Whitney Slaten

Jazzmobile, Community, and the Harlem Soundscape

In conjunction with the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and Jazzmobile, Inc., I organized a special event entitled Jazzmobile, Community, and the Harlem Soundscape that took place in Columbia’s St. Paul’s Chapel on Tuesday, September 19, 2017.  The event included remarks by the Center’s director, Professor Robert O’Meally, a performance by the Danny Mixon Trio, a presentation of my research that represented my ten year experience as the sound engineer for Jazzmobile, and the significance of its audience’s engagement with live jazz sound in Harlem’s outdoors. A video montage of key Jazzmobile performances, reflections by Thomasine Gangadean, Wycliffe Gordon, Winard Harper, Antoinette Montague, and Al Mtu, remarks by Jazzmobile C.E.O., Robin Bell-Stevens, and a performance by Aaron Diehl and Wycliffe Gordon closed the evening.

The following is an excerpt from the event’s program:

In response to the increasing inaccessibility of jazz performances in Harlem, Dr. Billy Taylor founded Jazzmobile in 1964, a not-for-profit arts organization that presents free, professional, live jazz concerts in order to bring jazz “back to Harlem.” Jazzmobile has presented free, live jazz concerts continuously for over fifty years, through which audiences, production teams, organizers and musicians sound and listen to amplified jazz at historical sites in Harlem’s outdoors.

Jazzmobile, Community, and the Harlem Soundscape engages how Jazzmobile constructs community and the soundscape of Harlem in the midst of Harlem’s changing milieu. The program features performances by Jazzmobile all stars, a keynote address interrogating Jazzmobile as cultural repatriation and a roundtable discussion with Jazzmobile audience members.

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