Jazz
Jazz is an original American
musical art form originating around the start of the
20th century in
New Orleans, rooted in
Western music technique and theory, and is marked by the profound cultural contributions of
African Americans. It is characterized by
blue notes,
syncopation,
swing,
call and response,
polyrhythms, and
improvisation. Jazz has been described as "America's
Classical Music," and started in saloons throughout the nation.
 |
Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong remains one of the most loved and best known of all jazz musicians. |
Jazz has roots in the combination of Western and
African music traditions, including
spirituals,
blues and
ragtime, stemming ultimately from
West Africa, western
Sahel, and
New England's religious
hymns and
hillbilly music, as well as in
European military band music. After originating in African American communities near the beginning of the
20th century, jazz gained international popularity by the
1920s. Since then, jazz has had a pervasive influence on other musical styles worldwide. Even today, various jazz styles continue to evolve.
The word
jazz itself is rooted in American
slang, probably of sexual origin, although various alternative derivations have been suggested. According to
University of Southern California film professor
Todd Boyd, the term was originally slang for sexual intercourse as its earliest musicians found employment in
New Orleans brothel parlors.
At the root of jazz is the blues, the folk music of former
enslaved Africans in the
U.S. South and their descendants, heavily influenced by West African cultural and musical traditions, that evolved as black musicians migrated to the cities. According to jazz musician
Wynton Marsalis:
Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music.[1]
Early jazz influences found their first mainstream expression in the marching band and dance band music of the day, which was the standard form of popular concert music at the turn of century. The instruments of these groups became the basic instruments of jazz: brass, reeds, and drums, and are voiced in the Western 12-tone scale.
Black musicians frequently used the melody, structure, and beat of marches as points of departure; but says "North by South, from
Charleston to
Harlem," a project of the
National Endowment for the Humanities: "...a black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of
European musical tradition, even though the performers were using European styled instruments.
Many black musicians also made a living playing in small bands hired to lead
funeral processions in the
New Orleans African-American tradition. These Africanized bands played a seminal role in the articulation and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout black communities in the Deep South and to northern cities.
For all its genius, early jazz, with its humble folk roots, was the product of primarily self-taught musicians. But an impressive
postbellum network of black-established and -operated institutions, schools, and civic societies in both the North and the South, plus widening mainstream opportunities for education, produced ever-increasing numbers of young, formally trained African-American musicians, some of them schooled in classical European musical forms.
Lorenzo Tio and
Scott Joplin were among this new wave of musically literate jazz artists. Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory from a classically trained
German immigrant in
Texarkana, Texas.
Also contributing to this trend was a tightening of
Jim Crow laws in
Louisiana in the 1890s, which caused the expulsion from
integrated bands of numbers of talented, formally trained African-American musicians. The ability of these musically literate, black jazzmen to transpose and then read what was in great part an improvisational art form became an invaluable element in the preservation and dissemination of musical innovations that took on added importance in the approaching
big-band era.
1800s
Strong influence of African American music traditions had already been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to the 19th century
minstrel show tunes and the melodies of
Stephen Foster.
Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Curiously named black dances inspired by African dance moves, like the
shimmy,
turkey trot,
buzzard lope,
chicken scratch,
monkey glide, and the
bunny hug eventually were adopted by a white public. The
cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of their masters' formal dress balls, became popular. White audiences saw these dances first in
vaudeville shows, then performed by exhibition dancers in the clubs.
The popular dance music of the time was not jazz, but there were precursor forms along the blues-ragtime continuum of musical experimentation and innovation that soon would blossom into jazz. Popular
Tin Pan Alley composers like
Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influence into their compositions, though they seldom used the specific musical devices that were second nature to jazz players—the rhythms, the blue notes.
1910s
Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
Main article:
DixielandA number of regional styles contributed to the early development of jazz. Arguably the single most important was that of the
New Orleans, Louisiana area (particularly the
Storyville neighborhood), which was the first to be commonly given the name "jazz" (early on often spelled "jass").
