“Imperial musicology” at the end of empire: jazz, race, and musical criticism in mid-twentieth century Britain

Music, like every other aspect of the indigenous cultures encountered by British colonialists, was subjected to interpretations based on imperial racial hierarchies. Modes of understanding and analyzing music in colonial settings produced a kind of “imperial musicology” that went on to have a significant afterlife, not least by influencing musical criticism in Britain itself. After providing a historiographically-rooted overview of imperial musicology, this essay explores the parallels between it and elements of British jazz criticism in the last decades of Empire. By focusing specifically on the reception of a style with Black American origins, I show how writing on music in mid-twentieth century Britain could be shaped by colonial frameworks, making music a vehicle of racialization, despite its potential liberationist dimensions. The article thus offers a new assessment of the relationship between music and empire, enabling further research that explores these connections in additional depth.