Jay Coburn

It was an iconic American instrument.

And now, with jazz, it was a black American's instrument.

I've got this magazine column here written by a couple of saxophone purists in 1917.

Let me just read a bit.

God save us from the hideous catcalling that is so much in vogue at present termed jassing.

The listener who hears some of these jazz players and has never before heard a saxophone is liable to form some very erroneous opinions of the much talked of instrument.

Really, the jasser should be subject to the same quarantine restrictions as if he had the foot-and-mouth disease.

This reputation for being a black instrument, an instrument associated with smoky clubs and sex, it's that reputation that followed the saxophone back to its birthplace in Europe.

This association was strong enough that the saxophone ran afoul when the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.

This is Darius Jones.

He's a composer, a saxophonist, and assistant professor of music at Wesleyan University.

The Nazis banned what they called entartete music, degenerate music.

That included anything with excesses in tempo, Jewishly gloomy lyrics, I am quoting the Nazis there.

They even had an exhibition showcasing all the styles of art that were supposedly morally terrible.

It was, apparently, much more popular than the one showcasing fine German art.

The Soviet Union also sent saxophonists to the Gulag for being too bourgeois, too Western.

The saxophone was excluded from the Vatican and then by churches the world over, including in the U.S.,

Then again, maybe it's not.

Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the instrument had already done some dramatic shapeshifting.

It had been an obscure money-making scheme, a fallen military instrument, a novelty item, and a powerful symbol of black American music.