Cobi Narita

Nobuko "Cobi" Narita (* 1926 in California ) is an American music organizer.

Live and act

Narita lived with her family during World War II as part of the internment of Japanese-born Americans at the age of 15 at the Gila River Detention Camp in Arizona, where she organized a camp newspaper. After the war, she finished high school and received a scholarship to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. She married and raised seven children. In the 1960s she volunteered in the jazz club Memory Lane in Los Angeles , where u. a. Sweets Edison , Houston Person and Etta Jones performed. When their marriage failed, she moved to New York in 1969 to work as assistant to the vice president of the International Council of Shopping Centers . Since 1972 she was the managing director of the non-profit organization Jazz Interactions , which organized music education programs and concerts. Among other things, she worked for the repertoire orchestra Collective Black Artists , which campaigned for musicians in need; in the project worked u. a. Stanley Cowell , Frank Foster and Charles Tolliver , it was directed by Reggie Workman , Jimmy Owens and Kenny Rogers . Narita also organized concerts in New York's Town Hall . In 1976 she founded the organization Universal Jazz Coalition , which u. a. George Butler , Betty Carter , Dizzy Gillespie , Herbie Hancock , Ahmad Jamal , Bob James , Melba Liston , David Stone Martin , Jymie Merritt , Robert Moog , Clark Terry , George Wein and their new spouse, record dealer Paul Ash. 1977 Narita was briefly owner of the Club Casablanca ; In 1979 she organized the New York Women's Jazz Festival there for the first time (artistic director was singer Jay Clayton ); she also produced the festival for the fifteen years that followed.

In 1983, Narita created the Jazz Center of New York as a venue for the Universal Jazz Coalition , a loft where numerous workshops, jam sessions and concerts were held, etc. a. with Abbey Lincoln (whose Enja album Abbey Sings Billie she produced), Dakota Staton and Maxine Sullivan , Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston , Ahmad Jamal, Billy Harper , Max Roach , George Coleman , Henry Threadgill and Harold Mabern . There she also established the concert series Late Great Black Composers . After five years, however, the location had to be abandoned due to rising rents. In 1995 she co-founded the International Women in Jazz series of events that she co-created with Lorraine Gordon ( Village Vanguard ), Leslie Gourse and Sarah McLawler . She has also served on the boards of the Flushing Council of Culture and the Arts , the Japanese American Association of New York, and the Asian American Arts Alliance . In 2002 she created Cobi's Place on 48th Street, where u. a. Jimmy Heath , Sandy Patton and Frank Owens played, but films and dance performances were also shown. In 2004 she got Parkinson's disease ; at a benefit concert organized for their treatment in 2010, u. a. Bobby Sanabria , Terell Stafford and Frank Owens.

In 2001 the Jazz Foundation of America honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

further reading

• Leslie Gourse: Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists New York City: University Press, 1995
• Wayne Enstice and Janis Stockhouse: Jazzwomen: conversations with twenty-one musicians ; preface by Cobi Narita and Paul Ash. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004

Web links

• Cobi Narita: A Special Place for Jazz - Tireless champion of jazz and jazz artists in New York City reflects on her life devoted to promoting the music in JazzTimes
• Celeste Sunderland: Cobi Narita's 80th Birthday in All About Jazz
• Portrait at jazzhouse

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jazz Museum in Harlem Celebrates Women in Jazz  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Cobi Narita Sponsors Concert to Benefit Parkinson's Unity Walk  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.