The Storyville Diaspora Revisited

During in the 1930s and ‘40s, a number of jazz studies associated an exodus of jazz musicians from New Orleans with the closing of the Storyville red-light district in November 1917. This assumption eventually became canon in the popular history of jazz, but recent scholarship of the genre’s early days has started to revisit the story. Jazz historian and director of special collections and curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University Bruce Boyd Raeburn digs into the history surrounding this myth in “The Storyville Diaspora Revisited,” a free lecture at The Historic New Orleans Collection. This lecture is presented in conjunction with THNOC’s exhibition, “Storyville: Madams and Music,” which guides visitors through the rise and fall of the neighborhood that helped shape the notorious reputation that adheres to New Orleans today. The exhibition will open one hour prior to the beginning of the program for extended viewing. Lecture at 6 pm. Admission is free, but reservations encouraged; email wrc@hnoc.org or call (504) 523-4662.