Jazz in the light of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Firsthand reports written about jazz, when it arrived in Europe, by journal ists, writers and musicologists closely resemble the accounts written, duri ng the Classical Age, about Black African or slave music by travelers and t he philosophers who set their words down in writing. Besides general lament ations about the noise and cacophony produced by practices that could hardl y be called musical, a few more inspired voices were heard. What is really in common between "Manding drums" or the "Negre Arada chant" and the music brought to Europe after the First World War by Will Marion Cooks or lames R eese's bands? While inquiring into the constancy in these accounts, which d oes not hold up given the difference between the sorts of music in question , the authors suggest that thinkers during the Enlightenment, such as Jean- Jacques Rousseau (who laid the basis for ethnomusicology), helped prepare o ur minds and ears for other kinds of music or, in broader terms, prepared t he way for us to listen to music in another way.