ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to turn in more detail to some others which have generally managed to camouflage their problematics or simply to conceal themselves from scrutiny, but which come under a stronger spotlight from the diasporic perspective. The most ubiquitous formation deployed in diasporic jazz studies has been that of ‘nation’, which continues to affect the way jazz musicians are perceived and valued. The dominant model framing diasporic jazz is that of nation, but that occludes internal heterogeneities relating to such factors as locality, class, and cultural identity, that often reach out beyond nation. The limitations of ‘nation’ in providing anything but the most provisional map of diasporic jazz, points to a more general difficulty with the application of geo-political formations in tracing the music’s history, including its origins. The study of the international diaspora also turns attention back to the case of the US itself. New Orleans remains identified as the single point of origin, from which all flowed.
