The pleasure of being out of step, according to Nat Hentoff, is not having to worry about being in step. Hentoff has spent his career letting words dance to their own beat in his columns for Downbeat and the Village Voice. One of jazz music’s groundbreaking critics, Hentoff made his name as an early champion of bebop’s urgent, modernist impulses. But his passion for music has always been inseparable from his unflagging commitment to free speech and journalistic activism. Over the years, he hasn’t just insisted that we listen to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, he has ardently defended Lenny Bruce’s right to command a microphone and neo-Nazis’ right to march. In Hentoff’s mind, music and our Constitution-guaranteed rights to free speech are harmonious counterpoints. For him, spontaneous expression of any kind, even if it’s out of step with the mainstream beat, is the most vital instrument in the performance of the American experience.  TW