Sounding and being black have meant many different things throughout the history of jazz, from "authenticity" and "realness" to militancy and rebellion. In this thesis, I attempt to reframe such understandings by foregrounding the voices of the musician practitioners and the sound of their music by looking at their lives and work through the lens of black nationalism. Exploring the social, political, and economic consequences of being and sounding black, I posit that a sonic black nationalism is evinced which, rather than being a radical political orientation, instead situates black jazz musicians within larger black communities and life in the United States. In particular, I look at the ways in which the cross-racial politics of patronage in jazz has affected the sound of the music, the importance of 1950s black musicking for both the musicians and larger black communities, and finally at the ways in which great man narratives occlude the importance of group sound and groove for black musicians of the 1960s.
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