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A sweet, hot town — and all that jazz
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06/17/09 11:03 AM ET
For most of the last century, the close relationship between the U Street area and jazz music has been heavily influenced by race relations and the economy of the Shaw/Howard neighborhood. Jazz music’s roots in the nation’s capital date back to the segregated U Street of the early 1900s — where Washington native and world-renowned jazz musician Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington began his illustrious career.
Jazz music did not reach the pinnacle of its popularity on U Street until the early 1960s. By the end of the decade, though, desegregation, civil unrest and economic decline had forced many of the area’s jazz venues to shutter their doors. Only recently has jazz been able to regain some of the former glory it once held on the U Street corridor.
Although New Orleans is widely considered to be the birthplace of jazz, D.C. was among a number of other cities with strong African-American communities that helped popularize the music.
The most important venue for jazz in D.C. was the Howard Theatre. Constructed in 1910 on the corner of 7th and T streets NW, the Howard is “the oldest major theater built for African-American entertainment,” said Chip Ellis, a managing partner of the Howard Theatre Development Group currently restoring the historic landmark.
The Howard Theatre is significant because its rise and demise can be seen as a microcosm of the broader segregation economy that tied jazz music to the area.
“Just like most places around the country, [segregation] really forced African-Americans to establish their own places [of business],” Ellis said. In the early 1900s, there were “over 200 black-owned businesses in Shaw.”
In the midst of this separate-but-vibrant economic system were a number of performance venues, restaurants, supper clubs, and bars— so many, in fact, that the U Street corridor became known as “Black Broadway.”
It was a “place where a person of African-American ancestry could go and emulate what happened on Broadway in New York,” said Dr. Sais Kamalidiin, professor of African and African-American Music History at Howard University. Whites were never excluded from shows at the Howard Theatre, and on at least on one occasion during the 1940s President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor were among those in attendance.
Ironically enough, desegregation in the mid-1960s may have marked the beginning of the end for the Howard Theatre. Freed from the artificially imposed confines of segregation, top-tier musicians were able to make more money playing to integrated audiences in larger venues.
To complicate matters further, as a significant portion of the African-American professional classed moved to more affluent areas, desegregation also “changed the makeup of the neighborhood,” Ellis said.
But the culminating event that left jazz music — and the wider U Street economy — in the doldrums for nearly three decades was the destructive riot that occurred after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968.
Even before the King assassination, U Street “was on a downward slide,” Kamalidiin said. “Somebody had straw, old newspapers, leaves, gas cans, dynamite with a fuse piled in an area — and people walked around it. Dr. King’s murder was somebody putting a match to that.”
Only after the U Street Metro station was built in 1991 did the neighborhood’s economy slowly begin to turn around. “As the money comes back, the need for entertainment comes back,” Kamalidiin said. In 1998, the Bohemian Caverns — which gained national recognition when Ramsey Lewis recorded his Grammy Award-winning album “The In Crowd” there in 1965 — reopened after a 30-year hiatus.
Twins Jazz, an intimate restaurant co-owned by Ethiopian-born twin sisters Kelly and Maze Tesfaye, opened on U Street in 2001, and others soon followed.
According to Kelly Tesfaye, “after we moved in here and started jazz, every restaurant started playing jazz.”
While jazz will probably never regain the status it once enjoyed, the music can still be heard nearly any given night on U Street at a number of other venues including Cada Vez, U-Topia, HR-57 and JoJo’s. And “if that’s the criteria,” Kamalidiin said, “then I would say that the state of [jazz] music on U Street today is good.”
Jazz music did not reach the pinnacle of its popularity on U Street until the early 1960s. By the end of the decade, though, desegregation, civil unrest and economic decline had forced many of the area’s jazz venues to shutter their doors. Only recently has jazz been able to regain some of the former glory it once held on the U Street corridor.
Although New Orleans is widely considered to be the birthplace of jazz, D.C. was among a number of other cities with strong African-American communities that helped popularize the music.
The most important venue for jazz in D.C. was the Howard Theatre. Constructed in 1910 on the corner of 7th and T streets NW, the Howard is “the oldest major theater built for African-American entertainment,” said Chip Ellis, a managing partner of the Howard Theatre Development Group currently restoring the historic landmark.
The Howard Theatre is significant because its rise and demise can be seen as a microcosm of the broader segregation economy that tied jazz music to the area.
“Just like most places around the country, [segregation] really forced African-Americans to establish their own places [of business],” Ellis said. In the early 1900s, there were “over 200 black-owned businesses in Shaw.”
In the midst of this separate-but-vibrant economic system were a number of performance venues, restaurants, supper clubs, and bars— so many, in fact, that the U Street corridor became known as “Black Broadway.”
It was a “place where a person of African-American ancestry could go and emulate what happened on Broadway in New York,” said Dr. Sais Kamalidiin, professor of African and African-American Music History at Howard University. Whites were never excluded from shows at the Howard Theatre, and on at least on one occasion during the 1940s President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor were among those in attendance.
Ironically enough, desegregation in the mid-1960s may have marked the beginning of the end for the Howard Theatre. Freed from the artificially imposed confines of segregation, top-tier musicians were able to make more money playing to integrated audiences in larger venues.
To complicate matters further, as a significant portion of the African-American professional classed moved to more affluent areas, desegregation also “changed the makeup of the neighborhood,” Ellis said.
But the culminating event that left jazz music — and the wider U Street economy — in the doldrums for nearly three decades was the destructive riot that occurred after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968.
Even before the King assassination, U Street “was on a downward slide,” Kamalidiin said. “Somebody had straw, old newspapers, leaves, gas cans, dynamite with a fuse piled in an area — and people walked around it. Dr. King’s murder was somebody putting a match to that.”
Only after the U Street Metro station was built in 1991 did the neighborhood’s economy slowly begin to turn around. “As the money comes back, the need for entertainment comes back,” Kamalidiin said. In 1998, the Bohemian Caverns — which gained national recognition when Ramsey Lewis recorded his Grammy Award-winning album “The In Crowd” there in 1965 — reopened after a 30-year hiatus.
Twins Jazz, an intimate restaurant co-owned by Ethiopian-born twin sisters Kelly and Maze Tesfaye, opened on U Street in 2001, and others soon followed.
According to Kelly Tesfaye, “after we moved in here and started jazz, every restaurant started playing jazz.”
While jazz will probably never regain the status it once enjoyed, the music can still be heard nearly any given night on U Street at a number of other venues including Cada Vez, U-Topia, HR-57 and JoJo’s. And “if that’s the criteria,” Kamalidiin said, “then I would say that the state of [jazz] music on U Street today is good.”
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