My earliest memories of critical writing came from reading Nat Hentoff in Downbeat, He combined an appreciation for what my music professors called “ethnic music” with the liberation politics of the day. His jazz criticism fused the social and the cultural in its fullest material and historical context.
For many on the left his later libertarian views became difficult to understand in the context of how asymmetric power was manifested as inequality, but one did admire his dedication to democratic principles such as in Free Speech for Me — But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.
Good bye Nat, and thank you for bridging cultures and sound in giant steps.
Hentoff was a writer for the Village Voice for 50 years. He also wrote for many publications over his lengthy career, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, United Media syndicate and Down Beat magazine.
He frequently wrote about issues surrounding civil liberties — the Voice describes him as a "civil libertarian." His 1982 novel The Day They Came to Arrest the Book tells the story of a high school that seeks to remove the book Huckleberry Finn from the school curriculum and library over racism and other issues. A student from the school newspaper fights the effort — an allegory on censorship.
Hentoff wasn’t just a great writer, though. He also produced several albums—none of such stature as the drummer Max Roach’s ambitious 1960 album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, a project of civil-rights-related compositions. “Freedom Day,” which focuses on the Emancipation Proclamation, features Roach’s wife Abbey Lincoln on vocals and boasts notable solos from trumpeter Booker Little and trombonist Julian Priester, but it’s Roach’s machine-gun drumming that leaps out of the music.
Hentoff’s liner notes:
Jazz musicians, normally apolitical and relatively unmindful of specific social movements, were also unprecedentedly stimulated. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Max Roach, Art Blakey and several others declared public support for the sit-ins .... Jazzmen too had been becoming conscious and prideful of the African wave of independence. Several new original compositions were titled with the names of African nations, and some jazzmen began to know more about Nkrumah than about their local Congressman.