The Importance of Record Covers for the Rising Status of Jazz

In the project The Importance of Record Covers for the Rising Status of Jazz, Mischa van Kan analyzes how Swedish record covers in jazz connected to developments in visual arts and what these connections meant for jazz in Sweden. By using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the project explores how the use of record covers with connections to visual art forms raised the status of jazz and helped to establish the idea of jazz as an art form. The main research question of the project is: How did artwork on record covers influence the status of jazz as an art form?

The research project runs from February to December 2019 and is funded by Birgit and Gad Rausing’s Foundation for Humanistic research.