By Maya Johnson
A once-empty storefront in Isla Vista has come alive this past year since UC Santa Barbara Black Studies professor Jeffrey Stewart turned the university-owned building into a space of community and cultural enrichment with the return of Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse.
Jeffrey Stewart, author and scholar of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Stewart, award-winning author and scholar, recently held a pop-up of live jazz in Isla Vista with the Los Angeles-based jazz artists Ben Caldwell and Love and Exile Players. The event drew around 30 community members into a former shop, now owned by UCSB.
“It’s rare to see events like this in Isla Vista,” said fourth-year Art student Isabella Ignatian, one of many students who attended.
Drawing from the 1960s Black Art Movement, the performance integrated jazz, poetry, and spoken word to honor the history of jazz music and bring members of the community together.
“We’re trying to think about jazz as healing and catharsis,” Stewart said.
Love and Exile Players perform at Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse in Isla Vista.
A desire for healing is what first inspired Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse a decade ago. In 2015, a year after six UCSB students were killed in a mass shooting in Isla Vista, the live jazz pop-up celebrated the UCSB-based block party Deltopia with a New Orleans style second line— revelers that follow the first line of family members at a funeral. The brass band led the community in a joyful march of dancing and twirling parasols, a piece of African tradition that transforms tragedy into celebration, Stewart said.
“Jazz is a cathartic experience. I wanted to model that you can be exuberant and celebratory without being self-destructive,” Stewart said.
Since then, Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse has served to rebuild the community through education and appreciation of jazz music. The pop-ups are held several times a year in connection with professor Stewart’s UCSB course History of Jazz.
Since 2011, the course has focused on how this musical artform has emerged from certain geographical spaces and how it has worked to reflect and heal those cultures. When tragedy struck the community of Isla Vista in 2014, Stewart and other UCSB faculty wondered how the course could intervene and rebuild positivity.
Jazz artists Ben Caldwell and the Love and Exile Players perform at the pop-up event Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse in Isla Vista.
“One of the students brought up Isla Vista,” he recalled. “What would it be like to have jazz in Isla Vista?”
This past year the pop-up has brought Isla Vista together under the sounds of Chicago blues with bands such as Morganfield Burnett & Da Blues, and the George Friedenthal Quintet. By bringing music from these different cities where jazz has emerged, the pop-up seeks to model ways in which the Isla Vista community can grow from tragedy.
“Is not just jazz as a musical thing, it’s jazz as a performance design, music, spoken word,” said Stewart. “It’s jazz as a design for living.”
Maya Johnson is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Writing and Literature. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.