Jazz

Jazz has had a profound influence on the Broadway stage. In the 1920s and ’30s, jazz rhythms and harmonies began to reshape the sound of the American musical, giving it a freshness and vitality audiences hadn’t heard before.

Lily Pearl Woodard, better known as Pearl Woods, was born in Saint Matthews, South Carolina, in 1933 and moved to New York City in 1951.

Webster Young was born in Columbia, South Carolina, on December 3, 1932. Though he left South Carolina as a toddler, the musical seeds planted there would flourish elsewhere.

Composer, singer, and percussionist Nick Ashford was born in 1941 in South Carolina. As an infant, he moved north to Michigan, eventually settling in New York City, where he dreamed of becoming a dancer.

Mac Arnold, born in 1942 in Ware Place, South Carolina, is a powerhouse in jazz and blues whose career spans decades and coasts.

Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary, first aired on PBS in 2001, is more than a history lesson—it’s a celebration of an American art form.

"Lady Sings the Blues" is one of Billie Holiday’s signature recordings, and it’s a masterclass in vocal jazz.

Jazz helped reshape the visual arts. Artists like Romare Bearden and Jackson Pollock translated jazz's energy, rhythm, and improvisation onto canvas.

Colson Whitehead’s fiction often pulses with the spirit of jazz, shaping both rhythm and structure in his narratives.

Throughout American literature, jazz has been a storytelling tool. Writers like Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison didn’t merely write about jazz — they wrote with it.