The rapid development of jazz in both the United States and Europe has spawned a number of diverse musical expressions, including music that most listeners today would not recognize as “jazz” music. To remedy this situation, jazz musicians and critics after 1930 began to codify what “real” jazz included and, more importantly, what “real” jazz did not. This construction of authenticity, often delimited along racial lines, has served to relegate diverse artists and styles (those outside of a “mainstream” to the margins of historiography. The question of race is central to all jazz discourses. Alongside race goes the issue of representation , or who gets to play what, for whom, and under what circumstances Issues of representation have abounded since the beginning of jazz history, usually centering on white representation of black music and culture from one perspective. negative Iconic examples of this phenomenon include the 1917 release of Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Paul Whiteman's concert at Aeolian Hall in 1924. The ODJB recording was the first jazz record and the first performance of the jazz to most Americans, both white and black to white Americans, showing how it had progressed from its primitive black beginnings to a more sophisticated style rooted in the foundations of European practice. Indeed, ideas of creation and control in jazz have usually been drawn along racial lines: black as creator, white as curator. In this mode of racial understanding in jazz, white fans and musicians are supposedly missing an essential “something” that makes them unable to innovate in jazz. In contrast, black musicians, despite being highly c...... middle of paper...... of which modern jazz, big bands, dance music (e.g., the orchestras of Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Count Basie), bebop and later Free Jazz emerged. Modern jazz, and especially bebop, because of its hybrid nature has presented cultural critics, and especially music critics, with a number of unsolvable questions. Music itself embodies the contradiction. It can accurately be defined as both popular culture and high culture; it has an oral, vernacular strain and one linked to the most innovative compositional techniques; he is African American and European, romantic and revolutionary; and has both escapist (e.g. late-era Sun Ra and John Coltrane) and resistance (e.g. Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman) tendencies. As a result, jazz has become one of the most discussed and debated modern musical forms, with controversial discourse surrounding its development..