I last attended the Newport Jazz Festival, then known as the JVC Jazz Festival, in 2007. The lineup included Dave Brubeck, Jack DeJohnette, Al Green, B.B. King, Christian McBride, Branford Marsalis, Marcus Miller, Joshua Redman and Susan Tedeschi.
The 2024 Newport Jazz Festival kicks off on Friday, August 2.
The event is sold out so let’s look at the iconic festival’s origin story, the Storyville jazz club in Boston.
In the Newport Jazz Festival’s monthly newsletter, fittingly titled “Storyville,” John Peabody writes:
To go back to the very beginning of Newport Jazz— and really Newport Folk as well— get on Boston’s Green Line and take it to Copley Plaza. Walk one block south on Exeter past the public library to the Copley Plaza Hotel.
Long before Miles played Newport Jazz and said, “I wasn’t real popular at this time, but that began to change after I played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955.”
Before there was Nina playing Porgy to a hushed audience in 1960, or Duke, who declared, “I was born at Newport in 1956.” Well before Dizzy, Monk, Mingus, Aretha, Frank Zappa, and Led Zeppelin in 1969 and before Common, Norah Jones, Christian McBride, The Roots, and Jon Batiste, there was George Wein, standing in front of the Copley Plaza Hotel in 1950 with dreams of a jazz club he’d call Storyville.
As Black Music Month comes to a close, I want to focus on the message in our music. I believe to my soul that music can transform lives and inspire ordinary citizens to get involved in the fight for justice.
From the sorrow songs of the enslaved to right now, Black music has been the soundtrack of movements for social change.
Countless books, dissertations, studies, news articles and social media posts have been written about Black culture and Black music. It is said a picture is worth 1000 words. In an era when 1000 words are TL;DR, this image says it all: Black culture is the root; every popular music genre is the fruit.
Black Music Month is the brainchild of music mogul and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Kenny Gamble, radio personality and media coach Dyana Williams and Cleveland DJ Ed Wright.
The first celebration was held on June 7, 1979. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter hosted a dinner and concert on the White House’s South Lawn. Performers included Chuck Berry, Billy Eckstine, Evelyn King and Max Roach.
Every president since Carter has issued a proclamation recognizing the contributions of African American musicians. In his 2024 proclamation, President Joe Biden said:
During Black Music Month, we celebrate the Black artists and creatives whose work has so often been a tidal wave of change — not only by defining the American songbook and culture but also by capturing our greatest hopes for the future and pushing us to march forward together.
Our Nation has only recognized Black Music Month for 45 years, but its legacy stretches back to our country’s earliest days. Black music began when enslaved people, who were cruelly prohibited from communicating in their native languages, found ways to express themselves through music. Set to the sound of African rhythms, they captured the inhumanity, tragedy, and toll that America’s original sin took on their lives while also telling the stories of their hopes and dreams, faith and spirituality, and love and purpose. Ever since, Black performers have carried on that tradition of using art to break down barriers, create sacred spaces for expression, and give voice to the promise of America for all Americans. They have created and shaped some of our most beloved genres of music — like folk, blues, jazz, hip-hop, country, rock and roll, gospel, spirituals, and R&B. Black music has set the beat of the Civil Rights Movement; expressed the inherent dignity and captured the pride and power of Black communities; and held a mirror to the good, the bad, and the truth of our Nation.
NPR is celebrating Black Music Month with an all-women lineup of Tiny Desk concerts. Featured performers include Chaka Khan, Lakecia Benjamin, Meshell Ndegeocello, Tems, Tierra Whack, SWV and Flo Milli.
Tiny Desk host and series producer Bobby Carter said:
This Black Music Month, we’re giving the ladies their flowers! We’re releasing nine Tiny Desk concerts from Black women who’ve paved the way for what we hear today in Black music and others who are carving out their own paths. All of them are queens in their own right who represent a beautiful array of genres, generations and walks of life.
If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys. It’s the ladies at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History designated “African Americans and the Arts” as the theme for Black History Month 2024. African Americans used art to both survive and escape enslavement:
The suffering of those in bondage gave birth to the spirituals, the nation’s first contribution to music. Blues musicians such as Robert Johnson, McKinley ‘Muddy Waters’ Morganfield and Riley “BB” B. King created and nurtured a style of music that became the bedrock for gospel, soul, and other still popular (and evolving) forms of music.
In his address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz festival, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the importance of jazz in paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement:
Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.
This is triumphant music.
[…]
Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.
Lee Morgan personified the power of art. Lee grew up in Tioga, a neighborhood in North Philly, surrounded by railroad tracks, factories belching smoke and warehouses. Art empowered him to see beyond his immediate environment and imagine a future as a jazz musician. Within months of graduating from Jules E. Mastbaum Area Vocational/Technical School, Lee joined the Dizzy Gillespie Band and recorded his first album for Blue Note Records.
An organizer of the Jazz and People’s Movement, Lee secured his place in history with “The Sidewinder,” a rare crossover hit that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
The Nicetown-Tioga Library and All That Philly Jazz are cohosting a community celebration of Lee Morgan and Tioga’s cultural heritage on Friday, February 9, 2024.
The event is free and open to the public. To reserve a spot, go here.
All That Philly Jazz was an official partner of the 1st Annual Music Landmarks Virtual Fest, organized by the American Music Landmarks Project. The virtual event celebrated the architectural legacy of American popular music.
The Douglass Hotel, former home of the Cotton Club, Show Boat and Bijou Café, was featured on Day 2.
The Aqua Lounge, future location of Lee Morgan’s historical marker, was featured on Day 4.
Ticket holders have access to all Fest content through November 30, 2023.
