This book is one of the most improtant works ever written on Jazz music. It is a virtual manifesto agains the ghettoization and the racist pigeonholing thast has afflicted the public's appreciation of this great music since its beginnings as ragtime a century ago. It exposes the lies and misconceptions that have surrounded this music, the attempts-made anew, it seems, each decade-to deny that jazz is one of the leading artistic forces of our time. It does this by convincing its readers of the special beauty of this great music of the Afro-American people
