Menu
Idea

jazz

96
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 61–90 of 96 results. Go to first page
Dancing crowds and a DJ at the 2022 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, Washington

How the Block Party Became an Urban Phenomenon

“That spirit of community, which we all talk about as the roots of hip-hop, really originates in that block party concept.”
by Briana A. Thomas via Smithsonian on August 10, 2022
Advertisment for 1947 performance by singers and musicians Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong

Did the Blues Originate in New Orleans?

Something unusual happened in New Orleans music around 1895. Was it the birth of the blues?
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on April 18, 2022
Postcard of The Rex Float at Mardi Gras Carnival, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Strange Career of Beautiful Crescent

How an old textbook lodged itself in the heart of New Orleans’ self-mythology.
by Jordan Hirsch via Slate on April 18, 2022
Portraits of Dean Dixon, William Grant Still, and Margaret Bonds, three African American classical musicians.

A Prophecy Unfulfilled?

What a new book and six companion videos have to say about the fate of Black classical music in America.
by Mark N. Grant via The American Scholar on April 2, 2022
Man holding a poster of Malcolm X, African American Day Parade, 2010 in Harlem.

Malcolm X’s Gospel

A look into how Malcolm X employed gospel rhetoric to critique the mainstream civil rights movement for catering to white Christianity.
by Ellen McLarney via Black Perspectives on March 28, 2022
US patent drawing of elevator bell signal.

Elevator Sounds

What are elevator passengers listening to?
by Alexandra Hui via Perspectives on History on March 3, 2022
Marian Anderson studying a musical score with the pianist Kurt Johnen, Berlin, 1931

Black Voices, German Song

What did German listeners hear when African American singers performed Schubert or Brahms?
by Adam Kirsch via New York Review of Books on January 20, 2022
Album cover featuring a sketch of Buck Hammer playing the piano with a cigar in his mouth.

The Discovery of Buck Hammer

A remarkable blues musician emerged from obscurity in 1959, but something about him just didn’t seem right.
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on January 17, 2022
A photo of Fontella Bass repeated as if it's a frame in a filmstrip.

Can't You See That I'm Lonely?

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.
by David Ramsey via Oxford American on December 7, 2021
Title card of the article styled like a Tina Turner album cover.

Manhattan in East St. Louis

The Club Manhattan could hold about 250 people. They did not know it at the time, but they were the earliest witnesses to the rise of the Queen of Rock & Roll.
by Maureen Mahon via Oxford American on December 7, 2021
The Crystals, a Black girl-group, performing at a high school prom.

The Kansas City School That Became a Stop for R. & B. Performers

In the nineteen-sixties, artists such as Bo Diddley and the Ike & Tina Turner Revue played the prom at Pembroke-Country Day.
by David Dale Owen via The New Yorker on December 4, 2021
John Cage on the quiz show "Lascia o Raddoppia?"

Freedom for Sale

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.
by Fintan O’Toole via New York Review of Books on July 1, 2021
Advertisement for Ethel Waters' record

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

The story of the first major black-owned record label and the mystery behind the man who created it.
by Joe Richman via Radio Diaries on June 25, 2021
A collage featuring pictures from the 1918 Flu Pandemic and the 1920s, including people wearing masks and nurses on one side and flappers on the other.

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably)

As the U.S. anticipates a vaccinated summer, historians say measuring the impact of the 1918 influenza on the uproarious decade that followed is tricky.
by Lila Thulin via Smithsonian on May 3, 2021

A Lover’s Blues: The Unforgettable Voice of Margie Hendrix

Remembering the woman who outsang Ray Charles.
by Tarisai Ngangura via Longreads on September 2, 2020
Illustration taken from The Great Gatsby, The Graphic Novel

Greil Marcus Takes a Deep Dive Into "the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby"

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’
by Allen Barra via The National Book Review on July 17, 2020
Photograph of Sun Ra by Ming Smith

Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Sun Ra, a seminal artist of afrofuturism, embraced a unique vision of blackness.
by Namwali Serpell via New York Review of Books on July 12, 2020
Rapper YG, one of a crowd of people at a protest over the death of George Floyd.

Hip-hop Is the Soundtrack to Black Lives Matter Protests

Songs from Public Enemy and Ludacris have been heard at marches, continuing a tradition that dates back to the blues.
by Tyina Steptoe via The Conversation on June 25, 2020

Ride Shotgun through Mid-Century LA with Ed Ruscha’s Photos and Jack Kerouac’s Words

A kinetic slice of Americana so pure you can almost smell Kerouac’s invoked apple pie – or maybe it’s the faint stench of exhaust fumes.
by Matthew Miller via Aeon on January 7, 2020

Jitterbugging with Jim Crow

Ninety years ago, young African Americans in the South took up the Lindy Hop. It was an act of resistance and an assertion of freedom.
by Nicole M. Baran via The Bitter Southerner on October 8, 2019

The “Star-Spangled Banner” Hysteria of 1917

The Boston Symphony’s refusal to play the national anthem in its one concerts triggered a xenophobic panic that led an arrest.
by Alex Ross via The New Yorker on July 2, 2019

Vessel of Antiquity

Influence, invention, and the legacy of Leon Redbone.
by Megan Pugh via Oxford American on March 19, 2019

How 'Green Book' And The Hollywood Machine Swallowed Donald Shirley Whole

Why relatives of the musician depicted in "Green Book" called the film “a symphony of lies.”
by Brooke Obie via Shadow and Act on December 14, 2018

Canon Fodder

Where's the country music on Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 1980s?
by Shuja Haider via Popula on September 13, 2018
Woman playing a guitar, and the cover of the book 'Country Music USA.'

‘Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure’

On the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.
by Bill C. Malone, Will Hermes, Tracey Laird via Longreads on August 1, 2018

Borne Back Into the Past

Mike St. Thomas reviews ‘Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.'
by Mike St. Thomas via Commonweal on January 4, 2018

The Powerful Tune That Drives ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’

A melody can carry an undeniable purpose even before it gets paired with a lyric.
by Jon Batiste via The Atlantic on November 7, 2017

Old New York, Seen Through a Cab Driver’s Windshield

The people Joseph Rodriguez saw through the windshield in the 1970s and 80s.
by Joseph Rodriguez via Intelligencer on October 27, 2017

Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius

One of the greatest living artists in popular music still isn’t properly recognized.
by Lindsay Zoladz via The Ringer on October 16, 2017

The Rise and Fall of the “Sellout”

The history of the epithet, from its rise among leftists and jazz critics and folkies to its recent fall from favor.
by Franz Nicolay via Slate on July 28, 2017
View More
30 of
96

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History