Jazz poetry

In his book Digitopia Blues – Race, Technology and the American Voice, poet and saxophonist John Sobol argues that jazz was a transformative vehicle for African-American self-empowerment whose dominant characteristic and purpose was a search for mastery of a language of power, undertaken by a historically enslaved oral people denied access to words of power.

Instead, it heavily referenced the musical form with allusions made to musicians, instruments, and locations key to the burgeoning jazz scene.

Poets including Vachel Lindsay (who actually abhorred the "primitive" sound of jazz music) and Mina Loy wrote poetry in this vein.

[citation needed] As members of the Beat generation began to embrace aspects of African-American culture during the 1950s, the art of jazz poetry shifted its focus from racial pride and individuality to spontaneity and freedom.

When I did my spontaneous scatting [...] he would play piano or bongos and he never drowned out or stepped on a word or interrupted a thought that I or anyone else had when they joined us in these late night-early morning get-togethers.

"[5] In the 1960s, Beat poet LeRoi Jones renamed himself Amiri Baraka and revived the idea of jazz poetry as a source of black pride.

Gil Scott-Heron, often seen as one of the founding fathers of rap music, also used many of the artistic devices of jazz poetry in his spoken-word albums of the 1970s and 1980s.