Duke Ellington, Jazz Dance, and the African Aesthetic

Dance and music have a symbiotic relationship. Art forms that happen in real time, creative extensions of each other, they reflect tradition and serve as vanguards of social change. Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, the great American composer and jazz icon, never lost sight of the relationship between his music and dance. This allegiance to dance aligns Ellington with the Afrocentric aesthetic, where dance and music are inseparable. Primary source research—autobiographies, interviews and oral histories, the words of Ellington, his musicians and the dancers who worked with him—gives us a new appreciation of his music and, moreover, his creative process. Their voices give proof that JAZZ IS A VERB, it is the act of creation itself.