In the year 1500, navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral claimed Brazil as a colony for the Portuguese empire. Despite the region’s immense beauty, the measure was primarily a strategic one, beginning an era deemed “The Sugar Age,” in which millions of slaves were imported, particularly from Congo, to harvest the resource and send it throughout the […]
Early on, listening to Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, jazz was something in another yard, walled-off, and separated from what I was listening to on the radio. It was an idea–segregated by race, primarily, and from behind that wall, everything else in the music stayed hidden. So when I listened to traditional New Orleans jazz, […]
Following the riots of the prior summer, there was no Newport Jazz Festival in 1961. However, the city had not abandoned the idea of being a cultural center for jazz. Instead, promoter Sid Bernstein hosted “Music at Newport.” In some ways, it emulated the original. It was set in both the same venue and time […]
