This week on Visions, I celebrate Black History Month with the creators, innovators, and current shapers of jazz. Since jazz music is Black music, what better way to start this month than with jazz through the decades? This episode features bebop, spiritual jazz, the avant-garde, modern jazz and hard bop. It touches on themes of slavery, freedom, resistance, political issues of the time, and forward-thinking, afro-futurist art.

I start out in 1947 with one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, Charlie Parker. I move through almost each decade with selections from Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Andrew Hill, Sonny Stitt, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, and Ornette Coleman.

I play more contemporary selections from Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Trio 3 & Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell, and Kamasi Washington. I’ll continue featuring Black artists this month, so stay tuned!

Check out the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

Visions Playlist for Feb. 2, 2026

• “Donna Lee” – Charlie Parker
• “Bright Mississippi (Take 1)” – Thelonious Monk
• “What’s Your Story, Morning Glory” – Trio 3 & Geri Allen*
• “Driva’man (feat. Weedie Braimah, Milena Casado, Morgan Guerin, Simon Moullier & Matthew Stevens)” – Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell
• “Strange Fruit” – Cassandra Wilson
• “Original Faubus Fables” – Charles Mingus
• “The Chocolate Nuisance (Live)” – Cannonball Adderley
• “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
• “There Is No Greater Love” – Gene Ammons & Sonny Stitt
• “Land of Nod” – Andrew Hill
• “Broad Way Blues” – Ornette Coleman
• “The Windmills of Your Mind” – Dorothy Ashby*
• “A Love Supreme, Pt. 2: Resolution” – John Coltrane
• “Chambers Of Tain” – Wynton Marsalis
• “Final Thought” – Kamasi Washington

* indicates Detroit artists