Adorno traced jazz’s authoritarian implications to its military-march origins

Evidence

From a purely musical point of view, jazz, Adorno argued, was also completely bankrupt. Its beat and syncopation were derived from the military march, which suggested its implicit relation to authoritarianism, despite its being banned in Germany. Cool jazz was similar to the musical impressionism of Debussy and Delius, but watered down and conventionalized. Its subjective element was derived from salon music, but it had long since lost any spontaneity. In fact, any attempts to reintroduce elements of true spontaneity were quickly absorbed into its reified system. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 568

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 563; Adorno read astrology as an ideology serving dependent authoritarian personalities — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 593; Adorno read jazz syncopation as illusory individual breakout masking collective subjection — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 879

Broader Connections

• Adorno read astrology as an ideology serving dependent authoritarian personalities #expands (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 593