Cleveland Swings: The Rise and Fall of Jazz at University Circle 1950-1970
George Blake (SAGES)
2021–2022 Freedman Faculty Fellow
George Blake (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) studies music and urban life. Prior to working as a teaching fellow in SAGES, he was the Postdoctoral Scholar in the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at CWRU. He also taught a range of classes in the Department of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara pertaining to geography and cultural production. His SAGES offerings include a USEM on digitally mapping musical Cleveland, a USEM on music and labor and an FSEM on art, culture and the city in the context of globalization. His Freedman Fellows project explores the hidden histories of jazz in Cleveland's "second downtown."Although it is widely known that "Cleveland rocks," the aim of this project is to show that "Cleveland swings." The rich history of jazz in the city is not widely understood, but it is extensive. In the project, I will map the history of Cleveland's jazz venues - with a particular focus in the University Circle area - using ArcGIS. By mapping venues, this project seeks to illuminate a lost musical landscape. It also seeks to show how the jazz scene reached its peak in the 1950s and declined into the late 1960s. Additionally, the project seeks to digitize newspaper articles and other documentation that points to the jazz cultural heritage of the city, as well as on the campus of CWRU, and provide textured contextual understanding to Cleveland's shifting musical landscape.
