Jazz Collection

Jazz Collection

Jazz Collection

Music--United States

Jazz--United States

Orlando (Fla.)

Collection of digital images, documents, and other records depicting the history of jazz in Florida. Series descriptions are based on special topics, the majority of which students focused their metadata entries around.

The roots of jazz music began in the fields of the American South, as African-American slaves sang “call-and-response” work songs and “spirituals” to help them get through the brutal hours of forced labor. As Europeans immigrated to American cities in the late 19th century, they brought their musical traditions with them, and soon African-American musicians, such as Ernest Hogan and Scott Joplin, combined these styles with polyrhythmic African music, creating ragtime. New Orleans was an especially diverse cultural melting pot and became a place for musical experimentation by the early 1910s. European music merged with blues, folk, marching band music, and ragtime, creating a new genre called “jazz.”

By the 1920s, the First Great Migration brought millions of African Americans to the urban Northeast and Midwest. Young, white Americans became enamored with jazz and blues music and the genre was soon being played on radio stations, at dancehalls, and in homes across the country. New York City, Kansas City, and Chicago began to establish their own styles of jazz. Big band swing became the most popular style of American music in the 1930s and 1940s.

The most definitive feature of jazz is improvisation. The Great Depression forced many bands to cut down in size, leaving more space for intricate melodies and room for exploration. Bebop, which emerged in New York in the early 1940s, was aimed at a listening audience, rather than a dancing one, and became known as “musician’s music.” Bebop paved the way for Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz in the 1950s, when musicians, such as Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, incorporated Latin rhythms by playing with Cuban musicians in New York. The popularity of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s led to jazz-rock fusion, which combined improvisation with rock rhythms and amplified instruments. By the 1980s, smooth jazz emerged, creating a commercial form of the genre that drew criticism from many purists, who felt that the musicians were more concerned with making money than creating art with substance.

Although Florida might not be as closely associated with jazz as cities like New Orleans, Chicago, and New York City, it has made significant contributions nonetheless. Afro-Cuban jazz developed simultaneously in New York City and Havana in the early 1940s, and Florida’s Cuban immigrants had a profound cultural impact on areas like Miami and Tampa. Since its foundation in 1979, the annual Jacksonville Jazz Festival has become one of the most popular jazz festivals in the country, featuring some of the top names in the genre, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Count Basie, George Benson, and Herbie Hancock. The Clearwater Jazz Holiday began around the same time and has also evolved into a major international jazz festival. In addition to the legendary Sam Rivers, who moved to Orlando in the early 1990s and continued to perform until his death in 2011, Florida has been the home to a number of prominent jazz musicians, including Cedric Wallace, Ira Sullivan, George Tucker, Nathen Page, Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis, Jackie Davis, Rich Matteson, Jeff Rupert, and the University of Central Florida’s Jazz Professors.

Central Florida Music History Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.

Collection

Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club, Deauville Beach Resort, Miami Beach, Florida

DeLand, Florida

Young Musicians Camp, University of Miami, Miami, Florida

WUCF-TV, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida

Cepero, Laura

Cravero, Geoffrey

Alkyer, Frank. DownBeat--the Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary Anthology. New York: Hal Leonard, 2009.

Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America's Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.