Pilgrims in the Big Apple: Improvisation, Interaction & Inspiration in the Jazz Village

In this thesis I use the context of jazz to argue for a radically inclusive conception of music-making, one encompassing a multiplicity of musical "villagers" who contribute, collaborate, and co-perform in less obvious yet equally essential ways as do the musicians themselves. In contrast with ethnographies that depict musicians as the focal agents of social exchanges, performing for perceptive and responsive listeners---a framework that tacitly consigns the latter to a peripheral participatory role---I emphasize as well an audience's potential involvement as active players and co-agents, both in the micro-context of specific performance events and in the macro-context of community-wide cultural commerce.