The revered trombonist, composer and cultural activist never wished to be ‘the state composer’ but remained political until the end, in service of the people.
Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces New York, 1947.
William P Gottlieb/Flickr
Though he lived hard and died young, Bird’s genre-busting style of sax playing ignited jazz’s bebop revolution.
Virtuoso: John Coltrane (tenor sax), Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), Miles Davis (trumpet) and Bill Evans (piano) recording Kind of Blue in 1959.
Pedro Garcia
Ph.D. fellow in European Research Council (ERC) project "Apartheid- The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation 1948-1990", led by Prof. Louise Bethlehem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem