American Jazz Cultures in Contemporary Europe: An Eternal Triangle focuses on a jazz generation at the center of the debates over jazz ownership and aesthetics: Generation E ('Gen-E'), or those Europeans who matured under the sign of the Euro and call all of Europe 'home.' In addition to describing the contemporary European milieu, the book also contextualizes Gen-E’s growing self-awareness as a transatlantic cultural force within the era framed by the George W. Bush presidency. In drawing upon 'African American,' 'American,' and 'European' modalities of jazz identity, European jazz musicians emerge as both resourceful and also as not so different from their American counterparts.

The book disentangles a complicated twenty-first century discourse--the 'eternal triangle' framework-- by consolidating existing scholarship and enabling a wide audience to apprehend the dynamic links between postmodern Gen-E jazz productions and their American modernist and/or African American traditionalist counterparts. It shows how young European musicians triangulate their own jazz identities in relation to a) other Europeans; b) cultural-imperialist America; and c) African Americans.

A second framework uses ethnography and institutional analysis to present contemporary European jazz as annulated with nationalist, internationalist, and universalist spheres of activity. Accordingly, the centerpieces of the book are three ethnographic case studies focusing on 1) jazz nationalism in Germany; 2) jazz internationalism in Switzerland; and 3) jazz universalism in the Netherlands. Collectively, these chapters link the local activities of European jazz musicians and industry insiders to broader European and transatlantic networks.