Louis Armstrong by Harry Warnecke and Gus Schoenbaechler, 1947 (National Portrait Gallery)
Jazz crosses lines of race, class, geography, politics, religion, and genre. In this three-part lecture series, explore the origins and proliferation of jazz, from its beginnings in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Kansas City to its most recent appearances in Europe and Asia. Key to the history of jazz is its connection to recorded sound, says musicology professor Anna Harwell Celenza: Jazz was the first musical genre shaped by modern sound technology and the first worldwide music phenomenon.
Celenza crafts each session to focus on understanding the shifting meanings of the music as it moved through various cultural and political contexts. She shares recordings of blues, Dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, and fusion to reveal what makes jazz vital to America’s multifaceted identity as she demonstrates how jazz has never stopped changing.
September 15 From New Orleans to the Nation
Celenza traces the birth of jazz in New Orleans and follows its early spread to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. She explores how blues, ragtime, brass band traditions, and improvisation came together to create a new American sound. Special attention is given to the role of migration, Prohibition, and the recording industry in carrying jazz across the country. She considers how politics, race, class, and literature shaped the music’s earliest meanings. Historic recordings show how a regional style became one of the first truly national musical phenomena.
September 22 Swing, Bebop, and the Many Faces of Modern Jazz
The 1940s and 1950s were a period of extraordinary creativity and change for jazz, evidenced by the birth of swing, bebop, hard bop, and cool jazz. After World War II, jazz fractured into facets in response to shifting social conditions, changing ideas about art and entertainment, and new possibilities in recorded sound. Through listening and discussion, this session highlights jazz’s assorted identities, from popular music and modern art to national symbol and political tool.
September 29 Jazz Beyond Boundaries
Jazz is a global and ever-evolving art form. It expanded beyond the mid-century styles of swing and bebop through encounters with Latin music, rock, hip-hop, and musical traditions from Africa, Asia, and beyond. Celenza discusses the remarkable adaptability of jazz and the many ways artists have used it to cross boundaries of genre, nation, and identity. Participants listen to recordings that show jazz continually reinventing itself in response to new technologies, new communities, and new political realities.
3 sessions
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