The Emergence of the Rural American Ideal in Jazz: Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny on ECM Records

Abstract

Jazz has long been identified as an urban genre. Certainly, the standard historical narratives of the music trace a metropolitan lineage: New Orleans to Chicago to Kansas City to New York, with other cities, inside and outside the U.S., playing somewhat lesser roles. In many ways, experts and laypeople alike have understood the music as not only presented predominantly in urban areas, but also as among the foremost aural representations of city living. Using such historical contexts as a backdrop, this article addresses the emergence of a decidedly different geo-cultual milieu for jazz, one that, while sometimes physically composed, performed, or distributed in cities, evokes an idyllic America far from the bustle and hum of the metropolis. The essay focuses particular attention on the key roles played by two U.S.-born musicians—Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny—in shaping an idealized notion of non-urban spaces in the 1970s and 1980s.