Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The Northampton Jazz Festival Promotes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The Northampton Jazz Festival presents, promotes, and preserves the cultural tradition and creative expression of people of color and women. That cultural tradition and creative expression is known as JAZZ.
 
Jazz is the purest of the American art forms, born from black indigenous people of color in America and influenced by the peoples of the African diaspora as well as European classical music. Jazz continues today through the many musicians, composers and listeners who keep it alive as a musical form. And it is continually renewing and advancing from its multicultural roots.
 
Part of the Northampton Jazz Festival’s mission is to keep this great American art form alive by presenting musicians of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. We also reach out through our social media sites, the internet, and regional press and radio to attract a diverse audience to our musical offerings throughout the year. Through these efforts, our concerts have attracted a diverse audience in terms of age, income, physical ability, and gender status.
 
We are very conscious of the need to reach out to a diverse audience, and Jazz, as an art form, is arguably the most diverse. The Northampton Jazz Festival proudly upholds diversity, equity, and inclusion as one of its main tenets.