5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Chicago Jazz

New York Times

05-03-2025

Jazz has experienced a meaningful resurgence in popularity over the past 15 years or so, especially among younger listeners. What's driving that? You could make the case that there is a particular hunger, now that so much of life is lived in the digital cloud, for the messy and untamed energy of jazz, and for its way of putting a live process on display. And if that's the case, then it makes a lot of sense that Chicago jazz has been at the forefront of this recent surge. Chicago has always represented a particularly rootsy, physical and — yes — windy ideal in jazz. So perhaps it's an especially heady antidote to that sense of digital disappearance.
The Chicago jazz sound amounts to a sum of the city's Black histories: In it you can usually hear something of the snowy, clamoring traffic in Richard Wright's 'Native Son,' from 1940; the yowl of Howlin' Wolf's electric guitar in a 1950s blues bar; the drummers and dancers pounding out rhythms at one of Kelan Philip Cohran's gatherings at the 63rd Street Beach in the late 1960s; even the antiracist street protests of the 1990s.
The Windy City was an important musical outpost from the start of the recorded era, when many blues and jazz musicians moved there from the South and became stars. It's also known as a cradle of the avant-garde, thanks to institutions like Sun Ra's Arkestra, established there in the early 1950s, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a seed-sowing collective that celebrates its 60th anniversary this spring. Today, the city remains at the forefront of contemporary jazz thanks to artists like Nicole Mitchell, Kahil El'Zabar, Makaya McCraven, Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker and Isaiah Collier, each a latter-day A.A.C.M. affiliate who has springboarded into a leading role on the international jazz circuit. And the label International Anthem, founded 12 years ago in Chicago, has become one of the biggest success stories in the indie-jazz business.
We asked writers, musicians and other linchpins of the Chicago scene to tell us what tracks they would play to make a newcomer fall in love with the distinctive but multifaceted sound of Chicago jazz. Read on, listen to their picks in our playlists, and if you have favorites of your own, drop them in the comments. Image Ernest Khabeer Dawkins leading the New Horizons Ensemble. Credit... Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times
This recording, featuring some of the stalwarts of Chicago's improvised music scene, should tantalize the palate of any listener new to creative music. The music is exploratory, while at the same time being funky and accessible. This Ernest Dawkins composition is a homage to Chicago's own Ameen Muhammad, who died in 2003 at 48. Muhammad, a dear friend of Dawkins, was not only a renowned trumpeter and composer but also a highly admired and respected educator; 'Mean Ameen' gained international notoriety over the course of his brief career. Ernest Khabeer Dawkins is one of those rare individuals who manages to balance a passion for community, mentorship and art. For me, this piece represents the saxophonist and bandleader at his best, through a beautiful dedication to a dear friend.
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