Here the jazzwomen of the past and of our times find voice. The Italian designation, however, will be preferred, giving rise to the plural “le jazziste”: an expression almost nonexistent if not hidden, encompassed and buried by the more famous masculine one. To the expression “jazz is a man,” which describes a man with a cigarette in his mouth and the halo of smoke that circumscribes him in a golden age, suffering but omnipotent, I substitute “jazz is everyone,” women and men, indistinctly. Maybe they will both have a cigarette in their hand, that matters little!
Women artists of the past especially, composers, arrangers, instrumentalists, singers and advocate of jazz are often forgotten and their value is not recognized as it should be. In this column we will give precisely space and time to them, with the aim of filling their absence in the stories and aiming for equality.
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Jazz singer, musicologist, and PhD candidate in jazz research
Logo created by Ilaria Bellone
Pcitures by gio_huangzhiwei
I would like to thank the International Museum and Library of Music of Bologna for kindly providing the images.
