About the Scottish Jazz Archive

Scottish Jazz Archive (SJA) is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Association (SCIO), SC049270, regulated by the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSRC) for the purposes of:

Advancing heritage by identifying, collecting, cataloguing and digitising materials, and the production of filmed oral histories relating to the history of jazz in Scotland through the preservation and curation of tangible cultural artefacts foundational to current practices in the field.

Advancing education by raising awareness and providing access to the history of jazz in Scotland through a permanent and publicly accessible online educational resource and through public events including talks and exhibitions.

In November 2017, an event was held in association with Scotland’s Sounds (National Library of Scotland) at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh at which we welcomed over 100 jazz musicians and members of the public to present the idea of a national archive for jazz in Scotland.

In the months following, we have begun to identify funding for what we believe to be a vitally important undertaking: namely the identification, digitisation and cataloguing of Scotlands rich history of jazz. We have taken the first modest steps in capturing the stories of some of the music’s pioneers in a bid to preserve their experiences for coming generations of musicians and fans alike. Examples of these filmed interviews are available on this blog.

Our aim, support permitting, is to document through interviews, text, photography and audio, the breadth of Scotland’s long and active relationship with jazz and to present the stories of those who served to create the foundations on which the current scene is built. This site has been established to initially present a small sample of materials already originated or collected by the team and to raise awareness and support for the project as it takes shape and gathers momentum.

We operate a strict ‘take-down’ policy and, therefore, if you believe that any site-content represents a violation of copyright please make us aware via the website contact form and it will be removed forthwith. If you have materials that might be of interest to the archive team, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Please follow us on FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date with developments.

Fionna Duncan – Photographed by Allan Shedlock