“In this book, the authors have gone much further than simply recognizing that jazz is located differently in cultures outside of the United States; they have transformed our understanding of those cultures and what jazz has meant to and for the people who inhabit them. In seeking to locate jazz in the world, and to map the multiple worlds of jazz, this book manages to redefine the possibilities and politics of the field. This is a major achievement for jazz scholarship.”
— Nicholas Gebhardt, author of Going for Jazz
“Jazz Worlds/World Jazz is a significant contribution to jazz studies—the essays here are provocative, perceptive, and original. As a whole, the book presents a critically informed and broadly theorized set of perspectives on jazz (and music) around the world, offering a nuanced and balanced perspective to understanding how global jazz practices have taken shape over the years.”
— Charles Hiroshi Garrett, editor in chief of The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition
"Jazz Worlds/World Jazz is valuable for the critical lens that the assembled ethnomusicologists bring to bear on local music practices, which targets issues of race/ethnicity, nationalism, gender/sexuality, identity politics, mediation, globalization/indigenization, historiography, canonization, socioeconomics, and the like. . . . The accompanying compact disc of musical examples, referred to in the text, further illustrates and clarifies the discourse"
— Notes
"Jazz Worlds/World Jazz is a fine introduction to different ways of looking at and learning to play jazz. And it certainly provides an alternate narrative to the clichéd story of the music migrating up the river from New Orleans to points north and then suddenly and miraculously easily disseminating all over the world."
— Music Works