The city of New Orleans and the surrounding area had long been a regional music center. People from many different nations of Africa, Europe, and Latin America contributed to New Orleans' rich musical heritage. The slave population of some colonies of what would later become the United States had the opportunity to express themselves culturally. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color, some of whom prided themselves on their education and used European instruments to play both European music and their own folk tunes.
Key figures in the development of the new style were flamboyant trumpeter
Buddy Bolden and the members of his band, who took the blues and arranged it for brass instruments, "variating the melody" by improvising. The New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation than ragtime. The New Orleans style players also adopted much of the vocabulary of the blues, including "bent" and "blue" notes, and using the European instruments in ways they were not used previously.
Key figures in the early development of the new style were
Freddie Keppard, a Creole who mastered Bolden's style;
Joe Oliver, whose style was more bluesier than Bolden's; and
Kid Ory, a trombonist who refined the style, and
Papa Jack Laine led a multi-ethnic band.
Other regional styles
Meanwhile, other regional styles were developing which would influence the development of jazz.
*In
1891 African-American minister Rev.
Daniel J. Jenkins of
Charleston, South Carolina established the
Jenkins Orphanage, where boys formed Orphanage Bands that performed popular and religious music. Orphanage Band members such as
William "Cat" Anderson,
Gus Aitken, and
Jabbo Smith went on to play with jazz legends like
Duke Ellington,
Lionel Hampton and
Count Basie.
*In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime developed. Characterized by rollicking rhythms, the "hot" style lacked the bluesy influence of the southern styles. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by
Eubie Blake.
James P. Johnson took the northeast style and developed "
stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the active left hand provides the rhythm. Johnson influenced later pianists like
Fats Waller and
Willie Smith.The top orchestral leader of the style was
James Reese Europe.
Tim Brymn performed with a northeastern "hot" style.
*In Chicago at the start of the 1910s, a popular type of dance band consisted of a saxophone vigorously ragging a melody over a 4-square rhythm section. The city soon fell heavily under the influence of waves of New Orleans musicians, and the older style blended with the New Orleans style to form what would be called "Chicago Jazz" starting in the late 1910s.
*Along the banks of the Mississippi around
Memphis, Tennessee to
St. Louis, Missouri, another band style developed incorporating the blues. The most famous composer and bandleader of the style was the "Father of the Blues,"
W.C. Handy. While in some ways similar to the New Orleans style (Bolden's influence may have spread upriver), it lacked the freewheeling improvisation found further south. Handy denounced jazz as needlessly chaotic and limited improvisation to short fills between phrases.
1920s
 |
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921. |
By the nature of their work,
Pullman porters helped to spread jazz across the United States.
With
Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, the legal saloons and cabarets were closed; but in their place hundreds of
speakeasies appeared, where patrons drank and musicians entertained. The presence of dance venues and the subsequent increased demand for accomplished musicians meant more artists were able to support themselves by playing professionally. As a result, the numbers of professional musicians increased, and jazz—like all the popular music of the 1920s—adopted the 4/4 beat of dance music.
The inventions of the
phonograph record and of
radio helped the proliferation of jazz as well. Radio stations proliferated at a remarkable rate, and with them, the popularity of jazz. Jazz became associated with things modern, sophisticated, and decadent, and this era would become known as the Jazz Age. In the early
1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things—current dance numbers, novelty songs, show tunes.
Key figures of the decade
|
Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in 1929. Paul Whiteman was known throughout the decade as "The King of Jazz." Today, jazz purists would disagree. Nevertheless, Paul Whiteman was the most popular orchestra leader of the decade. |
Paul Whiteman was the most popular bandleader of the 1920s, and claimed for himself the title "The King of Jazz." Despite his hiring
Bix Beiderbecke and many of the other best white jazz musicians of the era, later generations of jazz lovers have often judged Whiteman's music to have little to do with real jazz. Nonetheless, his notion of combining jazz with elaborate orchestrations has been returned to repeatedly by composers and arrangers of later decades.
Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra.
Ted Lewis's band was second only to the Paul Whiteman in popularity during the 1920s, and arguably played more real jazz with less pretension than Whiteman, especially in his recordings of the late 1920s. Some of the other "jazz" bands of the decade included those of:
Harry Reser,
Leo Reisman,
Abe Lyman,
Nat Shilkret,
George Olsen,
Ben Bernie,
Bob Haring,
Ben Selvin,
Earl Burtnett,
Gus Arnheim,
Rudy Vallee,
Jean Goldkette,
Isham Jones,
Roger Wolfe Kahn,
Sam Lanin,
Vincent Lopez,
Ben Pollack and
Fred Waring.
In the 1920's, the music performed by these artists was called jazz. Today, however, this music is disparaged and labelled as "sweet music" by jazz purists. The music that people consider today as "jazz" tended to be played by minorities. In the 1920's, however, the majority of people listened to what we would call today "sweet music" and hardcore jazz was categorized as "hot music" or "race music."
Influential 1920s Performers
*
King Oliver was "jazz king" of Chicago, and his band was the epitome of the New Orleans hot ensemble jazz style.
*A young protege of King Oliver,
Louis Armstrong, had a major influence on the development of jazz, with his extensive improvisations and
scat singing.
*
Sidney Bechet brought the
saxophone to prominence.
*
Bix Beiderbecke was a white, non-New Orleanian whose legato phrasing brought the influence of classical romanticism to jazz.
*
Fletcher Henderson's arrangements would play a significant role in the development of the Big Band era in the following decade.
*Young pianist and bandleader
Duke Ellington's tight band made many recordings and radio broadcasts. Today he is regarded as one of the most important composers in jazz history.
1930s
Big bands
While the solo became more important in jazz, popular bands became larger in size. The
Big band became the popular provider of music for the era. Big bands varied in their jazz content; some (such as
Benny Goodman's Orchestra) were highly jazz oriented, while others (such as
Glenn Miller's) left little space for improvisation. Most were somewhere in between, having some musicians adept at jazz solos playing with section men who kept the rhythm and arrangements going. However even bands without jazz soloists adopted a sound owing much to the jazz vocabulary, for example sax sections playing what sounded like an improvised variation on a melody (and may have originated as a transcription of one).
Key figures in developing the big jazz band were arrangers and bandleaders
Fletcher Henderson,
Don Redman and
Duke Ellington.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in entertainment settings. White bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-
1930s,
Benny Goodman hired pianist
Teddy Wilson, vibraharpist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist
Charlie Christian to join small groups. During this period, the popularity of
swing and
big band music was at its height, making stars of such men as
Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington.
The influence of Louis Armstrong also continued to grow. Musicians and bandleaders like
Cab Calloway, trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie and vocalists like
Bing Crosby embraced Armstrong's style of improvising. Vocalists such as
Ella Fitzgerald,
Billie Holliday and later,
Frank Sinatra and
Sarah Vaughan, all jumped on the scat bandwagon.
An early
1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or
jump music used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on
boogie-woogie from the
1930s, with the rhythm section playing "eight to the bar," (eight beats per measure instead of four).
Big Joe Turner became a boogie-woogie star in the
1940s and then in the
1950s was early
rock and roll musician. (Also see saxophonist
Louis Jordan).
Kansas City Jazz
Main article: Kansas City Jazz
Kansas City Jazz in the 1930's marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. In the 1930s Big City Boss
Tom Pendergast was at his zenith of his power and left Kansas City a wide open town in which night clubs were allowed to remain open from dusk to dawn. In this venue an era of
musical improvisation developed in which it was not uncommon for a single "song" to be performed all night by competing performers who passed through the city. The era ended in 1936 when producer
John H. Hammond began signing Kansas City talent and transferring the acts to
New York City. The era of Kansas City influence is bracketed by the rise of
Count Basie in 1929 to the advent of Kansas City native
Charlie Parker in the 1940s. Pendergast was convicted of income tax evasion in 1940 and the city began a crackdown of the clubs.
