ABSTRACT
On a Sunday night in the spring of 2011, I visited a weekly jam session at a venue in London’s Dalston district. When I arrived at eleven o’clock, the small corner bar was already crowded and growing warm; by the end of the night, some time after three in the morning, attendees were glowing from the heat in the packed room, and their exhalations had left a thin mist on the inside of the windows. The audience consisted mainly of young white men and women, fashionably dressed. There were some notable exceptions: a middle-aged white couple stayed till the end of the night, as did an older white jazz fan, perhaps in his seventies, who sat close to the band and responded enthusiastically throughout the second set. There were also a small number of middle-aged black attendees in the audience, and a black concert promoter who handed out flyers advertising performances of jazz, soul and lovers rock at another venue in west London.
