December 2022 - Only available for a limited time
but it might(should?) be repeated sometime.

A short BBC series -stories of protest, politics and diplomacy behind jazz.

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The Truth about Jazz - 2022 - BBC World Service & R4

The roots of jazz
Clive Myrie charts the early roots of jazz in the late 19th and early 20th Century. The programme visits the jazz museum in New Orleans and hears about the early jazz pioneers like Buddy Bolden.
Clive meets Robert Meeropol, the adopted son of Abel Meeropol who wrote the original poem that Billie Holiday's seminal protest song Strange Fruit was based on.
He also hears the story behind the 1929 song Black and Blue. Mercedes Ellington remembers Black, Brown and Beige - her grandfather Duke Ellington’s 1943 creation for his first concert at Carnegie Hall.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct43qn

Jazz and diplomacy
He hears about Louis Armstrong's struggle with racism and meets musician Charles McPherson, who worked with the legendary jazz composer Charles Mingus - and discusses Fables of Faubus, one of Mingus's most explicitly political works. The song was written as a direct protest against Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who in 1957 sent out the National Guard to prevent racial integration at Little Rock Central High School.
Clive also remembers the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which killed four children in September 1963. Veteran jazz musician Reggie Workman tells him how the attack led John Coltrane to write Alabama two months after the bombing.
Clive also looks at how America's global radio service Voice of America began using jazz as a way of improving US diplomatic relations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct43qp

The voice of America
Clive Myrie hears more about how jazz was used as a form of 'soft power' by the American establishment, via Voice of America radio broadcasts beyond the Iron Curtain. The State department was persuaded to send America’s biggest stars overseas to promote US music, and the tours would bring jazz to new audiences all over the world.
The programme looks at how Martin Luther King inspired jazz musicians in life and death.
Clive hears how a 16-year-old Danny Scher persuaded Thelonius Monk to play to a predominantly white audience at his high school in California in the late 60s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct43qq

Jazz and protest   
He hears how it clashed with the Nazis in World War Two and how people used jazz to cope with life in the concentration camps.
There's the story of John Coltrane's big composition in Japan and Clive remembers how jazz became a huge part of the fight to end apartheid in South Africa.
There's recollections from Dave Brubeck's son Chris and Darius before the series heads back to where everything began - at the home of the ‘father of jazz’, Buddy Bolden, in New Orleans.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct43qr

Producers: Ashley Byrne and Wayne Wright.

The Truth About Jazz is a Made in Manchester Production, originally produced for the BBC World Service.

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And a couple of BBC pages linking to associated programmes including at least a couple of music related ones.

"I Have a Dream"
A collection of programmes and content marking Black History Month.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b8cms

Britain's Black Past
Professor Gretchen Gerzina explores a largely unknown past, the lives of black people who settled in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07yvszg/episodes/player

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