Item Details

Rhythm Clubs, record series, and the everyday connoisseurship of ‘hot rhythm’ records in interwar Britain

Issue: Vol 13 No. 1-2 (2019) Special Issue: Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics

Abstract:

The Rhythm Club movement was a crucial development in British jazz history: it galvanizedan emerging audience of primarily lower-middle-class young men, who dramaticallyreshaped how jazz was understood and consumed. Using contemporary pressclippings, as well as archive material relating to the earliest Rhythm Club meetings, Iexamine how participants developed a unique form of 'everyday connoisseurship' thatmerged ideals of autonomous 'art' culture with a critical vocabulary that was informedby more quotidian elements of musical consumption and leisure activity. My account ofhot rhythm appreciation seeks to nuance existing popular narratives of early jazz recordconsumption that overemphasize enthusiasts' isolation from a putatively authentic jazzperformance culture.

Author: Lawrence Davies

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