I’m stoked to be presenting a paper tomorrow morning at Drexel University as part of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s US conference. It’s got the kind of awful title: “Phantasmatic Identity Over Opinion?”: Making Sense of New Grammy Category “Alternative Jazz.” What can I say, the title got a bit out of hand. But writing this has been a helpful step into thinking on whatever “jazz” may be in the contemporary post-genre space, especially for very-online music communities. This, of course, isn’t the whole story, and may be addressing only one function of genre for a particular cohort of musicians with a particular subject position (read: straight white males in the “alternative” jazz scene who get to play with identity with few real stakes). But that itself may be important.
Check out the presentation text and slides HERE or scan the QR code below. And hit me up with your ideas – I’d love to hear what you think about the whole thing.
AJ Kluth 