Established by UNESCO in 2011, International Jazz Day is celebrated annually on April 30 to recognize jazz as a universal language of freedom and creativity. Led by legendary keyboardist, composer and bandleader Herbie Hancock, the day highlights the genre’s power to promote peace, dialogue among cultures, and respect for human rights.
Earlier this year, Hancock held a Zoom call with organizers of International Jazz Day events. He said “jazz is America’s contribution to the world. Jazz is about creativity and sharing this planet as a family.”
I will spend part of International Jazz Day 2026 preparing the nomination of Hercules Posey, President George Washington’s enslaved chief cook, for a Pennsylvania historical marker.
Later that evening, I will view the livestream of the All-Star Global Concert from Chicago, Hancock’s hometown.
I will close out Women’s History Month with jazz pioneer Melba Liston (1926-1999). Liston holds the distinction of being the first woman to be regularly featured as a player, composer, and arranger with a major jazz band.
Although a formidable trombone player, Melba Liston was primarily known for her arrangements, especially working with Randy Weston, and compositions. Growing up mostly in Los Angeles, some of her first work came during the 1940s with two West Coast masters: bandleader Gerald Wilson and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. In Gordon’s small combos, she began to blossom as a trombone soloist, and Gordon wrote a song as a tribute to her, “Mischievous Lady.” Despite her obvious talent as a soloist, Liston became an in-demand big band section player, which likely fueled her later work as an arranger. During the 1940s, Liston also worked with the Count Basie band and with Billie Holiday.
Following a brief hiatus from music, she joined Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop big band in 1950, and again for two of Gillespie’s State Department tours in 1956 and 1957, which included her arrangements of “Annie’s Dance” and “Stella by Starlight” in performances. She started her own all-woman quintet in 1958, working in New York and Bermuda, before joining Quincy Jones’ band in 1959 to play the musical Free and Easy. She stayed in Jones’ touring band as one of two-woman members until 1961.
In 1959, Liston arranged and conducted Gloria Lynne’s album, Lonely and Sentimental.
During the late 1960s and ‘70s, Liston worked as a staff arranger at Motown Records. In this role, she was responsible for arranging and conducting for several artists, including Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Billy Eckstine.
In the 1980s, Liston taught at the University of the West Indies and was director of Popular Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. A stroke in 1985 ended her playing career. She was able to resume work as a composer and arranger in the 1990s through the aid of computer technology.
Liston was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1987.
Melba Liston was recently celebrated at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount (1914-1993), grew up in the Jim Crow South and later transformed himself into a celestial being from Saturn. He created cultural aesthetics that imagined liberation from racism and white supremacist shackles. Sun Ra fused swing, bebop, free jazz, electric keyboards and synthesizers to create his sui generis avant-garde sound.
Sun Ra’s embrace of Egyptian iconography, space-age imagery and alternative historiography laid the foundation for aliberatory technology, a future of possibilities in a society that said there weren’t any. The “Godfather of Afrofuturism” reimagined Black identity across space and time. His influence is recognized in venerable cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
This week, PBS American Masters will premiere Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, a feature-length documentary that provides a definitive look at the life and cosmic philosophy of the jazz visionary.
The documentary explores Sun Ra’s early years in Birmingham, Alabama, his formative time in Chicago where he established the communal lifestyle of the Arkestra, and his later years in Philadelphia.
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible premieres Friday, February 20 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings).
October is National Arts and Humanities Month. All That Philly Jazz Director Faye Anderson will lead a walking tour of the people, places and events in Moses Williams’ Philadelphia.
The first Black museum professional and master silhouette artist, Moses Williams was born into slavery in August 1776 in the household of Charles Willson Peale, “Portrait Painter of the Revolution.”
Faye successfully nominated Moses Williams (1776-1830) for a Pennsylvania historical marker. The marker will be dedicated in 2026, the 250th anniversary of his birth.
The walk and talk will start at 3rd and Lombard streets, near the site of the home of Charles Willson Peale, and end at Philosophical Hall, near the proposed location for installation of Moses Williams’ historical marker (.06 mile).
Points of interest along the way include:
Site of the home of entrepreneur and abolitionist James Forten;
Charles Willson Peale’s gravesite;
Church where George Washington and Absalom Jones worshipped;
Site of the home of Francis Johnson, the forefather of jazz;
Site of the first Black Episcopal church in the United States;
Locations of Peale’s Museum; and
Organization founded by Benjamin Franklin that has a collection of Moses Williams’ silhouettes.
The walking tour will be held on select Saturdays in 2026. To be added to the mailing list, send your name and email address to phillyjazzapp@gmail.com.
September was designated Gospel Music Heritage Month in 2008 following the passage of House Joint Resolution 90 sponsored by the late Representative Sheila Jackson Lee. The resolution highlighted gospel music’s deep roots in the African American experience and acknowledged its influence on other genres, including jazz, blues, soul, R&B and rock.
Gospel music is how African Americans got over during the Jim Crow era.
Formed in 1928, the Dixie Hummingbirds were one of the most popular and influential gospel groups. Their best-known recordings include “Thank You For One More Day,” “I’ve Been Born Again,” and “Loves Me Like a Rock” which won the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance.
