ABSTRACT
Everyday life became a major theme for philosophers, ethnographers, historians, sociologists, cultural theorists, and artists in the early twentieth century, and it continues to inform some of the most important debates in all of these fields. The use of the term, however, is often vague and paradoxical. It has been applied, on the one hand, to experiences that are common to everyone, such as eating, sleeping, walking, or talking; on the other hand, it is used to describe social practices that are somehow excluded from or in some way resist incorporation into the standard narratives of modern life. This chapter explores the concept of everyday aesthetics in the context of jazz studies. It begins with a survey of current debates on everyday life in popular music studies, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, and philosophy, before discussing the example of Ornette Coleman’s early 1970s loft experiment, the Artist House, in New York City.
