Drawing from a two-year ethnographic study, this article establishes jazz as an epistemological metaphor for critical participatory action research. The author juxtaposes the tensions inherent in jazz music and critical participatory research methodologies to provide a framework for understanding how dissonance can become a productive element for meaning making and Truth-telling. The article establishes three major implications for critical researchers: 1) The desirability of discomfort in critical qualitative research as a means to avoid stagnation; 2) the "crisis-generating" potential of jazz epistemologies as an approach to critical participatory action research; and, 3) the emergence of new perspectives on research and pedagogy from the intersections of critical research and teaching practices.