“Nobody Likes Rock and Roll but the Public”: Down Beat, Genre Boundaries and the Dismissal of Rock and Roll by Jazz Critics

Abstract

Jazz and rock and roll have been historically treated as separate musical traditions, despite sharing many socio-musical characteristics. The roots of the divide between the two genres can be partially traced through the history of music journalism. This article examines how jazz critics writing for Down Beat, the most influential of the American jazz publications, constructed rock and roll in opposition to jazz in the 1950s, providing one of the earliest instances of a discursive tension which survives to the present day. It shows how the commercial decisions music publications need to make can influence the formation of musical genre boundaries.