Economics Justice Speaker Series

Join us for the launch of Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies & the Jazz Commons by Benjamin Barson, assistant professor of music at Bucknell University

This book recasts the birth of jazz, and unearths vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Black brass bands rehearsed participatory democracy through collective performance and their militant spirit embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction.