The Edinburgh Jazz Bar in Chambers Street has reopened in triumph, just in time for the 2024 Fringe and Edinburgh Jazz Festival.
The space closed earlier this year, leaving a gaping void in the city’s nightlife and live music scene.
However, a passionate fellowship of night owls and jazz cats banded together to save their beloved bohemian hideaway.
Over £30,000 in funds sourced entirely through crowdfunding has allowed the basement bar to open its doors once again, flourishing as a non-profit social enterprise.
It was a community that assembled to rescue Edinburgh’s jazz haven.
Here we explore and celebrate the genre’s indisputable influence on community, fashion, culture, politics and society.
The 1920s was an era characterised by bold innovation, daring and rebellious attitudes and a cultural emphasis on youth, leisure and luxury.
Jazz’s influence on the fashion of this decade cannot be understated.
Only a mere few years after the first jazz standards were conceived, the music was already having a major impact on American society, causing it to break away from the stale conventions of the pre-WW1 west.
Clothing designed for playing jazz music meant many American women went without a corset for the first time.
This movement not only created new aesthetics for women’s dress, but also pushed clothing design to prioritise comfort and practicality.
Clothing and accessories were created for the sole purpose of dancing to jazz, particularly big band performances.
Fluid fits and eccentric colour schemes continue to influence contemporary fashion today.
Jazz is deeply embedded in the DNA of hip hop.
This is most apparent in the alternative jazz rap movement of the early 1990s, popularised by the Native Tongues Collective.
The likes of De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Digable Planets, the Roots and A Tribe Called Quest are immortalised within the genre as the forefathers of an aesthetic mark that would inspire, not only the breadth of the Hip Hop spectrum, but also contemporary music as we know it.
These pioneers would take old jazz records and breathe new life into them through the practice of sampling.
This technique involves taking a preexisting musical piece, exporting it from a turntxable and putting it into a sampler, and then chopping, pitching and looping to unlock new rhythms and melodic progressions, often unrecognisable from the original piece.
Many jazz rap records include a handful of samples in every song. Some of the early De La Soul tracks boast an abundance of samples – their debut album features over 70 across its 24 tracks.
The wider influence of jazz sampling can even be seen in contemporary pop music; many avid popular music fans are blissfully ignorant to the fact that their favourite tracks are built on the foundation of music conceived decades ago.
From Rhianna to Charlie XCX, these pop juggernauts are all indebted to jazz.
Jazz’s influence on politics and social progress is well documented, the most famous example being that of the civil rights movement in the United States.
The genre was at the forefront of a cultural shift, providing the soundtrack to a revolution that would bring millions of oppressed Americans closer to equality.
The scene gave African Americans, not only a sense of community and representation, but was also one of the first legitimate economic vehicles for black Americans.
The influence of jazz trumpeted into the future, inspiring the likes of elegiac songwriter, Gil Scott Heron and the furiously charged Public Enemy.
While Jazz shifted society in the States, that very same music was fuelling a revolution in its ancestorial home, Africa.
Pan-Africanism was a political movement calling for a united Africa.
The movement and ideas were adopted by a variety of groups with widely ranging manifestos, but the fundamental pillars were an end to neocolonialism, the redistribution of industry and a mass reform of state throughout the continent.
The movement inspired not only a wave of politically minded jazz musicians across Africa, but also across the Atlantic.
Many pioneers of the jazz scene in the United States were infatuated with the Pan-Africanism movement.
The likes of John Coltrane, who had a close association with Nigerian percussionist and activist Babatunde Olatunji, and Sun Ra were among many forward-thinking musicians who actively engaged with these political ideals.
This is not only an example of jazz’s dramatic influence on geopolitics, but also demonstrates the creation of a space in the mainstream for the ideas and concerns of African Diaspora.
Jazz has provided art, security, inspiration and liberation to communities through the decades, from humble basement jam sessions to world-changing political movements.
This unique relationship between art and people has created a delicate and powerful ecosystem which sustains and nurtures both.
The community that came together to save the Edinburgh Jazz Bar serves as a powerful reminder of this relationship, a relationship to which music fans are forever indebted.
