The New Jazz Archive

Jazz, R&B, and Social Protest - S02E05

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Jazz and r&b both have a long history of protest songs and artists who were also potent political activists not only in the USA, but across the globe. We’ll explore how some of jazz’s most important musical pioneers wrote both subversive instrumental suites and outright angry musical manifestos, hear how American swing music became the unlikely soundtrack to an underground youth movement in Nazi Germany, and learn how the mellow sounds of the bossa nova grew into one of Latin America's most powerful protest idioms. One from the vaults – this episode was produced for Jazz Connections, an earlier version of The New Jazz Archive.

 

Episode Transcript

 

Content warnings: use of dated derogatory racial terms in some Louis Armstrong lyrics and interview quotes, and a clip from the movie Swing Kids

 

Host: Jeff Haas

 

Music

  • Bob Dylan “Masters of War”
  • Nina Simone “Old Jim Crow”
  • Max Roach “Freedom Day”
  • Louis Armstrong “A Kiss To Build A Dream On”
  • Louis Armstrong “The Old Folks At Home”
  • Louis Armstrong “Summertime”
  • Louis Armstrong “Black and Blue”
  • Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On”
  • Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit”
  • Nina Simone “Mississippi Goddamn”
  • Charles Mingus “Fables of Faubus” 
  • John Coltrane “Alabama”
  • Gil Scott-Heron “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
  • Edwin Starr “War”
  • Antônio Carlos Jobim “The Girl from Ipanema”
  • Nara Leão “Opinião”
  • Caetano Veloso “Enquanto Seu Lobo Não Vem”
  • Sam Cooke “A Change Is Gonna Come”
  • Benny Goodman “Flat Foot Floogee”
  • Glenn Miller “In the Mood”
  • Benny Goodman “Sing, Sing, Sing”
  • Charlie Haden “Song for Ché”
  • Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra “This is not America”

    •  

    Radio broadcast produced by Lou Blouin and Jeff Haas

    Radio broadcast audio engineering by Jack Conners and Brock Mormon

    Podcast audio remastering by Sam Boase-Miller

    Transcripts by Erik Saras

     

    Theme Song: Jeff Haas Trio & Friends “Giving In”

     

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    The New Jazz Archive radio broadcasts originally sponsored by Chateau Chantal. The New Jazz Archive receives no revenue from podcast reissues of radio broadcasts.

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    The New Jazz ArchiveBy Jeff Haas