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North East Digital Village
Women, Music & Jazz!
In honor of National Women's History Month in March, Riverwalk Jazz presents a salute to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first racially-integrated "all girl" jazz band of the '40s. Named by Downbeat magazine as America's #1 All-Girl Orchestra in 1944, they enjoyed an enormous following among the African-American audiences who heard them on the black theater circuit at the Apollo in New York, the Paradise in Detroit, and the Howard in Washington, D.C. They played Battle-of-the-Bands concerts with jazz orchestras led by Fletcher Henderson and Earl Hines. Letter-writing campaigns from overseas black soldiers demanded the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and in 1945 the band embarked on a 6-month European tour making them the first black women to travel with the USO. LEARN MORE
cite: riverwalk.org
Sweethearts
by Teri Harllee
The Apollo Theatre, New York. The audience is on their feet, dancing to the unique rhythms that all-male, white big bands would later hire black arrangers to copy. Energy pulses and throbs as they swing through the moves this new dance form demands; vibrates the building. Louis Armstrong and Eddie Durham stand in the wings, smiling broadly as Ernestine "Tiny" Davis takes off in a riveting solo. The premier all-women big band, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, push the fevered audience to new levels as Edna Williams, Willie Mae Wong, and Ruby Lucas up the ante on "Swing Shift".
cite: allaboutjazz.com
"Jump Children"
by The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm on Guild 141 A(Released 1945)
Site includes audio links, historical background/links and photos of band:
Vi Burnside And Her All Stars (ca 1951). An excellent saxophone player, Vi was with The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm, an all female orchestra that had gained great fame in the 1940's, leaving them in 1947.
Tiny Davis, Decca recording Artist (ca 1952). She was with The Sweethearts in the 1940's, billed as "The Hottest Female Trumpeter In the Universe"! She left them in 1947. Guild 141 Label, Released 10/45. Vocal by Tiny Davis.
Guild was a New York City jazz label (1945-46). This same song, "Jump Children", was issued by The Flamingos on Chance 1162 in 10/54 and, as "Voo-It Voo-It!" by The Blues Woman (aka Marion Abernathy) on Jukebox 502 in 11/45.
cite: group-harmony.com
Women in Jazz
by Sherrie Tucker, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
In 1942, Viola Smith, a veteran drummer with 17 years of professional paradiddles under her belt, sent shock waves through the readership of Down Beat by extolling the existence of "hep girls," female jazz musicians "who could sit in any jam session and hold their own." A firestorm of letters-to-the-editor ensued, passionately debating the topic: Can women play jazz? What are women's roles in jazz history? If women have played jazz all along, why don't we know more about them?
While this controversy may seem hopelessly outdated in an era of such commanding female jazz performers as saxophonists Claire Daly, Fostina Dixon, and Jane Ira Bloom, and drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Sylvia Cuenca, its effects linger like a haunting refrain. LEARN MORE
Includes audio samples: Back Water Blues by Bessie Smith, I Got Rhythm by Ethel Waters, Fine and Mellow & Without Your Love by Billie Holiday, They Can't Take That Away From Me by Sarah Vaughan and reflections by musiicans Wynton Marsalis on Billie Holiday and Cassandra Wilson on the voice of Sarah Vaughan. Photos and more audio files.
LISTEN & LEARN MORE
cite: pbs.org
International Women in Jazz, Inc.
(IWJ) is a non-profit organization committed to supporting women jazz artists and related professionals, and to fostering a greater awareness of the diverse contributions women make to jazz, worldwide [501(c)3]. Through its programs, IWJ provides information and assistance to its members, thus standing dedicated to actively ensuring a place for women as a vital part of the past, present, and future of jazz.
cite: International Women in Jazz, Inc
Donne in Musica
Fondazione Adkins Chiti: Donne in Musica (Women in Music), came into being in 1978 as a movement promoting and presenting music composed or created by women worldwide, of all genres and in all times. The International Adkins Chiti: Women in Music Foundation organises festivals, concert series, exhibitions, research projects, publications, conventions, and master classes. Its library and archives house over 32 thousand scores of women's music. The Foundation is an Italian cultural organisation, partner within cultural agreements undersigned by the Italian Foreign Ministry, member of UNESCO's International Music Council and the European Music Council, and is internationally recognised for its activities advocating equal opportunities in the cultural sector. The Women in Music Foundation, the members of the International Honour Committee, (comprising national associations, composers, musicologists and distinguished women), together with a network of musicians in 116 countries, gives visibility, safeguards and sustains research regarding historic artistic production, encourages contemporary creativity and the musical and cultural diversity of women composers.
cite: donneinmusica.org
How many women composers and creators of music are included in textbooks and encyclopaedias? Far too few. Those present are there because other women musicians, scholars and historians have wanted to celebrate their contributions. If music is not performed, it is not perceived to exist; women's music is a tangible and intangible part of world heritage. Making it known is the mission of Women in Music.
http://donneinmusica.org/pagina-missione-e.htm
Expanding Boundaries: Miya Masaoka
by Teri Harllee
Miya Masaoka is an artist who stretches the boundaries of music into experimental and experiential realms of creativity. Her compositions explore sound and rhythm, creating unique sound landscapes. She is classically trained, holding degrees in both Western and Eastern music. Masaoka incorporates many styles in her compositions: Gagaku (Japanese court orchestral music), jazz, avant-garde, new improvised and electronic music.
cite: allaboutjazz.com
Mary Lou Williams: Jazz Healing
by Teri Harllee
"Jazz has healing in it, and a lot of love." ~Mary Lou Williams
. . . One of the most extraordinary aspects of Williams' career is the fact that she is the only major jazz artist whose playing spanned every era in the history of jazz: Spirituals, Ragtime, Blues, Small Jazzbands of the 1920's, Kansas City Swing, Boogie-Woogie, Bop/Modern, Avante-Garde. She was also one of the first women in jazz who really crossed gender lines. Williams achieved a status in jazz rare to women: unfaltering respect from her male colleagues as a musical equal. In Kansas City, Count Basie said, "Anytime she was in the neighborhood I used to find myself another little territory, because Mary Lou was tearin' everybody up". In Joan Burke's documentary on Mary Lou, saxophonist Buddy Tate agreed: "She was outplaying all those men. She didn't think so but they thought so."
cite: allaboutjazz.com
Information, Books and Other Resources
For more information on women's jazz history, see:
Linda Dahl. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (New York, 1989)
Leslie Gourse. Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists (New York and Oxford, 1995)
D. Antoinette Handy. Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras 2nd ed. (Metuchen, New Jersey, 1998)
D. Antoinette Handy. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm rev. ed. (Metuchen, New Jersey, 1998)
Sally Placksin: American Women in Jazz, 1900 to the Present: their Words, Lives, and Music (New York, 1982)
Sherrie Tucker: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s (Durham, 2000)
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