With the conductive virtuosity of Butch Morris, Jenkins, the artistic director of the DC Jazz Festival, assembles an impressive paean to the Black writers who’ve dedicated their lives to capturing in language what jazz musicians conjure in a split second. With more than two dozen thoughtful profiles, this is a fascinating dive into the sociopolitical realities of being a Black writer—in this case, Black writers who love jazz and express that love in vivid prose. As a unifying theme, jazz functions as a metonym for the larger Black experience. Jenkins includes roundtable discussions, biographical profiles, and an appendix full of significant essays by Black music journalists. He presents the material with the care and improvisational beauty of oral history, chronicling marvelous behind-the-scenes insights. Luminaries like the recently deceased Greg Tate receive their due, and each writer profile feels like an intimate conversation with an old, interesting friend. If the central thesis of this orchestration interrogates why there have been so few Black journalists in a field pioneered by Black visionaries, Jenkins shows that we are still contending with the ghosts of anti-literacy laws passed in antebellum America. Ultimately, what each of these writers celebrates is the intimate knowledge that out of such violent circumstances—and through the intrepid vision of Black pioneers—a wealth of musical treasure has proliferated, from the blues to rock to jazz to soul and beyond. Of course, the Black jazz writer is not a monolith, and Jenkins does wonderful job of exploring the diversity within this small set. Among others, readers will find the important work of Stanley Crouch, LeRoi Jones, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Karen Chilton, Herb Boyd, Rahsaan Clark Morris.