Introduction
This page includes resources for finding articles about jazz. We've included some suggested article databases below as well as recommendations of specific publications to check out in the next box. For more information about searching for and accessing scholarly articles through the Library, check our our guide linked below.
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Finding Journal Articles for Music ResearchThis guide is an introduction (or a refresher) to searching for, accessing, and evaluating articles for music research.
Suggested Databases
To find scholarly articles and reviews, try searching in the following music-specific databases. Some of these databases will provide the full text of the articles, while others might only provide citation information and an abstract. If you can't find full text access online, place an Interlibrary Loan request for a copy.
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Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowAn archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Includes all of Billboard (through 2000), all of Variety (through 2000), and Musical Express (1948-1952).
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Music Index This link opens in a new window
Contains cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for every aspect of the classical and popular world of music including musicological and organological topics, as well as book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries from more than 850 music periodicals from over 40 countries.
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Music Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowA database with full-text and abstracts of articles on music. Includes indexing for music articles and obituaries from the New York Times and The Washington Post. Covers nearly all aspects of music, including scholarly studies and popular trends. Coverage: 1874 - present.
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RILM Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new window
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is a comprehensive bibliography on writings about music featuring citations, abstracts and indexes. It covers nearly one and a half million publications from around the world on traditional music, popular music, jazz, classical music and related subjects. Coverage begins in the early 19th century and extends to the present.
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Jazz Index (Jazzinstitut Darmstadt)The Jazz Index is a computer data base of literature in the archives of the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt.You may order excerpts from our Jazz Index free of charge. Just send us an e-mail listing your research interest, musicians’ names, specific styles, cities or other catchwords that might help you in your research (and please limit yourself to three research requests at one time).
Because jazz can be studied from various disciplines, searching in interdisciplinary databases can be helpful. Some of these databases will provide the full text of the articles, while others might only provide citation information and an abstract. If you can't find full text access online, place an Interlibrary Loan request for a copy.
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Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
The Alternative Press Index is a subject index to over 300 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Index is international and interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities, with its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
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Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowA scholarly, multidisciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and others. Also includes full-text access to over 5,000 journals.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis. The University of Illinois has access to the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XV, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Business IV, Global Plants, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences Collection, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, Struggles for Freedom - South Africa, Sustainability, and World Heritage Sites - Africa.
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Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowPerforming Arts Periodicals Database covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television and more.
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Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowIncluded are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses. The current collection, Ethnic NewsWatch™, covers 1990-present, and the historical collection, Ethnic NewsWatch: A History™, spans 1959-1989. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
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Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 offers a broad range of subject coverage in the humanities and social sciences with high-quality indexing of more than 1,300,000 articles in nearly 1,100 periodicals, dating as far back as 1907, as well as citations of over 240,000 book reviews.
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Arts and Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. Indexes world's leading arts and humanities journals with selected, relevant items from major science and social science journals.
While reviews can often be found in the music-specific databases, newspapers are another great place for finding them. For more help finding reviews, visit the Finding Reviews guide.
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Alt-PressWatch This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text articles for over 210 publications of the alternative and independent presses, from 1970 to current.
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Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowIncluded are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses. The current collection, Ethnic NewsWatch™, covers 1990-present, and the historical collection, Ethnic NewsWatch: A History™, spans 1959-1989. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
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Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. Includes current news, business information, company directories, federal and state laws, regulations, legal cases, and more.
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ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearch all 46 ProQuest Historical Newspaper titles owned by the University of Illinois, representing 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as titles from Canada, the UK, and India. Coverage spans the 18th century to the 2010s and includes important publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and Chicago Tribune.
Selected Journals & Magazines
Below is a selection of journals and magazines that cover jazz. Looking for a specific one? Check the library catalog or our Journal and Article Locator tool to see if we have it in print and/or online.
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Black Music Research Journal (online)Begun in 1980, Black Music Research Journal is published in the spring and fall of each year and includes articles about the philosophy, aesthetics, history, and criticism of black music. BMRJ is an official journal of the Center for Black Music Research.
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Down Beat (print)An American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond."
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Ethnomusicology (Online)As the official journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology is the premier publication in the field. Its scholarly articles represent current theoretical perspectives and research in ethnomusicology and related fields, while playing a central role in expanding the discipline in the United States and abroad.
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Jazz and Culture (online)Beginning in 2018, this title continues International Jazz Archives Journal, which MPAL has available in print .
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Jazz Perspectives (online)The journal aims to bridge the jazz-as-music and jazz-as-culture divide of contemporary jazz studies, as well as to promote broader international perspectives on the jazz tradition and its legacy.
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Jazz Research Journal (online)The journal aims to represent a range of disciplinary perspectives on jazz, from musicology to film studies, sociology to cultural studies, and offers a platform for new thinking on jazz.
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Jazziz (online)For more than three decades, JAZZIZ Magazine has been covering the music scene, documenting innovations, charting industry trends, following the artists whose lives so colorfully inform our own.
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Journal of Jazz Studies (online)The Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS), formerly the print journal Annual Review of Jazz Studies, is an open-access online journal, which is peer reviewed and published by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Addressed to specialists and fans alike, JJS provides a forum for the ever-expanding range and depth of jazz scholarship, from technical analyses to oral history to bibliography to cultural interpretation.
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Journal of Popular Music Studies (online)Journal of Popular Music Studies features work on popular music in its historical, cultural, aesthetic, and political registers. Its purview encompasses all genres of music that have been dubbed popular.
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Melody Maker (microfilm)British periodical that spans from 1926-2000
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Popular Music (online)Popular Music is an international multi-disciplinary journal covering all aspects of the subject - from the formation of social group identities through popular music, to the workings of the global music industry, to how particular pieces of music are put together. The journal includes all kinds of popular music, whether rap or rai, jazz or rock, from any historical era and any geographical location.
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Popular Music and Society (online)Popular Music and Society , founded in 1971, publishes articles, book reviews, and audio reviews on popular music of any genre, time period, or geographic location. Popular Music and Society is open to all scholarly orientations toward popular music, including (but not limited to) historical, theoretical, critical, sociological, and cultural approaches.