Topics Related to Jazz in NC

Photo by Sierra Turner.Last month Ocean City Jazz Festival celebrated its tenth anniversary. Founded in 2009, the festival raises awareness about the community's historic role as the first beachfront community in North Carolina where African American's could purchase property. WUNC's The State of Things invited Angela Thorpe, Director of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, and Carla Torrey, Ocean City Beach Citizens Council member onto their show to discuss the significance of the festival and the community it calls home. 

Photo: Connye Florance by Graham GerdemanThe General Jackson, a modern-day replica of the flat-bottomed steamers of the nineteenth century, has been paddling the waters of Tennessee’s Cumberland River since 1985.

All Photos Courtesy of the Ocean City Jazz Festival

During the 1940s and the 1950s when jazz music was as hot as hip-hop is today, Wilmington, North Carolina, was the place where jazz giants like Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong performed at a local jazz club and ballroom called The Barn. It was located on South 11th Street, between Meares and Wright Streets, and was owned and operated by the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Whitted.

Back home in Puerto Rico in the early 1990s, I used to listen to a jazz radio show called “En Clave de Jazz” where the DJ played music by artists such as Tito Puente, Cal Tjader and Bobby Hutcherson. It was through that program that I discover the marimba! At the time, I had no idea what that instrument was or where I could learn it but I immediately felt in love with its sound.  Then in 1994, I started taking marimba lessons at the Escuela Libre de Música in Caguas, Puerto Rico; from there I went to the Puerto Rico Music Conservatory and eventually to the University of North Texas.