This course addresses jazz and related African American musics as a continual process of “call and response” by musicians, audiences, writers, and other participants on the scene in relation to their broader social environment. Students will investigate topics such as the American civil rights movement through music by Max Roach, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, and others; large-scale musical framings of the historical narratives of African American experiences and identities by William Grant Still, Duke Ellington, John Carter, and Matana Roberts; uses of jazz styles by musicians responding to societal issues beyond the United States; and competing debates surrounding jazz as a representative expression of African American identity, as a symbol of America as a “melting pot,” and as a global emblem of freedom, democracy, cosmopolitanism, revolution, and struggle. Historical examples will be placed in relation to the urgent “calls” to musicians in our contemporary society, and the many responses to these calls by today’s artists; in this tradition, students will be encouraged to develop their own socially informed responses to the world around them.