Place and Innovation in Popular Music: The Bebop Revolution in Jazz

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between place and processesof innovation in popular music, focusing on the example of the bebop styleof jazz. Bebop emerged during the 1940s both as a reaction against olderjazz styles and as an expression of artistic innovation within a communityof younger jazz musicians. The process of its creation and early developmentwas situated in a set of "nested'' locales centered in New York City. Thisanalysis examines the diverse nature of these locales and the distinctiveways in which they fostered interactions among bebop's creators and theirvarious audiences. The analysis reveals that different locales played dissimilarroles during specific stages in bebop's emergence, as it evolved into anincreasingly coherent form of cultural expression. Most importantly, certainjazz clubs in Harlem provided a setting for the early experimentation thatculminated in the bebop style, but the style's subsequent formalization andpopularization depended on its exposure in jazz clubs in midtown Manhattan,at first along 52nd Street and later on nearby sections of Broadway.These findings confirm the importance of place in understanding thedynamic nature of popular music and the processes of innovation integral toit.