The Land of Dreams

Explores the idea that jazz, seen both in terms of dance and music, was instrumental in developing and expressing an outward-looking and socially challenging notion of freedom in America.

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Freedom is the oldest human value. Traditionally, though, freedom has been seen in rather abstract terms: as something that, since the Enlightenment in particular, is best couched in the complexities of a political philosophy of the sort associated with Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Yet for freedom to be real it needs to be something that is experienced, felt, and enjoyed, fought for, and maintained in the face of those who might seek to oppose it.

The Land of Dreams explores how the population of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th century danced, played, sang and spread their dreams of freedom. By examining sociological and political themes of gender, race, and class it will argue that jazz was instrumental in expressing and giving rise to an outward-looking and socially challenging notion of freedom and liberty in America. It will maintain that jazz was revolutionary in the way that it was improvised from various cultural materials (both linguistic, material, psychological, social and cultural) that were available in New Orleans during that time.