News, Arts and Culture from WFIU Public Radio and WTIU Public Television
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Sing A Song Of Spirits: A Musical Cocktail Hour

This week we’re stepping into the cocktail lounge. Not necessarily to hear lounge music, per se, but to listen to songs about cocktails, wine, and other adult beverages – and also the highs and lows that can accompany them. Jazz and alcohol have been inextricably linked since the dawn of jazz, fairly or unfairly, and the stigma still holds – for many it was a way to degrade new types of music and associate these new sounds with clandestine and debaucherous behavior. Fueling the sinful reputation was the proliferation of speakeasys in the 1920s and 30s during prohibition in the US. Jazz predates Prohibition, but it was that nationwide underground network of liquor and jazz that solidified the mythology of the two sinful vices.