Australian jazz was the most significant music in the country’s entry into the modern era, and indeed the world’s first jazz festival was held in Australia back in 1919.

Jazz has also been Australia’s most influential cultural export, generating the jazz movement in parts of Europe, and transforming the social function of popular music in England in a way that set the scene for the pop revolutions of the 1960s. Its international impact continues into the twenty-first century, with the band The Necks acclaimed in the English press as showing the world the way forward for the music.

The Australian Jazz Archive (AJA) was established as a repository for the record of this extraordinarily important Australian musical tradition. Growing out of painstaking negotiations that began over a decade ago between the jazz community and the commonwealth government, the AJA was formally established in 1997 within ScreenSound Australia (SSA) as that body’s first genre-specific music archive. Its mission is the collection and development of archival materials relating to the story of Australian jazz. Its thousands of items include taped interviews, photographs, print materials and, of course, recordings.

The development of the AJA is managed as a collaboration between the unparallelled archival professionalism of ScreenSound Australia, and the equally unsurpassed local knowledge of the national jazz community, represented by the Australian Jazz Archive National Council. That Council has representatives from all states and territories wishing to participate in this archival enterprise. Each regional representative has her or his own local support body, which may be a committee or an archival body in its own right. SSA knows how to archive; the jazz community knows what to archive.

Its holdings thus combine significance with the best possible conditions of preservation and storage. But it is more than a silent storehouse. The AJA is also a public resource. It generates materials which flow back into the public sphere. Apart from the fact that its holdings are continuously being catalogued on-line for researchers, its projects include print publications such as the collection of interviews conducted by John Sharpe, and restored CDs accompanied by carefully researched booklets, produced under the general supervision of Bruce Johnson.

While the progress of the AJA has already been beyond expectations, its future looks even more promising. Earlier this year, as Chair of AJANC, I participated in an SSA seminar on the possibility of establishing formal research programmes. Apart from jazz historians, the mainstream media are also beginning to recognise its value as a resource for public information. Our association with the National Jazz Website also has the potential to massively increase the network of creative input. Above all, we are seeking to develop projects which will draw an emerging generation of jazz musicians and enthusiasts into an awareness of the importance of archiving. More detail on these activities will be provided in future bulletins on this website.

Bruce Johnson
Chair
AJA National Council

Links

Victorian Jazz Archive Inc http://home.vicnet.net.au/ ~vjazarch/

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Hash Varsani is the owner of The Jazz Directory, a network of sites related to jazz, travel and everything else he loves. He also runs a selection of jazz related sites including Jazz Club Jury, a jazz club and festival review site. Check out his Google+ Profile, to see what else he's up to...probably setting up another website from one of his many passions.

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