In this article I seek to explore the cosmopolitan foundations of jazz music and ask whether it currently exists as anything other than a postmodern commodity. I seek to investigate the practice of jazz in the 1950s and 1960s and argue that it sought to redefine what was meant by freedom. The aesthetic disputes of this period among musicians and critics around the practice of modernist (be-bop and free jazz) jazz music have played a crucial role in defining the identity of jazz. Critical here remain the attempts by musicians to establish a more autonomous relationship with the culture and entertainment industry. However the radical politics offered by jazz is fraught with ambiguity, caught between cosmopolitan sentiment and the establishment of gendered and racial hierarchies. Further, we also need to carefully investigate the role of black nationalism and the role that it has played in seeking to criticize more cosmopolitan understandings. In the final part of the argument I look at the material and cultural condition of contemporary jazz. Despite the power of the cultural commodification and the culture industry, jazz continues to exhibit a number of cosmopolitan frames that pose critical questions to the dominant neoliberal society.