ABSTRACT
Recognizing that art is not a monolith, conceptually or in practice, Peter Kivy proposed that an exploration of differences is more enlightening than a focus on similarities. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the decades since Kivy's proposal. Every art encapsulates a set of evolved skills, practices, and standards of evaluation. From the viewpoint of a participant inside any one of them, the parameters of its practice are fixed. But, imagine a speeded up film, so to say from well before the first signs of its appearance on earth, up through its eventual disappearance. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book evaluates the prospects for defining jazz by identifying what is musically distinctive about jazz, apart from the social practices that nurtured it. White appropriation would not merit extended discussion were it not for the way that appropriations were successfully packaged and sold as mass entertainment.
