"Castles Made of Sand": Racial Ambiguity and Mid-twentieth Century American MusiciansMain MenuRacial Classification in American Culture and Law into the Twentieth CenturyMass Media in Mid-Twentieth Century AmericaRacial Ambiguity in the Age of Integrationism: Lena HorneRacial Ambiguity in the Age of Integrationism: Charles MingusRacial Ambiguity in the Age of the Popular Counterculture: Jimi HendrixRacial Ambiguity in the Age of the Popular Counterculture: Charles LloydRacial Ambiguity in the Age of the Popular Counterculture: Keith JarrettRacial Ambiguity and the Sale of Identity and ArtSam Schaefer394cfd47fa9812b1affb27b8128defe57fcac106
Keith Jarrett interview with Terry Gross for NPR's "Fresh Air"
12017-12-12T10:09:21-08:00Sam Schaefer394cfd47fa9812b1affb27b8128defe57fcac106275401Keith Jarrett relates a couple stories about his ambiguity and the way it affected his career performing music from a historically black genreplain2017-12-12T10:09:21-08:00Sam Schaefer394cfd47fa9812b1affb27b8128defe57fcac106
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12017-12-13T16:50:16-08:00Racial Ambiguity in the Age of the Popular Counterculture: Keith Jarrett3gallery2017-12-13T17:34:10-08:00Charles Lloyd's pianist during his breakout years was Keith Jarrett, a musician of European descent. Despite Jarrett's Hungarian, Scots-Irish and French ancestry, his hair, which was extremely curly, and his occupation, as a jazz pianist, led many who saw him play to assume he was a lightskinned Black man.
It was not an assumption Jarrett or his record companies did much to quell, as he was often photographed on the covers of his releases, such as Treasure Island and his own wildly successful LP, The Köln Concert.
Later in his career, in an interview with Terry Gross for National Public Radio's Fresh Air, Jarrett recalled that he might have benefitted from the ambiguity around his race, and he told stories of Black jazz musicians joking that they didn't believe he was actually white. He also recalled being the subject of protests at a music festival one time by some Black activists who charged that he was appropriating Black music and culture for profit. The mystery around his racial identity played a part in his image as one of the biggest jazz stars of the 1970s and granted him some license to explore musical styles historically associated with African-Americans, including gospel music and funk as well as jazz.
