Public Domain Jazz?

Dear LazyWeb,

I write this blog entry in order to have your advice! Anyone know good sources of cool or quirky Jazz music that has entered the public domain (or old stuff released under very liberal open content licenses)?

Thanks, swingstars!

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14 Comments

  1. Posted April 25, 2006 at 17:21 | Permalink |

    You might have a look at http://www.magnatunes.com

    While it isn’t necessarily public domain, they have an incredibly open policy about sharing, publishing, broadcasting and generally enjoying their content.

  2. Simon
    Posted April 25, 2006 at 18:08 | Permalink |

    Some people publish their music under CC: http://www.jamendo.com/us/tag/jazz/

  3. Eric
    Posted April 25, 2006 at 18:35 | Permalink |

    I like the collection of old tunes that archive.org holds. I have found a number of genuine gems looking for blues and jazz stuff. The only small inconvenience is that I find the “browsing” mode of the site a little awkward. It’s basically a search engine that throws anything it finds at you through an ugly interface, but with a little luck you may find something you like. For a starting point, see for example:

    http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=jazz%20AND%20mediatype%3Aaudio%20AND%20collection%3Aopensource_audio%20AND%20subject%3A%22jazz%22&sort=-%2Freviews%2Finfo%2Favg_rating%3B-%2Freviews%2Finfo%2Fnum_reviews

  4. Posted April 25, 2006 at 18:39 | Permalink |

    Dismuke is a nice source: http://www.dismuke.org/

  5. Posted April 25, 2006 at 19:42 | Permalink |

    Aka Moon is a great Belgium Jazz band. Most of their live music can be downloaded. Check out their website: http://akamoon.com. You can also find them over torrent and p2p network, which are medias they use a lot to share their music.

  6. Posted April 26, 2006 at 00:21 | Permalink |

    Hi Jeff !

    I actually published my jazz album on Jamendo, with a CC license :

    http://www.jamendo.com/us/album/1290/

    So, a jazz album AND Ubuntu developer, whaddya say ? :)

  7. Posted April 26, 2006 at 02:35 | Permalink |

    It seems like you’re getting a lot of folks posting new releases of CC-licensed jazz performances, but you asked for old public-domain jazz as well.

    I’m not sure where to find the actual recordings on the Internet, but the US Library of Congress has large collections of public-domain musical recordings and other media from all over the world. The only reason they do this is because Thomas Jefferson donated his entire personal library after a Capitol fire, so the LoC started with a mandate as encompassing as Jefferson’s own tastes.

    There are also public-domain performances that you can purchase at any record store, but you’d never know it to look at the packaging. When the CD came out, lots of companies reissued old collections of 68s and such in compilations, and asserted a compilation copyright. So you can go out and buy an old Verve or Mercury reissue of some Duke Ellington or something, and check up with loc.gov on the individual track to see if the copyright has lapsed.

    Alas, I don’t know of any ccmixter-like collections of public domain Jazz recordings.

  8. Posted April 26, 2006 at 02:36 | Permalink |

    Oh yeah, and it’s on-again-off-again, but: http://ccmixter.org/media/tags/jazz

  9. paul
    Posted April 26, 2006 at 03:22 | Permalink |

    Maybe there’s something over here: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=jazz%20AND%20mediatype%3Aaudio&page=2

  10. Posted April 26, 2006 at 05:09 | Permalink |

    Hi,

    Same here :

    http://ccmixter.org/media/tags/jazz
    http://ccmixter.org/media/tags/jazzy

    You can check here too :
    http://www.musique-libre.org

    Old stuff in here but don’t know the licence :
    http://nfo.net/ogg.htm

    To discover for free but the licence ?
    http://web.archive.org/web/20050305030807/http://www.m-base.org/mp3_philosophy.html

  11. JanC
    Posted April 26, 2006 at 08:11 | Permalink |

    If you like gipsy swing jazz, you might want to contact Adrian Holovaty whether he’s interested; he’s a fine gipsy swing guitar player:
    http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2006/01/22/0005 (Super Mario goes Gipsy Swing ;-) )

    (He’s also the author of the open source “Django” python web framework, of course…)

  12. ravi
    Posted April 26, 2006 at 14:37 | Permalink |

    you can find many live performances at archive.org like this — http://www.archive.org/audio/etree-details-db.php?id=32041

  13. Posted April 26, 2006 at 18:05 | Permalink |

    As Gouchi said, I confirm that Steve Coleman’s collection of free mp3s are really great for those who appreciates free jazz :

    http://www.m-base.org/sounds.html

    It is worth listen to it and I like his philosophy about sharing music…

  14. Posted April 29, 2006 at 21:02 | Permalink |

    hi, as for jazz, you may check on our archive: http://www.musique-libre.org/static.php?op=musiqueIndex.php&npds=-1 browsing by style=jazz:

    don’t miss these bands: diatribes ; Lilliput Orkestra ;
    also : Muwei ; d’Incise ; …