Transculturation in Black Jazz Scenes from Ontario and Nova Scotia During the Interwar Period: and Its After-Effects

Abstract

Jazz music and culture are almost entirely forgotten on Canadian radio and television today as a popular music form, yet they are still vibrant ingredients in urban Black culture in the East and persist on the fringes of society in rural and industrial areas. This thesis examines how interwar Eastern Canadian Black jazz scenes themselves, and those Black musicians who attained popularity during that period contributed to a national Black identity, and how anthropologist, Fernando Ortiz’s concept of transculturation contributed to their self-hood, today. My thesis asserts that Jazz culture helped form greater social bonds between Blacks and other ethnicities during the interwar period and was also a driving force behind the loosening of racial barriers in White society at large by connecting Black musicians and dancers from America, England, Africa, and the Caribbean to Eastern Canadian Black communities through transculturation and travel. By incorporating old and new live interviews and archival data in print, on film and in audio recordings, this thesis draws attention to the importance transculturation as the main vehicle for the transmutation and transportation of jazz musics and cultures around the world. It also documents the subtle aspects of racial discrimination in the lives of my participants, but where possible, allows the voices of those alive and those passed to speak for themselves. By using the immersive and qualitative research methods taken from anthropology, musicology, and ethnographic history, my research asserts that jazz culture was the defining factor connecting Black people together worldwide during the interwar period and was certainly instrumental in building Canadian Blacks’ self- concept and a more equitable Canadian entertainment industry.