ABSTRACT
The chapter will discuss the stylistic and aesthetic history of the jazz imaginary and the ways it is tied to the changing social and political realities of the populations that invented and nurtured the forms and meanings of the music. There will be some discussion also of the similarities of these histories throughout the Black Atlantic with a special focus on South Africa and Afro-America. In addition, there is a discussion of the extra musical dimensions of the jazz imaginary.
Since its inception, this music developed as an antidote to colonial domination. It not only serves as a potent resistance to the colonial condition, but also functions as an epistemological framework capable of providing answers to its fruits, many of which survive de jure colonial structures. The decolonizing efficacy of the music resides in its theoretical underpinnings as well as in its various practices.
