In this essay,  I consider two different approaches to the problem of what I call objective representational content: bottom-up approaches, that take the semantic value of the constituent to be both metaphysically and explanatorily prior to the semantic values of whole sentences and top-down approaches that reverse that order of priority.   I call theories of the second sort jazz combo theories of meaning, on the grounds that they take the initial constitution of objective representational content to be simultaneous with the institution of a set of mutually owned discursive norms.  On this approach, just as it is only against a backdrop of mutually endorsed musical norms that what would otherwise be mere noise is constituted de novo as music, so it is only against a backdrop of mutually owned linguistic or discursive norms that what would otherwise count as productions of meaningless strings are constituted de novo as determinate  linguistic acts, with determinate propositional contents.  To confer a propositional content, on this approach,  just is to confer liability to determinate patterns of normative assessment -- making  propositional contents and the norms governing linguistic production two faces of the same coin.  But I shall argue that Jazz Combo theories ultimately fail to explain where objective representational contents come from because they they need to be supplemented with an independent theory of reference. And this, I argue,  only a "bottom-up" up approach to objective representational content has any hope of establishing.