"Fire" music makes accessible the most extensive scholarship of the new jazz beginning in the 1950s. Included are materials on such topics as jazz collectives and the New York loft scene as well as jazz in specific countries and biographical and critical studies on over 400 artists and more than 7,100 sources are further divided by types of materials, including print and audio-visual sources. A new jazz chronology and a bibliography section on African cultural history and the arts provide background materials. Appendixes offer general reference sources, a directory of archives and classified lists of artists by country and instrument.