A collage of jazz albums

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
A poster for the Asian American Jazz Festival, 1984, by Zand Gee

Out of Black Liberation, Asian American Jazz

Inspired by Black artistic and political movements, musicians from diverse communities began expressing pan-Asian cultural belonging and freedom.
Dizzy Gillespie

What Is Jazz Poetry?

The form flourished in the 1950s, as poets and musicians inspired each other to new heights.
Charles Mingus

The Newport Rebels and Jazz as Protest

In 1960 a group of jazz musicians organized an alternative to the Newport Jazz Festival, which they saw as too pop and too white.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights

Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, 2013

What The Great Gatsby Reveals About The Jazz Age

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel embraced jazz, while also falling prey to the racist caricatures associated with it.
Two teenagers dancing the jitterbug, 1942

Germany’s Real-Life “Swing Kids” 

Rebellious teenagers thumbed their noses at Hitler with jazz music, wild dancing, and the greeting “Swing Heil.” But how serious was their resistance?
King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra, Houston Texas, 1921

When Jazz Was a Public Health Crisis

In the 1920s, jazz music was thought to cause physical illness or even disability.
John Coltrane 1962

Remembering John Coltrane

Today JSTOR Daily celebrates John Coltrane, the greatly prophetic and pioneering jazz artist. We remember his music and legacy now.
Miles Davis at the Nice Jazz Festival in July 1989



Do We Overstate Miles Davis’ Genius?

There are things about Miles Davis we never discuss. Maybe it's time we did.