Jazz as critique: with Fumi Okiji

Online discussion with jazz musician & cultural theorist Fumi Okiji about her brilliant book ‘Jazz As Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited’, in conversation with Caspar Melville.

Fumi Okiji arrived at the academy by way of the London jazz scene in which she took an active part as a vocalist and improviser. She works across black study, critical theory, and sound and music studies. Her book Jazz as Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited (Stanford University Press, 2018) is a sustained engagement with Theodor Adorno’s idea concerning the critical potential of art. She teaches in the Rhetoric programme at Berkeley, and is a member of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, a group of friends who, whenever possible, study, listen to music and eat good food together.