America as process

Each of the two essays we read on the last day offered jazz as a key to understanding the central characteristics of American culture and/or character.  One, John A. Kouwenhoven's, "What's 'American' About America," was written in the 1950s.  The other, L. W. Levine's "Jazz and American Culture," in the late 1980s.  Both authors boldly attempt to articulate broadly true assertions without falling into essentialist fallacies. 

Why jazz?  In part, of course, because jazz has its origins within the United States.  In the most obvious, and easily demonstrated, sense it is an American genre of music though its roots extend to Africa and it has traveled around the globe.  However, these scholars' claim is more.  Before being invented in the USA, it is the sort of music that jazz is that expresses central features of American culture and character, both of the collective culture and of individual character.  Levine pays more attention to the music itself and to the historical debate about whether a 'low-brow,' popular form could be classified as culture at all.

Kouwenhoven takes another approach, beginning with a list of a dozen items that are more American than others including the grid iron street plan and the sky scrapper.  He considers how the two work together--horizontally and vertically--to create the New York skyline.  They reinforce their commonality: simple infinitely repeatable units.

Mary and I made our own list, topped by the drive-in restaurant.  (We did not think of the drive-in movie, but it could also be included.)  Our list also included garage sales, the interstate highway system, and plastic.  We noted the tension in these between stasis and impermanence, or maybe between the ephemeral and the enduring, that also suggests physical, social, and other sorts of motion.  Is that like jazz?  Is process valued here over product?  We'd need to consider each item on our list and the set of them together more carefully before I'd be willing to defend a claim about precisely what these items tell us about American culture and character.