Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Goltz, April

Titel

The Economics of Staging Authenticity at Preservation Hall

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

•  Preservation Hall is an iconic institution in New Orleans that has presented music known as “traditional New Orleans jazz” since 1961, primarily to a tourist audience in the French Quarter. A revered and internationally celebrated venue, touring band, and nonprofit foundation, the Preservation Hall brand is marketed as a symbol of authentic New Orleans culture, and the venue is a pilgrimage destination to which millions of people from all over the world seeking an experience of New Orleans jazz are drawn. This thesis situates and contextualizes Preservation Hall within broader discourses about the politics and economics of Black cultural display in New Orleans’ tourism industry. It examines the racial and economic dimensions of the two major mid-century New Orleans jazz revivals, and locates the founding of Preservation Hall within an ideology of preservationism held by largely white outsiders to New Orleans Black music. Utilizing historical, archival, and ethnographic methods, I investigate the structure and relationship between the complex of entities that comprise the Preservation Hall brand. Centering perspectives of past and present musicians, staff, affiliates, and the author's own observations as a former employee, I address the question of who is benefitting from the staging of "authentic" traditional New Orleans jazz at Preservation Hall, how, and in what proportion.