On Wednesday, September 24, 2025, the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection will host a talk with Dr. Lynn Peterson, author of “Flying with the Birds: Rev. Joe Williams, The Last Original Member of the Iconic Dixie Hummingbirds.”
Also on September 24, I will give a gallery talk about the exhibit that I curated for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, “Message In Our Music.” I will highlight objects in the exhibit related to gospel music, including Bishop Richard Allen’s collection of hymns and spirituals, a program from the Jubilee Singers’ 1873 concert at the Academy of Music, and a reel-to-reel tape of a live performance by Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The gallery talk is free and open to the public. To register, go here.
The inaugural North Philadelphia History Festival, a celebration of African American and Puerto Rican heritage through art, music, film, history and culture, will be held July 24-27, 2025.
President Trump has floated a plan to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. The United States Post Office Department was established in 1792. Enslaved Africans delivered mail and packages between plantations and towns. Before the introduction of home mail delivery in 1863, enslaved Africans often carried mail to and from the post office.
Mary Fields, aka Stagecoach Mary, was the first African American to carry mail on a Star Route for the Post Office Department.
Minnie M. Cox was the first Black female postmaster.
Initially, very few complaints were raised about Mrs. Cox’s appointment as postmaster. As time passed, however, concerns arose from the citizens of Indianola. During this time, Republican politics were being restructured by President Theodore Roosevelt, and the new party stance shifted so that it no longer continued the Reconstruction policy of placing African Americans to political appointments. The white citizens of Indianola called for the elimination of African Americans from leadership positions, and specifically for the removal of Mrs. Cox. In doing so, they hoped to create an opening for a white postmaster.
[…]
These threats concerned postal inspector Charles Fitzgerald, who suggested that “as a bona fide federal officer, Mrs. Cox should be protected, by federal troops if necessary, in the discharge of her duties.” However, President Roosevelt made it clear that there would be no need for federal troops and refused to accept Mrs. Cox’s resignation. Instead, he suspended the Indianola post office on January 2, 1903. Through this suspension, Roosevelt effectively showed Indianola citizens that mail would be rerouted until Mrs. Cox could resume her duties. The atmosphere, however, became so hostile that Mrs. Cox left Indianola for her own safety on January 5, 1903.
In response to the town’s actions against Mrs. Cox, President Roosevelt ordered the Attorney General to prosecute any citizens who had violently threatened Mrs. Cox. Furthermore, the Postmaster General decided to reduce the rank of the Indianola Post Office from a third-class to a fourth-class office on the grounds that the year’s lower postal receipts did not warrant third-class status.
A jazz club in South Philly paid homage to postal workers and the role of the Postal Service in building the Black middle class.
The Postal Service offered opportunities for Black high school graduates, as well as those with undergraduate and post-graduate degrees. In 1940, approximately 14 percent of all middle-class African Americans worked for the Postal Service; 28 percent had at least some college education compared to 4.9 percent of the Black population in general.
Today, African Americans represent approximately 29 percent of the postal workforce.
March is Women in Jazz Month, a time to celebrate the contributions of women to jazz. Truth be told, those contributions are often unheralded and overlooked. But as the National Museum of African American History and Culture notes, women were “present from its [jazz] inception”:
Jazz evolved from ragtime, an American style of syncopated instrumental music. Jazz first materialized in New Orleans, and is often distinguished by African American musical innovation. Multiple styles of the genre exist today from the dance-oriented music of the 1920s big band era to the experimental flair of modern avant-garde jazz. The radically new genre of music, originally seen as socially unacceptable, often called “the Devil’s music,” grew into an expression of high art, and as a result of many pioneering African American women. And while present from its inception, African American women are often omitted from the larger narrative in the history of the genre. Black women musicians fought harsh stereotypes levied against their gender, race, and musical abilities.
The Mellon Foundation is hosting a virtual discussion about jazz creativity and innovation featuring two women in jazz — Terri Lyne Carrington and esperanza spalding.
The event is free and open to the public. To register for the livestream, visit the Mellon Foundation.
The Apollo Theater turned 90 this year. Opened in 1914 as a burlesque house, by 1934 the theater was transformed into a venue primarily for African American performers and audiences.
A stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit, the now historic landmark was the place “where stars are born and legends are made.” Legends like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Jazz, blues and soul artists who graced The Apollo’s stage include Count Basie, Art Blakey, James Brown, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Louis Jordan, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Jimmy Smith, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.
The Apollo is, again, making history. It is the first organization to receive the Kennedy Center Honor. Michelle Ebanks, President & CEO of The Apollo, said:
We are thrilled to be the first organization honored in the history of the Kennedy Center Awards, emphasizing The Apollo’s impact on the past, present, and future of American culture and the performing arts. From the longest-running talent show in America with Amateur Night at The Apollo, which launched the careers of icons like Ella Fitzgerald and Lauryn Hill, to performances from beloved legends like Smokey Robinson and Lil’ Kim and today’s biggest stars like Drake, The Apollo has always been a home for artists to create and a home for audiences to see incredible music and art from legendary artists.
The 47th Kennedy Center Honors, hosted by Queen Latifah, will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday, December 22, 2024, from 8:30–11 pm ET/PT.
