Signs of times

Adorno's music criticism and Mingus's black jazz

Abstract

It is likely that Adorno never listened to Mingus's music, and that Mingus never read Adorno's writtings. The latter was interested, rather, in jazz as a mass phenomenon, while the former tried ways to get out of it. Adorno's criticism of jazz are well known. The main texts in which it is expressed comprise a span of 25 years. Among them is "Timeless fashion: on jazz" (1953), published when the trajectory of Charles Mingus turns  towards new forms of acting. I take advantage of this  convergence at a distance to bring them closer and, with the sparks produced by the friction of their ideas, try to illuminate the signs of the times.