This anthology undertakes a search for the real meaning of jazz and the blues. The book includes the words of Solomon Northup, an ex-slave describing musical life on a plantation, Ralph Ellison dismembering the politically slanted analyses of LeRoi Jones, and Sterling Brown's poem Southern Road, which is characterized by its chain-gang rhythms. The book also includes literary responses to the musical forms of black America by Philip Larkin, Michael Ondaatje, Gary Giddens and Peter Guralnick. The association of jazz with freedom, human rights and cross-cultural dialogue is explored, from the earliest recorded responses to accounts of its spread into Europe, to be outlawed by both Nazis and communists.