Benjamin Barson, Brassroots Democracy

In his new book Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons, musician-scholar-activist Benjamin Barson offers a new understanding of the birth of jazz. Barson takes readers on a journey through New Orleans, Haiti, Mexico, and the US South at large to show how African American musicians shaped social movements to free both the land and the people.

Brassroots Democracy reveals how early jazz was deeply intertwined with the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. He presents a “music history from below,” showcasing how Louisianan musicians of color built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Central to Barson’s framing is the influence of the Haitian Revolution on New Orleans and Louisiana, portraying it as a crucial nexus for political and cultural transformation in the region throughout the nineteenth century. Barson attributes the prevalence of Latin American musical influence in early jazz to the underacknowledged legacy of Haiti, highlighting activist musicians such as cornetist Daniel Desdunes, of Haitian descent.

Throughout the work, Barson develops the concept of “Brassroots Democracy,” demonstrating how Black brass band musicians infused participatory music practices with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Through collective performance, these musicians embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction, revolutionizing both political and musical landscapes and accompanying mass marches and assemblies––a legacy which continues in second-lining traditions today.

Brassroots Democracy proposes a kind of deep listening of New Orleans brass bands to hear the resonance of maroon ecologies across the Americas. “Maroon ecologies” describe the communities and environments created by escaped enslaved Africans, known as Maroons, who fled plantations and settled in remote areas across the Americas. These communities were often located in difficult-to-reach swamps, mountains, and dense forests, which provided natural defenses against recapture, and where they improvised a new, democratic political culture. Barson shows how the fruits of maroons’ labor contributed to the “commons” of the music we call jazz today.

Host or Publisher John Munro