Jazz and Washington D.C.

I found out RTHK (the "NPR" of Hong Kong) is broadcasting a show called "The History of Jazz" (爵士樂的歷史) from the Facebook page of a Hong Kong Internet radio show for jazz. RTHK's promo mentioned the show focusing on Washington being an important city in the development of jazz other than New Orleans and New York but this fact is often neglected.

Now I really want to watch it. And I found out the full title was actually "History of Jazz: Oxygen for the Ears" To be honest, even though I claim myself being familiar with the development of styles in different era in the history of jazz, I am quite ignorant about the connection between jazz and DC. In fact, last time when I was in D.C., the only club that I heard about was the Blues Alley and I skipped it after going to many in NYC. To me, New Orleans was about the early dixieland jazz. Then jazz musicians moved north to Chicago and New York and big band/swing era begun. Charlie Parker who played in Kansas City was the pioneer in bebop which spread to the New York jazz scene quickly. Next we had hard bop on the East coast and cool jazz on the West coast. And we have Miles and Coltrane playing modern jazz (e.g. the modal stuff, the avant garde and fusion) in New York, which has long been the "capital" of jazz. According to this article, before jazz musicians including the great Duke Ellington moved to New York (Harlem to be exact), they were playing at D.C. for a while, which was historically important. Also, the current live jazz scene are actually more active than the one club I mentioned before. For example, there are several good ones in the U Street area (The Howard Theatre was where great African-American musicians played in the early and mid-twentieth century) I guess D.C. was as important as San Francisco as far as jazz is concerned. SF also used to have a vibrant jazz scene in the Fillmore district (maybe D.C. weighs a bit more because of the Duke Ellington connection. SF does have its own Vince Guaraldi though :P) Pianist Jason Moran actually said something similar (from the above link):

[As a jazz artist, the] most familiar and important [cities] to him are New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans.

Moran looks at a city's jazz scene through the artists who enliven it. "I always think about who does the city raise? Duke Ellington and Billy Taylor were people who became major mouthpieces for the music and swayed the opinions of millions," he says. "D.C. is a major central point because of the people it births." He does not feel a musician has to live and perform in New York to make a substantial contribution. 

FYI, Jason Moran is considered as 1 of the 12 most important jazz musicians according to the San Jose Mercury News. From my recent Virginia trip I actually saw brochures of the Jazz at the Kennedy center program at the conference center. Sounds like it's gonna be like Jazz at the Lincoln center and SFJAZZ. I will not miss the jazz scene next time I get a chance to travel there.