Dating back to its origins in African American communities in the early 20th century, the history of jazz is inextricably linked to political struggle and social resistance. Jazz musicians have often stood at the forefront of civil rights movements, contributing to the formation of a broader countercultural force.
Louis Armstrong’s 1929 recording of “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” is an early critique of racial alienation in a segregated society. While often portrayed as apolitical, Armstrong’s success in breaking racial barriers—performing in previously segregated venues and appearing in mainstream films—carried significant symbolic weight.
Billie Holiday’s 1939 rendition of “Strange Fruit,” written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, also marked a turning point. Her emotionally charged performances transformed the song into a ritual of defiance: service would stop, lights would dim, a single spotlight would fall on Holiday’s face—and there would be no encore.
This spirit of resistance only continued to grow stronger after the war. In 1960, bassist and composer Charles Mingus stood on the passenger seat of a convertible speeding through Newport, Rhode Island, shouting, “Come to my festival!” This was a protest.
Mingus challenged what he saw as the failings of the jazz scene, specifically the one created by the Newport Jazz Festival. Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Jo Jones, and other Black musicians had several grievances with the main festival and George Wein. In response to Wein’s lowball offer of $700 for his band, Mingus refused to appear for anything less than $5,000 after learning that Benny Goodman was being paid $7,500. When Wein refused, Mingus and Max Roach undertook to organize a counterevent in Newport, the Newport Rebel Festival (source)
Max Roach performing at the Newport Rebels Festival in 1960. Photographed by William Claxton.
Similarly, in 1970, multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk spearheaded the Jazz and People’s Movement, which staged coordinated sonic protests during live tapings of major network talk shows. Armed with police whistles and small instruments, participants disrupted broadcasts to protest the systematic erasure of “Black creative genius” from American television and cultural memory.
The Jazz and People’s Movement issued a list of demands to major television networks, warning of further disruptions and boycotts if they were ignored. Central to their proposal was the establishment of a “board of jazz musicians” to oversee the production of three to four jazz specials per season—programs intended not only to place the music within its historical context but also to introduce emerging talent to the wider public. In addition, the movement demanded the regular inclusion of Black musicians on weekly talk shows, variety programs, and other broadcasts, not only as performers, but as featured interviewees, on equal footing with their white peers (source).
Rahsaan Roland Kirk and the Vibration Society, backstage at Keystone Korner, San Francisco, 1973. Gatefold image from the Bright Moments LP. Photograph by Jim Marshall, courtesy Jim Marshall Estate.
These stories are remnants of an archive of dreams, sounds, and forms of life—an unfinished counterculture that continues to haunt us. They preserve not only the memory of what was once possible, but also the traces of what was actively suppressed. Counterculture, in this sense, is not simply history but a hauntological resource: a reminder that the future could have unfolded otherwise, and still might.
Today, however, this counterculture is often reduced to “iconic images” and “classic songs,” its revolutionary potential neutralized and repackaged as heritage. With the disappearance of a genuinely oppositional cultural sphere, we circle in a loop of nostalgia, where radical gestures of the past are aestheticized rather than politicized. Only through continual re-narration can these suppressed possibilities remain alive. Without such active and collective preservation and re-narration, these struggles risk fading into oblivion. In this climate, preserving jazz as a living, contested practice is no longer merely curatorial—it is explicitly political.
Preserving jazz means sustaining a record of diversity in creativity, resilience, and political expression. Jazz carries many stories of struggle and resistance that have influenced cultures worldwide, and losing it would mean losing an essential part of our shared cultural memory. If jazz is forgotten, we risk erasing the voices that used it to demand freedom and equality. It is important to preserve jazz because it means preserving a language of hope and defiance that still speaks to our world today.
The Jazz Estate, a digital archive, began as a personal project. It was an attempt to ease myself into the world of jazz. I already loved the sound, but I wanted to understand the stories behind the music. I started an Instagram page to post about its history, hoping that tracing its roots would help me make sense of all the song titles and references. Over time, The Jazz Estate grew into a global community of over a million across social media platforms.
Our digital archive extends this legacy of resistance into different forms of cultural preservation, using design, storytelling, and community organizing to ensure that jazz remains an active speech of solidarity. We also run a webstore, where my partner Ozan and I launched the Jazz Against Apartheid fundraiser merch collection in solidarity with Palestinians who are being brutally murdered by the Israeli settler-colonial entity. Since November 2022, we have raised over $40,000 for the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance (MECA).
The Jazz Estate operates on a completely voluntary basis, does not belong to any kind of organisation, institution or corporation and the social media posts have always remained ad-free. Your Substack subscription directly supports us and allows us to continue this work.
About the author
Orkan Aydın is a theatermaker based in Germany. His work gives equal weight to sound, object, and text, creating poetic spectacles shaped by contemplation and the metaphysics of the everyday. In 2018, he founded The Jazz Estate, a project dedicated to expanding public access to jazz history through curated archival materials, historically grounded storytelling, and community-led cultural work.
https://deadline.com/2026/07/thabo-rametsi-first-look-as-hugh-masekela-condon-road-home-1237004272/
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