Anna Marie Wooldridge, known professionally as Abbey Lincoln, was an American jazz vocalist. She was a civil rights activist beginning in the 1960s. Lincoln made a career out of delivering deeply felt presentations of standards as well as writing and singing her own material.
Lincoln in concert, 1966
Greg Morris, Abbey Lincoln, Mission: Impossible, 1971
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
Albert Gleizes, 1915, Composition for "Jazz" from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Ethel Waters sang "Stormy Weather" at the Cotton Club.
Al Jolson in 1929
Dance in Congo Square in the late 1700s, artist's conception by E. W. Kemble from a century later