Chapter 14 - Louis Armstrong’s Autobiographical Art

Summary

Legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong developed his autobiography in a variety of ways of far-reaching complexity and subtlety to expose and challenge the realities of Jim Crow–era racism. He ultimately sought, in these moves, to preserve the sound world of his upbringing, and in turn, a world otherwise hidden, even erased by the dominant society’s racist logic in that era. The movement of the sounds of the music across traditional racial boundaries and the movement of the musicians themselves around the city both functioned as precursors to broader possibilities of free movement that ultimately brought significant pressure to bear on the oppressive structures of the Jim Crow era.