Jazz Consumption Among African Americans from 1982 to 2008

Abstract

This study sought to answer two questions. First, who within the African American community is consuming jazz music? Second, are African American jazz consumers cultural snobs or cultural omnivores? Nationally representative data sets from the Cultural Policy and National Data Archives for the years 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2008 were used to answer these questions. Using classification and regression tree analysis and binary logistic regression, the author draws several conclusions. First, African American jazz consumers are educated and urban. Furthermore, since 1982, the level of education associated with the jazz consumer has increased. Second, African American jazz listeners are omnivores who reject rap. It is suggested that this particular consumption pattern reflects a form of segmented assimilation in which middle-class African Americans consume jazz in order to retain their racial heritage but reject rap in order to distance themselves from working- and lower-class African Americans.