Dexter Gordon and Slide Hampton's jazz album "A Day in Copenhagen"-piped into the galleries-is the principal soundtrack for "Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century," at Scandinavia House through March 8. Organized by the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, where it had its debut last year, the exhibition features African-American artists, musicians, performers, scholars and writers who sought creative freedom, education, inspiration, love and work-as well as refuge from racial discrimination and Jim Crow segregation-in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Traditionally, when we think of cultural safe havens for AfricanAmericans abroad, it's not overwhelmingly white Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo or Stockholm that come to mind-but multicultural Paris. "Nordic Utopia?" highlights Scandinavia, which many black Americans saw as a promised land. Co-curated by AmericanScandinavian Foundation fellows Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson, it comprises more than 60 works: visual art, films, photographs, artifacts, ephemera and music. Its stellar performers include saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and pianists Fats Waller and Duke Jordan, as well as dancer, actress and singer Josephine Baker and singer Anne Brown. They all spent time in Scandinavia, a progressive, creative hub for African-Americans.
Each story here is unique. But there are overlying biographical themes. Los Angeles-born Gordon (1923-1990), a composer, bandleader and tenor saxophonist, lived, from 1962 to 1974, primarily in Copenhagen, where, in 1969, he recorded "A Day in Copenhagen" with fellow black expats Hampton on trombone, Kenny Drew on piano and Art Taylor on drumsalongside Dane Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on double bass.
This story is from the January 28, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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This story is from the January 28, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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