Jazz Dancing
Jazz dancing is an important modern art form that developed in tandem with jazz music between the 1910s and 1940s in America. Emanating from African-American…
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Free Jazz
Free Jazz emerged in the late 1950s out of the ongoing negotiation of the American jazz tradition. By the mid-twentieth century, this African-American musical tradition…
Bauhaus
In 1919 a young architect named Walter Gropius initiated one of the most modern art schools of the twentieth century in the city of Weimar…
Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Modernism in East Asia
The term ‘modernism’ is commonly used to describe some of the literary and cultural production of the early twentieth century in China, Japan, and Korea,…
Parker, Charles ‘Charlie’ Jr. (1920-1955)
Charlie Parker, known as ‘Yardbird’ or ‘Bird,’ was a famous American jazz saxophonist. Parker is best known for developing the style of jazz known as…
Davis, Miles Dewey III, (1926–1991)
Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis is one of the most significant artists in the history of jazz. He stood at the forefront of…
Monk, Thelonious (1917–1982)
Thelonious Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. One of the earliest performers in the bebop movement of modern jazz dating from the mid-twentieth…
Coleman, Ornette (1930–2015)
Ornette Coleman was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, considered one of the founders of the avant-garde movement in jazz, which he began performing…
Dehn, Mura (1903–1987)
Mura Dehn was a dancer, choreographer, writer and filmmaker whose work focussed on African-American vernacular jazz dance. Her greatest contribution to Modernism and jazz discourses…
Gillespie, Dizzy (1917–93)
Dizzy Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader. Over the course of his artistic career Gillespie was based in New York City, where…
Mambo
Mambo music, which emerged in Cuba in the 1940s but was popularized in Mexico City and New York, blended jazz harmonies and instrumentation with Afro-Cuban…
Ngatane, Ephraim Mojalefa (1938–1971)
Born in 1938 in Maseru, Lesotho (then Basutoland), South Africa, Ephraim Ngatane was a painter and jazz musician affiliated with the first generation of modern…
Mingus, Charles (1922–1979)
Charles Mingus (1922–1979) was an American jazz bassist, composer, and bandleader. He held strong social and political views and composed songs on civil rights, such…
Shimmy
The shimmy, also known as the shim-me-sha-wabble, is a jazz dance that features the upper body, especially the shoulders, shaking and quivering horizontally from side…
Parnakh, Valentin Yakovlevich (1891–1951)
Brother of the celebrated poet Sofia Parnok, Valentin Parnakh was a Russo-Soviet dancer, jazz musician, actor, poet, and translator, a mover and shaker of the…
Ellington, Duke (1899–1974)
Duke Ellington was an American jazz composer, pianist, and big-band leader who authored over 1,000 compositions throughout his career. Having studied piano since the age…
Vian, Boris (1920–1959)
Boris Vian (1920–1959) may well be the Renaissance man of twentieth-century France. In his short life, he was an engineer, a jazz musician, a fiction…
Braxton, Anthony (1945--)
Anthony Braxton, born 4 June 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, is an avant-garde jazz multi-instrumentalist and composer who performs and records primarily on saxophones. An active…
Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre (1900–1948)
On 24 July 1900, Zelda Sayre was born into a prominent Southern family in Montgomery, Alabama, the youngest of six children. Her father had a…
Harlem Nightclubs
In the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem became a major hub of New York City nightlife and a prolific space for African American artistic creation. It…
Page, Ruth (1899–1991)
Ruth Page was a Chicago-based dancer, choreographer, and director of ballet companies whose experimentalism, disregard for genre boundaries, and affinity for collaboration led her in…
Turnage, Mark-Anthony (1960--)
Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the leading British composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His prolific output fuses stylistic elements, compositional techniques,…
Jook House
The jook house (also juke joint), an African American institution found mainly in semiurban areas in the Southern United States, is an important cultural phenomenon…
Zorn, John (1953--)
John Zorn is an American avant-garde saxophonist and composer. Zorn performs on alto saxophone and is one of the leading figures in New York City’s…