Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: This Is Nashville
Episode: 50 years of jazz radio and the future of Nashville’s jazz scene
Description: “Jazz is here, whether you know it or not!”
That’s how one local jazz musician describes the scene in Middle Tennessee. It’s thriving, if less visible, with deep roots going way back to the 1930s, especially in the historically Black Jefferson Street community.
That’s also the location of the first jazz radio station in Nashville and the first Black-owned FM station — on the campus of Fisk University. Jazzy 88 WFSK is celebrating 50 years on air and getting ready for the return of its Fisk Food & Jazz Festival after a three-year absence.
WFSK is an a...