Before Jazz Had Festival Stages, It Had Coffeehouses

--°C|vendredi 26 juin 2026|

Abonnez-vous aujourd'hui pour obtenir 3 articles gratuits par mois.50 % de réduction sur vos 5 premières courses avec Lyft

EN/FR

The Main est soutenu par ses lecteurs. Les abonnements sont ce qui nous permet de rester indépendants. Cinq dollars par mois — les restaurants, les guides, le bulletin hebdomadaire et que faire chaque week-end. Soutenez-nous aujourd'hui. Soutenez-nous aujourd'hui.

Contenu commandité

Ceci est du contenu commandité, rendu possible par un partenaire de confiance.

Présenté par

Long before jazz had festival stages, it had the small, smoky rooms of basement clubs, neighbourhood cafés, and corner bars. These were the clandestine addresses where anyone with an opinion and a few coins could pull up a stool, take an espresso, and stay a while to listen in, argue, and think out loud.

As Italian-style espresso bars began spreading through North American cities in the 1950s, they carried something the local bar or dance hall couldn't offer: conversation and contemplation. That was the perfect setting for shifting attitudes in jazz at the time, as it moved away from the Swing and Big Band players of the dance floor and towards Bebop you’d sooner sit with and ponder.

Free account required

Pour ceux qui ont Montréal à cœur

Créez un compte gratuit pour lire cet article et accéder à 3 articles par mois, ainsi qu'à notre Bulletin hebdomadaire.

Indépendant. Local. Soutenu par ses lecteurs.

Déjà membre? Se connecter

A group at the artist café L'Échouerie in November 1954. | Photograph: Robert Millet / Archives de la Ville de Montréal / P179-Y-01-02-D003-P151

It wasn't accidental that these rooms tended to appear first in neighbourhoods with Italian immigrant communities, whether that was in Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, San Francisco's North Beach—and it’s no coincidence that fixtures of Italian bars and homes at the time, like the Turin-born coffee company Lavazza, travelled with that culture from across the Atlantic. Founded in 1895, Lavazza had spent decades becoming the de facto coffee found in Italian cups. By the 1950s, it was the country's most widely consumed brand, part of the daily rhythm of a culture that was now reshaping how the world listened to music as it fueled fast tempos, complex chord progressions, and heady talk.