The Legacy of Jazz: Embracing Diversity

I confess it: I was not raised on jazz. My earliest memories have a soundtrack of fifties and sixties music, and my dance education began by wiggling to Elvis Presley and twisting with Sam Cooke. I didn’t get around to jazz until my late teens, when I stumbled upon lindy hop toward the end of high school. While I regarded the dance as more of a fun hobby than an all-consuming passion, I was interested enough to get to know its music. My first investigations in jazz were courtesy of the local public library, where I rented CDs and ripped them illegally (may the music gods forgive me) to my fancy new college-bound laptop. I checked out every Louis Armstrong CD in the district, primarily because I had loved his cameos in High Society, but also because his voice made me smile. One CD, its name completely gone from my memory but which must have been a collection of Armstrong’s recordings from films, included “Basin Street Blues.” I remember my enchantment at the picture Jack Teagarden painted of that unique street down in “the land of dreams.” Jazz music, swing dance, and the world these arts presented to me was quickly becoming my “heaven on earth.” And one primary reason for their appeal is contained in the song’s lyric that struck me most: jazz and swing seemed to be the cultural place “where dark and light always meet.” For a restless white 18-year-old ra