Freedom of Choice: Jazz, Neoliberalism, and the Lincoln Center

Jazz music's status as a uniquely American cultural practice is rarely questioned, but is nonetheless continually reaffirmed. Crucial to this nationalistic discourse is the metaphor of freedom. The metaphor is a fluid one: manifest both in the music's role as an aestheticized practice of resistance and as official state propaganda. In April 2012, Jazz at Lincoln Center (J@LC) and artistic director Marsalis opened a new jazz palace in the St. Regis Hotel in Doha, Qatar. In this paper, I consider the J@LC program as an institution that sutures these official and unofficial jazz-freedom discourses. I propose that the case of J@LC Doha shows us exactly how free market economics and jazz-based American cultural imperialism have become increasingly inseparable as a reflection of a new, corporatized American neocolonialism.