Jazz and the abstract truth

This book describes the labyrinthine path of two European jazz musicians, as they arrive in America and are immediately plunged into the ghetto depths of Brooklyn. On the one hand, it documents the day to day reality of contemporary New York jazzland seen through bohemian sunglasses, and on the other - it paints a disturbing but accurate portrait of love breaking down within the brutally harsh constraints of the dollar empire. The two love America but the final passages of the book lead into a deep critique of modernism. There is a search for identity, amidst an America which is lost and searching for rebirth within the psychic aftermath of September 11th. This only serves to create further distrust in the status quo, and the two figures, like Baudelaire, quietly confirm with dignity and acceptance, that after all this suffering, the language of the streets has only gathered more currency, and that the path of existentialism has become yet more universal, such that free jazz, the music they risked their all for - is now a quasi-political entity or manifesto to reaffirm and once again stand by.