Description: Taking a central chapter in the history of jazz, Scott DeVeaux shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment. At the same time, he provides an extraordinary view of the United States in the decades just prior to the civil rights movement. Looking at musicians including Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, DeVeaux shows that bebop was simultaneously an artistic movement, an ideological statement, and a commercial phenomenon. A study in American cultural history and a critical musical inquiry, The Birth of Bebop is also a fitting homage to bebop and to those who made it possible.

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