This blog is devoted to contemporary poetics and to jazz, in approximately equivalent portions. Stay tuned.

Pierre Bourdieu refers to jazz, in passing, a middle-brow art. Theodor Adorno, notoriously, lumps it in with the “culture industry,” making no distinction between Thelonious Monk and [insert name of pop star here]. What I find fascinating is that there are high-brow, middle-brow, and low-brow approaches to jazz. An interest in canonical or avant-garde figures (Lester Young, Mingus, Monk and Miles, Ornette) is the mark of high-brow taste. The middle-of-the-road approach is self-explanatory. A desire to make jazz more respectable or “classical”hovers indeterminately between the high and the middle category. Low-brow jazz is simply Kitsch, the recycling of popular styles evident in many recent Nat King Cole tribute albums.

These categories overlap and are somewhat arbitrary. The high-brow attitude that consigns Oscar Peterson to oblivion is perfectly understandable. But do we really want Peterson to be different from what he is? His sense of ornamental excess and exuberant swing can be highly pleasurable. This is not the same thing as confusing him with Bud Powell.