Jazzgeist - Racial signs of twisted times

This article investigates the changing currency of racial politics in jazz music formations, with a comparative focus on Nazi and contemporary Germany . While it is noted that music articulates politics in an oblique or metony mic way, in highly-charged contexts music is lent further propositional cap acity. This is highlighted in Nazi Germany where jazz music was seen as bar baric, 'dark' and uncivilized, and classical music represented order and cu ltural supremacy. These dynamics continue but, often, in a slightly askew f orm for contemporaryarticulations of racial essentialisms: present-day fasc ist music is a repository of whiteness, but 'darkness' is sought in this pu tatively 'white' music, while jazz now serves as a moniker of comfort. and an "antiquated civility'. Each of these musical cultures invokes hybridity in a differential sense - either hybridity is suppressed or it is masked wi thin racially essential matrices. These musical trajectories form the backd rop to an appreciation of the overlooked yet significant jazz dance fusion scene in contemporary Germany - where hybridity is fetishized. arguably as a means of renegotiating violent histories and contemporary racisms in Euro pe.