The New Jazz Archive

We continue our tour of America’s great jazz cities with the sites and sounds of New Orleans jazz and its origins in the early twentieth century, the parade tradition known as Second Line, and explore how Hurricane Katrina has reshaped the New Orleans jazz scene. We’ll talk with jazz historian Bruce Raeburn about the birth of jazz in New Orleans, get to know the raucous New Orleans parade traditio...

A celebration of the life and music of maestro Tito Puente, including the 1950s mambo craze that launched his meteoric rise to the top, and the many talents that made him the undisputed King of Latin Jazz. We’ll talk with Latin jazz historian Bobby Sanabria about why Tito still matters to the 20-somethings he’s teaching at the Manhattan School of Music, chat with Tito Puente’s friend and biographe...

A lot of people probably don’t think of jazz as something that’s all that funny, but there’s more than one way to get a laugh out of all things jazz that’s guaranteed to make you smile. We’ll talk with stand-up comic Jeff Cesario about how his former life as a jazz musician helps make him a better comedian, bring in our jazz historian Lewis Porter to talk about jazz’s vaudeville roots and how jazz...

A celebration of the life and extraordinary work of American folklorist Alan Lomax and how his calling to record the world changed the course of 20th century music with his legacy of over 10,000 recordings. We’ll talk with Lomax historian and archivist Don Fleming about Lomax’s groundbreaking work in the American South during the 1930s, trace Lomax’s path abroad and his efforts to record and captu...

We start our tour of America’s great jazz cities with the sites and sounds of Chicago by tracing the arrival of jazz and how it established the city's reign as America’s jazz capital during the 1920s, leading it to grow into one of the country’s richest avant garde jazz scenes. We’ll talk with the owner of the storied Green Mill Cocktail Lounge about his epic restoration of the club to its former...

The life and music of the great Nina Simone from her roots as a gospel and classical musician to her place as one of the fiercest voices for civil rights. We’ll talk with New York Magazine’s Joe Hagan about his look inside Nina Simone’s private diaries, chat with Simone biographer Nadine Cohodas about Nina’s life and music and her role as one of the fiercest voices for civil rights, and listen to...

You can’t listen to a painting or see a song, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t really interesting places where the worlds of jazz and art overlap. We’ll explore jazz’s connection to the arts with a look at the criss-crossing paths of jazz and the visual arts with Dr. Robert O’Meally, discussing how the worlds of art and music collided during the Harlem Renaissance, explore the life and art of th...