1940s
Bebop
The next major stylistic turn came in the
1940s with
bebop, led by such distinctive stylists as the saxophonist
Charlie Parker (known as "Yardbird" or "Bird"),
Bud Powell and
Dizzy Gillespie. This marked a major shift of jazz from
pop music for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music."
Thelonious Monk was also associated with this movement.
Bop musicians valued complex improvisations based on
chord progressions rather than
melody.
Hard bop was at the peak of its popularity in the
1950s and
1960s, and was associated with such figures as
Sonny Rollins,
John Coltrane,
Miles Davis,
Art Blakey and
Charles Mingus.
Later, bebop and hard bop musicians, such as trumpeter
Miles Davis, made more stylistic advances with
modal jazz, where the harmonic structure of pieces was much more free than previously, and was frequently only implied -- by skeletal piano chords and bass parts. The instrumentalists then would improvise around a given mode of the scale.
1950s
Free jazz and avant-garde jazz
Main articles: Free jazz,
Avant-garde jazzFree jazz and
avant-garde jazz, are two partially overlapping subgenres that, while rooted in
bebop, typically use less compositional material and allow performers more latitude. Free jazz uses implied or loose
harmony and
tempo, which was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed. Avant-garde jazz has more "rules" than free jazz, in that performances being partly composed, but the improvised parts are almost as free as in free jazz.
Early performers of these styles go back as early as the late 40s and early 50s with
Lennie Tristano's
Crosscurrents and
Descent into the Maelstrom credited as being precursors to the movement. Free and avant-garde jazz started to gain popularity in the 1950s with
Ornette Coleman and
Cecil Taylor. In the
1960s, performers included
John Coltrane,
Archie Shepp,
Albert Ayler,
Sun Ra,
Pharoah Sanders,
Sam Rivers,
Leroy Jenkins,
Don Pullen and others.
Peter Brötzmann,
Ken Vandermark,
William Parker,
Derek Bailey and
Evan Parker are leading contemporary free jazz musicians, and musicians such as Coleman, Taylor and Sanders continue to play in this style.
Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from
criticism by
traditionalists in recent years.
1960s
Latin jazz
Main article:
Latin jazzLatin jazz has two varieties: Afro-Cuban and Brazilian.
Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the U.S. directly after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement after the death of Charlie Parker. Notable bebop musicians such as
Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands at that time. Gillespie's work was mostly with big bands of this genre. The music was influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as
Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, and, much later,
Arturo Sandoval.
Brazilian jazz is synonymous with
bossa nova, a Brazilian popular style which is derived from
samba with influences from jazz as well as other 20th-century classical and popular music. Bossa is generally slow, played around 80 beats per minute, straight eighths, rather than swing eighths, and difficult polyrhythms. The best-known bossa nova compositions have become jazz standards.
The related term jazz-samba essentially describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as
Stan Getz and
Charlie Byrd, and usually played at 120 beats per minute or faster. Samba itself is actually not jazz but, being derived from older Afro-Brazilian music, it shares some common characteristics.
Jazz fusion
Main article:
Jazz fusion |
Bitches Brew is an influential record in the history of jazz fusion. |
In the
1960s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed. Notable artists of the 1960s and
1970s jazz and fusion scene include: Miles Davis, who recorded the fusion albums
In a Silent Way and
Bitches Brew in
1968 and
1969,
Chick Corea and his
Return to Forever band, ex- Miles Davis drummer prodigy
Tony Williams's Lifetime with Alan Holdsworth and Larry Young among others,
Herbie Hancock and his
Headhunters band,
John McLaughlin and the
Mahavishnu Orchestra,
Frank Zappa,
Al Di Meola,
Jean-Luc Ponty,
Sun Ra,
Soft Machine,
Narada Michael Walden,
Wayne Shorter,
Jaco Pastorius, the
Pat Metheny Group and
Weather Report. Some of artists have continued to develop the genre into the 2000s.
