Jazz is typically characterised as a uniquely American form of artistic expression, and histories of jazz are almost always set within the United States. Yet, from its inception, this new art form exploded beyond national borders to become one of the first modern examples of a global music sensation.

Jazz Planet collects essays that concentrate on jazz created outside the United States. The essayists describe the seldom-acknowledged musical contributions non-Americans have made to the art and explore the social and ideological crises jazz initiated around the globe. Was the rise of jazz in global prominence, they ask, simply a result of its inherent charm? Was it a vehicle for colonialism, Cold War politics and emerging American hegemony?

Jazz Planet provokes readers to question the nationalistic bias of most jazz scholarship and to expand the pantheon of great jazz artists to include innovative musicians who blazed independent paths.

CONTENTS
Towards A Global History of Jazz - E. Taylor Atkins
PART I: LOCAL HEROES
Cuban Musicians & Jazz - Raul A. Fernandez
Django Reinhardt's Left Hand - Benjamin Givan
Brazilian Jazz & Friction of Musicalities - Acacio Tadeu de Camargo Pedade
Jazz in India - Warren R. Pinckney
Interpreting the Creative Process of Jazz in Zimbabwe - Linda F. Williams
Musical Transculturation: From African American Avant-Garde to European Creative Improvisation - Christopher G. Bakriges
Gianluigi Trovesi's Music: An Historical & Geographical Short Circuit - Stefano Zenni
PART II: LOCAL POLITICS
The Music of the Gross, 1928-1931 - S. Frederick Starr
Naturalizing the Exotic: Australian Jazz Convention - Bruce Johnson
Music & Emancipation: The Social Role of the Black Jazz & Vaudeville in South Africa Between the 1920s and the early-1940s - Christopher Ballantine
A Japanese Story About Jazz in Russia - Michael Molasky
Swinging Differences: Reconstructed Identities in the Early Swedish Jazz Age - Johan Fornas
Black Internationale: Notes on the Chinese Jazz Age - Andrew F. Jones

E. TAYLOR ATKINS is an associate professor of history at Northern Illinois University and is the author of Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz In Japan, which was awarded the John W. Hall Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2003 as the best book on Northeast Asia. His work has appeared in such periodicals as Japanese Studies and East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies.

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