Preserving the Jazz Tradition

Jazz critic and writer Leonard Feather sought to answer a simple question – could people identify a performer’s race or gender simply by the way he or she played their instrument?

Over three decades, he conducted “blindfold tests” on a number of famous jazz musicians. Feather would play a recorded jazz piece and have the guest attempt to identify the performer and rate the performance.

The International Jazz Collections (IJC), housed in the University of Idaho Library, contain 33 recordings of these tests along with copies of “Downbeat” and “Metronome” magazines, which published the transcripts.

Mitch Gibbs, a senior from Snohomish, Wash., received the inaugural Berry IJC Fellowship and helped make this collection, and Feather’s findings, more accessible to the public.

“Learning jazz is similar to learning a language,” Gibbs said. “These recordings are a way to learn more about the legacy of jazz through the words of its masters.”

During the fellowship, Gibbs - who is majoring in music education, music performance and music theory - used archived copies of the magazines and the recordings to update the data stored in the library’s digital archive.

By matching the audio recordings of the tests to the magazine editions they were published in, Gibbs could provide users more detailed information on the recording, including a list of songs featured in each interview.

“The contents of these interviews are pure gold,” Gibbs said. “The music world needs to have better access to these tapes in order to help preserve the jazz tradition.”