New York & New Orleans: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Women in Jazz

Other DH Method: Spatial Humanities

In addition, we attempted to implement various aspects of the spatial humanities projects we’ve worked with throughout the semester. Since our project focuses on the cross-cultural analysis of jazz music between north and south regions, we would be able to map out each of our selected women’s location and trace their relative career paths. This would enable us to discern whether there appeared to be any change in musical theme, tone, or style not only between artists, but also as their careers progressed. This provides us with a greater sense of the disparities that we know to have existed politically and socially, and observe how these changes have influenced some of the most artistic individuals of the time.

Below are Google Earth layouts of the career paths for our selected artists. Initially, we had hoped to include many more spots along the way, including information regarding first performances and the like. However, due to a lack of available information regarding some of our women, as well as technological conflicts arising in our attempts to implement other mapping software into Scalar, these maps are not as in-depth as we hoped they would be.


We had also planned on using spatial technologies to examine any relevant correlations between the women from each of our two distinct areas. Examining the information on the New Orleans' women's paths, we find that both Germaine Bazzle and Jackie Harris held positions at the Louis Armstrong summer jazz camp, with Jackie Harris actually holding roles as founder/director, whereas Bazzle was an instructor, following her love of teaching. As for the women of New York, we found very little overlap of their paths. Jackie and Roy performed in countless areas across the globe, and as a result rarely overlapped with the New York-centric career of Etta Jones. As development continues, we hope to be able to incorporate these analyses using other technologies.

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