Uneven and combined consecration: the mainstream, duplicate, and workaround institutions of jazz

Abstract

I find that jazz gained a toehold in U.S. concert halls, music awards, festivals, and schools in the 1930s, 60s, 70s or 80s. I reconcile this with extant research, which identifies the 1940s and 50s as the crucial moment for jazz, by linking the processes that transpired in the sites I examine to those past research has focused on. During the 1940s and the 50s, facing resistance in the mainstream institutions I highlight, advocates of jazz built alternative institutions that duplicated or worked around the mainstream; some of these then helped jazz enlarge its mainstream foothold. Based on these findings, I extend the conceptualization of consecration as ongoing permanent revolution: in already settled fields, the consecration of new, racially stigmatized art forms may follow from uneven and combined development across multiple institutional sites, constituting a string of loosely-related events of varying intensity. A reassessment of the highbrow-lowbrow scheme follows.