In Black slang, both "jazz" and "rock" were once synonyms for sex.

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Manufacturing Markets: From Jazz to Rock

Music did not truly exist as a commodity until the vast market of popular music was created. This market did not exist when Edison invented the phonograph; it arose only after the industrial system in America colonized Black music. The history of this commodity expansion is exemplary: a rebellious music transformed into a repetitive commodity; the venting of youthful anger—hinting at the economic crisis that followed the post-war economic boom—was quickly tamed by consumption. From jazz to rock, the same approach—constantly distancing oneself from the desire for liberation, constantly starting anew and reusing—is used to create a market, that is, simultaneously creating supply and demand.

In Black community slang, both “jazz” and “rock” mean sex. Significantly, these acts, once vibrant and celebratory, later became gender-neutral commodities, a cultural landscape available to consumers with purchasing power.

Jazz was strategically used to create this popular music market: it had never been able to become a commodity on the reproduction network before because jazz was music without written records and was almost exclusively limited to a specific local cultural audience; it lacked a market with purchasing power. It only developed after the invention of recording technology in the United States, with the emergence of a large, consumer-driven market of young people. Jazz was music of the body, played and composed by everyone, expressing the alienation of Black people. White people secretly extracted this creativity, rooted in labor and early industrialization, from Black people and then sold it back: the initial market for jazz was the displaced workers in the Black communities of Northern cities. White capital owned all the record companies, controlling this commodification process not only economically but also culturally.

It is noteworthy that the first jazz record was recorded by a white band (the Original Dixieland Jazz Band). The economic takeover of jazz by white people resulted in a very Westernized style of jazz—music shaped by white music critics and “acceptable to Western music itself.” In other words, it was music that had broken away from Black jazz and was designed to be accessible to a young white market.

Ironically, jazz is the symphony of beasts in the Voodoo forest, whose thumbs and toes still lack the ability to grasp. This music is utterly unrestrained, so monotonous is insufficient to describe it: like letting monkeys run wild, devoid of morality and self-discipline, completely ruled by instinct, its freedom is still base. These slaves must submit, or they will have no master in their eyes. Their attainment is a disgrace. This disgrace stems from ugliness and its victory.

Furthermore, in the early days of jazz recording, the most famous jazz musicians were white: Paul Whitman (voted “King of Jazz” in 1930), Benny Goodman (the revered “King of Swing”), and Stan Kenton. Beginning in the 1930s, when the demand for Black jazz grew to a point where it was profitable, there was a systematic exploitation and plundering of Southern Black heritage to produce jazz; those recording Black songs rarely considered paying royalties to Black people. Through the then-existing system of “field trips” (organized by so-called talent discoverers—sometimes Black—who organized trips to the South to collect Black music), the newly arrived Black population in Northern industrial cities heard musical forms derived from their culture, but in a standardized form.

The traveling studios recorded as much material as possible, paid the singers a fee, and that was it. Whether the record sold well? The singers had no idea and would never benefit from it. Only a few stars were regularly summoned north to record; but even then, they were paid per recording, not based on sales.

This exploitation of Black musicians continued for a long time, and remains so today. Many Black people benefited from the system and accepted the means by which their music could gain international recognition. As Adorno wrote, jazz “finds pleasure in its own alienation,” a direct reflection of the Black situation—which Black people endured until the late 1950s. (For more stories of the Jazz Age, click here.) After 1955, the commodification of jazz was established; (due to the proliferation of 45 rpm records and professional programming on AM radio networks) melodies and blues from the Northern Black community began to spread to white circles.

With the advent of jukeboxes, 78 rpm records disappeared and 45 rpm records took their place. A large, unified, and standardized market developed, centered on styles favored by high school students.

Furthermore, the baby boom and the end of the post-war economic crisis created a vast demand among young white people, a demand that coincided with the emergence of an eclectic product: rock and roll, a carefully filtered musical form designed to cater to this demand—appropriating Black frustrations to express the hopes of young white people. This precise infiltration was carried out simultaneously by radio stations and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), which oversaw royalty payments.

After this musical style took shape, it exploded in popularity in the 1960s, leading to mass production. The involvement of genuine Black musicians ushered in another phase; and paradoxically, these Black musicians were brought back to the United States via British orchestras or by Black people in Britain (such as Hendricks). This new trend was solidified by the development of 33 rpm records and FM radio networks—at that time, 33 rpm records and FM radio networks had largely replaced 45 rpm records and AM radio networks in the United States.

Just as the rise of Romanticism led to skepticism about the codes of harmony, the emerging pop music of the 1960s also prompted questions about the standardized pop/rock market. However, while representation collapsed, repetition arose: repetition could silence people, but representation could not. What music publishers of the late 19th century could not prohibit, the record industry could control—censorship, transplanted from the 18th century, played a significant role. For example, Jefferson Airplane was fined $1,000 for failing to comply with a clause in their contract prohibiting the use of profanity on certain occasions; the Grateful Dead of Texas was fined $5,000 for the same reason. Country Joe McDonald was fined $500 and ordered to shave his head for using profanity in Massachusetts; Jim Morrison was fined $500 and imprisoned for six months for indecent exposure and the use of offensive language in Florida.

As a result, a degenerate, censored, and artificial kind of music took center stage—mass music supplied by anesthetized markets.

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In Black slang, both “jazz” and “rock” were once synonyms for sex.