UC Santa Cruz

In this dissertation I draw on 45 in depth interviews and five years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Bay Area jazz scene to argue that the contemporary working practices of Bay Area jazz musicians constitute a refusal and critique of neoliberal ideology. I situate my work in a recent strain of scholarship that has demonstrated the ways in which jazz and the figure of the gigging musician have been appropriated by the corporate consultants, management science, and the business world more broadly to romanticize flexible precarious labor and promote entrepreneurial selfhood. I draw on a Bourdieuian framework to describe the ways in which Bay Area jazz musicians share a habitus constituted by two ideal types, the artist and the professional. I locate these ideal types in the historical contexts of jazz history and African American musical labor. I then argue that musicians negotiate the competing interests of these ideal types in their working lives in ways that affirm the value of musical labor, suggest a sense of collective responsibility, speak to the political valences of black music, and refuse neoliberal notions of human capital. I then move to a critique of the ways in which jazz and “jamming” have been adopted as metaphors for business management in organization science literature, and argue that the contemporary structures, practices, and rituals of Bay Area jazz jam sessions represent a refusal of neoliberal forms of competition and meritocracy. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which members of the Bay Area jazz scene, especially women, have challenged sexism in the scene in ways that move beyond neoliberal feminism’s narrow focus on tokenistic representation.