Masayoshi Yamada

Released in 1959, The Cry of Jazz was the only work of KHTB Productions, a movie production company founded in Chicago by a group of African Americans. The production team, consisting of novelist Mark Kennedy, urban planner Nelam L. Hill, mathematician Eugene Titus, Jr., and composer Edward O. Bland, referred to it as a thesis film that “relate[s] the structure of jazz to the structure of Black life in America.” For its shoddy acting and politically charged content, the film was largely dismissed upon its initial release. Even today The Cry of Jazz baffles many viewers, for its unusual juxtaposition of the term “Negro” and enhanced racial pride. The public reception remains divided. It is deemed at best a remarkable work of cultural politics ahead of its time, and at worst an aberration from the otherwise racially harmonious sentiments espoused during the civil rights years. Masayoshi Yamada's talk argues that neither is the case, instead pointing to the urgency of recognizing the film as a semi-autobiography.

Masayoshi Yamada is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at UCLA. He is completing his dissertation on the history of jazz fandom and listenership. Masa's writing has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, such as Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatched from Japan's Black Studies. Both in and beyond academic settings, he has delivered talks in Japan, North America, and Europe, including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Harlem—New York, Montreal, Columbia—Missouri, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Mainz, and Copenhagen. Masa is also a member of UAW 2865 which represents graduate workers across the University of California system. Having organized around issues that affect international graduate workers, he was part of the 2022 UC academic workers' strike that involved 48,000 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.