...Chapter 4 examines the shared goals and values of jazz and Islam through the wider lens of Sunni Islam, the Nation of Islam, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and the militant aesthetic of hard bop and free jazz in the late 1950s and 1960s. The chapter tells the story of jazz artists who played...

...This chapter centers the jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald’s career as a racial crossover artist, whose early career was critical to securing jazz as a profession for race representation. After emerging as a popular vocalist for Chick Webb’s swing band, she became a symbol of a respectable African...

...In the twentieth century, jazz professionals became race representatives who also played an important part in shaping the religious landscape of twentieth-century African American Protestantism. They wielded the power to both define their religious communities and craft novel religious voices...

... telegraphing African American historical experience. Reviewing exemplary jazz performances by such practitioners as Joseph “King” Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, and Cecil Taylor, the chapter resolves this evident contradiction by demonstrating that the “blackness” of any musical...

...The introduction describes the central arguments, themes, and overviews of the chapters in this book. It shows that Malcolm X and John Coltrane were two of the leading stars in what might be called the golden age of African American Islam and jazz. This book argues that the values that Islam...

...This book explores the historical connections between African American Islam, jazz, and black internationalism from the 1940s to the 1970s. It shows that the social justice values that Islam and jazz shared were key to the growth of black Islamic communities in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia...

...This chapter discusses the Afro-Protestant mainline in the era when jazz emerged as a distinct profession. In the 1920s and 1930s, religious race professionals provided editorial commentary on African American entertainment and social gatherings through their denominational newspapers and the black...