When the United States Congress declared that jazz deserved to be ‘preserved, understood, and promulgated’, 1987 became a watershed year in the history of valuing jazz: a music that had first entered the written historical record as ‘discordant jass’ now possessed the status of ‘a rare and valuable national American treasure’. Yet it could be said that such a statement attempts to erase the history that made it necessary. Even the Congressional discussion that preceded the resolution shows that the conflicted history of jazz is not so easily swept away.

Although John Conyers, the resolution's chief sponsor, at one point mentioned the ‘Afro-American roots’ of jazz, he, like the other speakers, emphasised the music's global success. He spoke of having encountered jazz in Japan, Moscow, Africa and the Caribbean, and he hailed the spread of jazz, along with its generative force to produce musical fusions, as bases for international respect and understanding. However, he raised important issues of ownership and identity when he commented: ‘I have been in countries throughout Europe in which many people thought that the art form [jazz] was their art form.’