1970s
The stylistic diversity of jazz has shown no sign of diminishing, absorbing influences from such disparate sources as
world music,
avant garde classical music, and a range of rock and pop musics.
Beginning in the
1970s with such artists as
Keith Jarrett,
Paul Bley, the
Pat Metheny Group,
Jan Garbarek,
Ralph Towner, and
Eberhard Weber, the
ECM record label established a new chamber-music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and incorporating elements of
world music and
folk music. This is sometimes referred to as "European" or "Nordic" jazz, despite some of the leading players being American.
1980s
However, the jazz community has shrunk dramatically and split, with a mainly older audience retaining an interest in traditional and "straight-ahead" jazz styles, a small core of practitioners and fans interested in highly experimental modern jazz, and a constantly changing group of musicians fusing jazz idioms with contemporary popular music genres.
There have been other developments in the
1980s and
1990s that were less commercially oriented. Many of these artists, notably
Wynton Marsalis, called what they were doing jazz and in fact strove to define what the term actually meant. They sought to create within what they felt was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as
Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington. In the case of Marsalis these efforts met with critical acclaim.
Others musicians in this time period - although clearly within the tradition of the great
spontaneous composers such as
Charlie Parker,
John Coltrane,
Fats Navarro and many others â€" choose to distance themselves from the term jazz and simply define what they were doing as music (this in fact was suggested by the great composer
Duke Ellington when the term jazz first began to be popular).
Acid Jazz and Nu Jazz
Styles as
acid jazz which contains elements of 1970s
disco, acid swing which combines 1940s style big-band sounds with faster, more aggressive rock-influenced drums and electric guitar, and
nu jazz which combines elements of jazz and modern forms of
electronic dance music.
Exponents of the "
acid jazz" style which was initially
UK-based included the
Brand New Heavies,
Jamiroquai,
James Taylor Quartet,
Young Disciples, and
Corduroy. In the
United States, acid jazz groups included the
Groove Collective,
Soulive, and
Solsonics. In a more pop or
smooth jazz context, jazz enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s with such bands as
Pigbag and
Curiosity Killed the Cat achieving chart hits in Britain.
Sade Adu became the definitive voice of smooth jazz.
Funk-based Improvisation
Jean-Paul Bourelly and
M-Base argue that
rhythm is the key for further progress in the music; they believe that the rhythmic innovations of
James Brown and other
Funk pioneers can provide an effective rhythmic base for
spontaneous composition.
These musicians playing over a
funk groove and extend the rhythmic ideas in a way analogous to what had been done with
harmony in previous decades, an approach M-Base calls
Rhythmic Harmony.
Wynton Marsalis has disagreed with the use of funk as a musical genre for jazz improvisation, preferring instead to retain the rhythmic base of
swing.
1990s
Electronica
With the rise in popularity of various forms of
electronic music during the late
1980s and
1990s, some jazz artists have attempted a fusion of jazz with more of the experimental leanings of
electronica (particularly
IDM and
Drum and bass) with various degrees of success. This has been variously dubbed "future jazz", "jazz-house" or "
nu jazz".
The more experimental and improvisional end of the spectrum includes Scandinavia-based artists such as pianist
Bugge Wesseltoft, trumpeter
Nils Petter Molvær (who both began their careers on the ECM record label), and the trio
Wibutee, all of whom have gained their chops as instrumentalists in their own right in more traditional jazz circles.
The Cinematic Orchestra from the UK or
Julien Lourau from France have also gained praise in this area. Toward the more pop or pure dance music end of the spectrum of nu jazz are such proponents as
St Germain and
Jazzanova, who incorporate some live jazz playing with more metronomic
house beats.
