Kurt Loder on Nat Hentoff, Free Speech, and Free Jazz

For well over 60
years, Nat Hentoff has been a one-of-a-kind public intellectual, an
unrelentingly outspoken champion of both modern jazz and all of the
liberties that flow from the First Amendment. In The
Pleasures of Being Out of Step, a new documentary directed by
David L. Lewis, we hear Hentoff explaining these twinned
inspirations. “The reason we have jazz,” he says, “the reason we
have almost anything worthwhile, is the fact that we’re a free
people. And that came about because of James Madison, and those
improvisers.” As Kurt Loder writes, Lewis does a superb job of
illustrating Hentoff’s long career with firsthand interviews of the
man himself and many of his colleagues, 

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