Wynton at Harvard, Chapter 19: Jazz Improvisation as Democratic Discourse

Delve into Wynton Marsalis’s six-part Harvard University lecture series, covering a range of topics including jazz, what it means to be American, and the importance of cultural literacy and the arts in the liberal arts education. XIX. Jazz Improvisation as Democratic Discourse In this chapter, Wynton highlights communication in blues improvisation. Go to for the complete series. “Hidden in Plain View: Meanings in American Music“ is a series of six lectures delivered at Harvard University between 2011 and 2014 sponsored by the Office of the President and Provost. The inaugural lecture, “Music as Metaphor,” was delivered in Sanders Theatre to a capacity crowd. It is an interpretation of the many unobserved symbols in American music and an investigation into how they illuminate the democratic process. It covers many of the fundamental devices, forms, and songs that bind the different Americas together at the root. It is Marsalis’s c