2000s
In the
2000s, "jazz" hit the pop charts and blended with contemporary
Urban music through the work of artists like
Norah Jones,
Jill Scott,
Jamie Cullum,
Erykah Badu,
Amy Winehouse and
Diana Krall and the jazz advocacy of performers who are also music educators (such as
Jools Holland,
Courtney Pine and
Peter Cincotti). A debate has arisen as to whether the music of these performers can be called jazz or not (see below).
 |
Reggie Workman, Pharaoh Sanders, and Idris Muhammad, c. 1978 |
Jazz is often difficult to define, but
improvisation is a key element of the form. Improvisation has been since early times an essential element in African and African-American music and is closely related to the use of call and response in West African and African-American cultural expression.
The form of improvisation has changed over time. Early folk
blues music often was based around a call and
response pattern, and improvisation would factor into the lyrics, the melody, or both. In the Dixieland style, musicians taking turns playing the melody while the others improvise countermelodies.
By the
Swing era,
big bands played using arranged
sheet music, but individual soloists would perform improvised solos within these compositions. In
bebop, however, the focus shifted from arranging to improvisation over the form; musicians paid less attention to the composed melody, or "head," which was played at the beginning and the end of the tune's performance.
As previously noted, later styles of jazz, such as modal jazz, abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise more freely within the context of a given scale or mode (e.g., the
Miles Davis album
Kind of Blue).
When a pianist, guitarist or other chord-playing instrumentalist improvises an accompaniment while a soloist is playing, it is called
comping (a contraction of the word "accompanying"). "Vamping" is a mode of comping that is usually restricted to a few repeating chords or bars, as opposed to comping on the chord structure of the entire composition. Most often, vamping is used as a simple way to extend the very beginning or end of a piece, or to set up a segue.
In some modern jazz compositions where the underlying chords of the composition are particularly complex or fast moving, the composer or performer may create a set of "blowing changes," which is a simplfied set of chords better suited for comping and solo improvisation.
Some observers argue that contemporary jazz is slowly evolving into pop music. A counterargument to this assertion is to point out that alternative pop music such as jazz-influenced pop is sometimes labeled as "jazz", which may not be correct.
For example:
*Music that is a mixture of jazz and pop music, such as the recent albums of
Jamie Cullum.
*
James Blunt and
Joss Stone have been called "jazz" performers by
radio DJ's, and record label promoters.
*
Jazz festivals are increasingly programming a wide range of genres, including world beat music, folk, electronica, and hip-hop. This trend may lead to the perception that all performers are jazz artists - including the ones that represent non-jazz genres.
*
American Jazz Museum*
Cool (aesthetic)*
Jazz standard*
Swing (genre)*
Thirty-two-bar form*
List of jazz pieces*
Music of the United States*Burns, Ken & Geoffrey C. Ward: Jazz - A History of America´s Music. Alfred A. Knopf, NY USA. 2000. or: The Jazz Film Project, Inc.
*Porter, Eric "What is this thing called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists." University of California Press, Ltd. London, England. 2002.
*Szwed, John F. "Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz."
*"The History of Jazz." Thomson-Gale Books.
* "Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930." Oxford University Press, Inc.
*
A Passion for Jazz! Music History and Education
*
Great Jazz Musician Biographies*
RedHotJazz.com Is A reference of Jazz Biographies and History*
Jazz Timeline Evolution of Jazz Styles
*
All About Jazz jazz portal
*
jazzreview.com - Reviews of jazz music both new and old
*
Jazz Police - Jazz and travel information - Live jazz in the USA
*
Jazz History Timeline *
Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University*
Jazz Institute Darmstadt — Europe's largest public research archive on jazz*
Jazz in the United Kingdom*
Looking at Jazz - NVR's New Film & Discussion Educational Program
