Library
Articles, books, and where the scholarship lives
A growing shelf — pieces worth the time, books that belong on a jazz lover's table, the films, and the journals and archives where serious writing about the music is published and kept. Not comprehensive; chosen.
Selected articles2 pieces
- John Coltrane At 100: A Global Perspective
Musicians and cultural figures from around the world reflect on Coltrane's centennial — his influence on improvisation, spirituality and musical innovation.
- My Brother, Don Sleet
A brother's memoir of the San Diego trumpeter — the early promise, the one great record, and the life that never got the recognition it deserved.
Books13 titles
- Roots in Reverse: Senegalese Afro-Cuban Music and Tropical Cosmopolitanism
A cultural history of how twentieth-century urban Senegal embraced Afro-Cuban music and, through it, forged an independent modern identity.
- Le jazz est-il encore possible ?
An essay on the history and philosophy of the music, asking, in the mid-1980s, whether jazz still had somewhere to go.
- Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song
How a poem by a Bronx schoolteacher became the song Billie Holiday closed her sets with at Café Society — and an early cry of the civil-rights movement.
- But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz
Lyrical, genre-defying portraits of Lester Young, Monk, Bud Powell, Mingus, Chet Baker and others — part fiction, part criticism, written from inside the music.
- Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times
Four portraits — Randy Weston, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Guy Warren and Sathima Bea Benjamin — of the two-way traffic between African musicians and American jazz in the years of independence.
- Sonny Rollins: The Definitive Musical Guide
A record-by-record study of Rollins' playing, from the Prestige sessions through the bridge years to the 1990s, by a German critic who was also a bassist.
- Jazz: The Rough Guide
The desk reference: some 1,700 musicians with biographies and recommended records, written by three British musician-critics who knew most of their subjects.
- Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday
The fullest biography of Holiday, built on the Linda Kuehl interviews with the people who knew her, and attentive to the records as much as the legend.
- Talking Jazz
Interviews gathered over forty years by the Melody Maker writer — Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Mary Lou Williams and dozens of others, in their own words.
- Live at the Village Vanguard
The owner's memoir of the basement club on Seventh Avenue South, from its 1935 opening to the era of Coltrane and Bill Evans — the model for every small room with a piano, including ours.
- The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music
Fifteen musicians — Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Andrew Hill, Maria Schneider among them — listen to records of their choosing with the New York Times critic and talk about what they hear.
- Chega de Saudade: A História e as Histórias da Bossa Nova
The standard history of bossa nova — Copacabana apartments, Nara Leão's living room, João Gilberto's bathroom acoustics — told as a chronicle of the people who made it. Published in English as Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World.
- Elis Regina: Nada Será Como Antes
The biography of the greatest Brazilian singer of her generation, from Porto Alegre to the festivals of the 1960s, the Elis & Tom sessions and her death in 1982 at thirty-six.
Films11 documentaries
Films to watch, from the classics to recent portraits.
- What Happened, Miss Simone?
Nina Simone's life and politics through her own recordings and diaries, and her daughter's testimony.
- I Called Him Morgan
Lee Morgan and his wife Helen — the music, the marriage, and the night in 1972 at Slugs' Saloon; built around Helen's own taped account.
- Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary
Coltrane's journey from Philadelphia to A Love Supreme, narrated by Denzel Washington reading Coltrane's words.
- Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser
Rare 1967–68 footage of Monk on tour and in the studio; produced by Clint Eastwood.
- Let's Get Lost
Chet Baker in his last year, in black and white — the beauty and the wreckage.
- Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
The full arc, from East St. Louis to the electric years, with the people who were in the room.
- A Great Day in Harlem
The story behind Art Kane's 1958 photograph of 57 jazz musicians on a Harlem stoop, told by the survivors.
- Jazz on a Summer's Day
The 1958 Newport Jazz Festival — Monk, Anita O'Day, Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong — filmed in color like a fashion shoot.
- Keep On Keepin' On
Clark Terry in his nineties teaching the young blind pianist Justin Kauflin; a film about mentorship.
- Jazz
The long television history of the music, from New Orleans to the 1960s, with Wynton Marsalis as guide.
- Buena Vista Social Club
Ry Cooder brings Havana's forgotten masters back to the stage — the Cuban side of the story that Roots in Reverse tells for Dakar.
The musicians elsewhere0 links
Clips of the series' musicians on other stages — their own channels, festival sets, television.
Clips of the series' musicians elsewhere — their own channels, festival sets, television — will be collected here.
Scholarship & archives14 places
Where the serious writing about jazz is published and kept: the journals, the indexes, and the archives whose oral histories and collections scholars draw on. Individual papers worth reading go in Selected articles above.
- Journal of Jazz Studies
Peer-reviewed online journal from the Institute of Jazz Studies, publishing new jazz scholarship since 2011 (current volume 17, 2026).
- Jazz Perspectives
International peer-reviewed journal of jazz scholarship covering history, analysis, and cultural studies.
- Jazz Research Journal
Interdisciplinary journal exploring jazz as practice, culture and idea, from the UK publisher Equinox.
- Jazz Education in Research and Practice
Journal of the Jazz Education Network bridging research and pedagogy in jazz education.
- Annual Review of Jazz Studies
The IJS's print-era scholarly annual (1982–2009), now digitized and searchable in the RIPM Jazz periodicals archive.
- Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University–Newark
The world's largest jazz archive and research library, founded by Marshall Stearns in 1952 and home to the Jazz Oral History Project.
- Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program
Transcripts and recordings of in-depth oral histories with NEA Jazz Masters, collected since 1992.
- RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
The comprehensive international bibliography of writings on music, including jazz scholarship in every language.
- Google Scholar
Search engine for scholarly articles, theses and books across all disciplines, including jazz studies.
- Ethnomusicology
The official journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the leading publication in the field.
- African Music
Journal of the International Library of African Music, published since 1954, with back issues freely available online.
- Jazz Studies Online
Curated digital library of jazz scholarship, panels, and primary sources from Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies.
- Current Research in Jazz
Peer-reviewed open-access journal of original jazz research, publishing annually since 2009 (volume 17 current).
- Jazzinstitut Darmstadt
Europe's largest public jazz archive and international research and information center on jazz.