Kansas City Jazz

[NOTE: I am posting this for Hannah, as she is having trouble using the site.]

Jazz in Kansas City started in the 1920s when musicians would assemble in a small union hall on the corner of 18^th and Vine in downtown Kansas City for improvisational jazz sessions. Everybody jammed in the hall, regardless of if they were black or white. Their only goal was to experience the riff-and-rhythm-based, rollicking improvisational style characteristic of Kansas City jazz. These jam sessions sometimes went all night long, fueled by the free-flowing booze stemming from the city’s speakeasies. Enabled by the rampant political corruption in the city administration of city manager Tom Pendergast, saloons became gathering places for musicians and their fans.

            Other clubs soon evolved in Kansas City, such as Paseo Hall, the Cherry Blossom, Luciille’s Paradise, The Subway Club, The Ol’ Kentuck’ Bar B-Q, and Fox’s. Famous jazz anthems like “Kansas City”, “Vine Street Drag”, and “Vine Street Boogie” immortalize the exuberant atmosphere of this area, and enshrine it in popular culture as a place where anyone can access the rich soul of jazz.

            In 1917, the musicians formed a union, called the Local 627. It grew to 300 members by 1928, and sponsored an annual battle of the bands that was widely popular in the community. However, segregation proved to be a powerful factor in the area’s evolution as a historically black area. The community was bordered by 12^th Street in the north, 27^th Street in the south, Charlotte Street in the east, and Benton Street in the west. Within these lines was an entire world of theaters, shops, diners, churches, and clubs that served as the black community’s antidote to the “whites-only” policies that banned them from fully integrating with the rest of the world.

            However, urban renewal efforts in the late 1950s cleared the buildings out of the district in an effort to eradicate unused buildings from the inner city, and desegregation in later years led to many African-Americans departing the city for the suburbs, and left the once-hopping Jazz District to crumble from neglect. Today, only a fraction of its buildings are left standing to preserve the memory of the clubs and bars that served as an incubator for some of the best jazz America has ever known.

            In our class, “Literature and Culture of the Roaring Twenties”, we learn about the Roaring Twenties through 21^st-century mediums like streaming video on YouTube, and digital audio files that have been converted from analog records. Though these advances help make the culture of the past accessible to the audience of the present, they also signal a revolution in the way music and culture is disseminated in America.

The popularization of the radio in the 1920s gave music fans the opportunity to listen to music without having to actually be at the venue it was performed at. Just as the radio changed the way people listen to music, so does the popularity of digital mediums in the 21^st Century now enable would-be musicians to change the way they make music by enabling them to create and share music without having to be in the same physical location. In light of what we discussed in class about the evolution of jazz music and culture in cities like New York City and New Orleans, is having a physical base still relevant in today’s digital culture? In other words, can music and the arts retain their vibrancy in an age where every aspect of the creative process can be shifted out of the bars and clubs of old and onto the laptops and flash drives of today? Any thoughts you might have would be appreciated, there is no right or wrong answer.