Every day it becomes clearer: The more our president attempts to obscure and erase Black excellence, the more centrally it emerges as an imperative contribution to the greatness of American cultural attainment.
Although true of every aspect of our shared history, it’s in the realm of music where we have really stood out. Jazz is perhaps our nation’s most substantial and original gift to world art, becoming a language of “coolness” in the process of dissemination internationally. If hip-hop engenders woke awareness from the start, jazz, inspiring a desire of understanding, has been a vehicle of reconciliation.
This was but one of several takeaways gleaned from a recent public program at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (NJMIH) that explored how, like baseball, jazz — this most American musical idiom — has flourished without diminution since before the Second World War, far, far away in Japan.
Made possible with support from the United States-Japan Foundation, the event featured a spirited conversation between icons of creative expression — bassist Christian McBride and award-winning journalist and author Nate Chinen. It was preceded by a sake reception, sponsored by Uka Saké. Reflecting on their long-standing connections to jazz and Japan, they highlighted exciting experiences in touring, recording, and collaborating in Japan’s distinctive jazz community.
Museum vice chair Lolita Jackson and new NJMH executive director Dale Dobson Credit: Michael Henry Adams 
Jazz journalist and author Nate Chimen 
Jazz bassist, composer, and arranger Christian McBride Credit: Michael Henry Adams 
AmNews Jazz Notes columnist Ronald E. Scott. Credit: Michael Henry Adams 
Rev. Marisa Sifontes and Rotarian Raqjba Bourne Credit: Michael Henry Adams 
Terrance McNigh, host of WNYC’s Evening Music, and Harlem native performer Helga Davis. Credit: Michael Henry Adams 
Dale Dobson, Zaire Batiste and Richard Taffet Credit: Michael Henry Adams
The Japanese have long been stereotyped as placidly implacable, reserved, ascetic, and unemotional. Observing the attentive silence with which Japanese people typically take in a live jazz performance, which “the uninformed might mistake reverence with disdain” “or even boredom,” both men recounted scenes each experienced in sold-out sports stadiums. An artistic legacy we have sometimes neglected at home is deeply appreciated by Japanese fans. “Just wait for the pandemonium at the close,” each said to the other. Neither the Beatles nor Beyoncé has ever had greater ovations!
“Yes,” they agreed about a Japanese affinity for jazz. So much is this the case that, here and there, ardor can sometimes lead to culture clashes and, even, in unintended merriment.
Consider, for instance, Tokyo’s so-called “Soul Bars,” which are listening venues for jazz enthusiasts where vintage, pristine LPs keep the sound authentic, while similarly well-preserved issues of Ebony and Jet Magazine heighten an ambience meant to be evocative of “the ’hood.” McBride conceded he was only taken aback on finally reaching the bar. “The bartender wore an Afro wig!” he laughed. “It was,” he said, “an example of when fandom trips over minstrelsy. But,” he was quick to add, “this was not the white American supremacist impulse to blacken up in mockery. It was a well-intentioned tribute to an artistry, our artistry, admired as much by many Japanese as any of their own.”
Neither mimicry or ridicule play into the high regard with which jazz is esteemed by the Japanese. No less than many earlier gatekeepers of opera, ballet, or other European traditions seeking to deny Misty Copeland, Marian Anderson, or Roland Hays opportunities to affront the superior discernment of their eyes and ears, plenty have similarly asserted “that no non-Black can play jazz.”
The world-renowned Akiko Tsuruga was a jazz organist par excellence. She was as determined to silence naysayers as Copland was. Both succeeded, not due to mere adherence to orthodoxy, imitating others. Rather, instead, it was with innovation and originality that each gained her fame. Tsuruga ascended alongside masterful saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who was so inspired by her soulful, swinging style on the Hammond B-3, he chose her alone. She died in September 2025, at age 58.
I used to visit the St. Nick’s Pub on nights when bus groups of tourists from Japan would drop in. More than once, I saw some laid-back, suited, apparent executive who dared to sit in with Bill Saxton or Patience Higgins. Taking out his bass, or at the drums, invariably, the transformation was a dramatic one. It was like Dr. Jekyll’s, or the grandmother who inhabits the housekeeper in the movie “Get Out.” One might say they came alive. However, neither they, nor Japanese jazz fans in general, are ever actually turned Black because of their admiration. Instead, it is as if they are awakened and made aware of just one part of the magnificence of Black excellence.
This is what makes the National Jazz Museum in Harlem such a valuable adjunct to the Studio Museum, the Urban League’s Civil Rights Museum, the Schomburg Center, the National Black Theater, the New York Amsterdam News’ upcoming Museum of Black Journalism, and every other institution that bears witness to all we of African descent have given America.
For more info, visit jmih.org.