Nišville Jazz Museum

Nišville Jazz Museum

The museum is located near the main entrance of the Fortress  (The Istanbul gate) in the building that was once a Turkish bath. Around the museum, visitors can find a lot of interesting cultural sites and tourist attractions. The Fortress itself, along with thermal baths and archeological excavations, tells the story of an ancient culture that once flourished here.  Worth visiting are the galleries in the vicinity –the Pavilion and Salon 77 and the open-air cinema, hosting many cultural events.

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Creation of Nišville Jazz Museum

In the early 2018., a group of enthusiasts around Nišville’s organizational committee started redecorating the area for the museum and acquiring museum exhibits – memorabilia belonging to some of the most famous performers who played at Nišville:

• Benny Golson (1929) American jazz musician, tenor saxophonist, composer and arranger.
• Joss Stone (1987) Joscelyn Eve Stoker, English singer whose repertoire revolves around soul music, but also rhythm and blues. She started her career at the age of 14, and made her breakthrough in 2003. with the debut album “The Soul Sessions”. Stone has a powerful voice, and she’s still being compared in the context of picking up the mantle of Aretha Franklin. She performed at Nišville in 2016., marking her first visit to Serbia.
• Candy Dulfer (1969) Dutch saxophonist and composer, who was already playing in her father’s band at the age of 11. She met wider acclaim after working with Prince. In 1989, before departing for USA, she recorded the hit instrumental “Lily was here”, along with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. The song went on to become one of the most popular instrumentals of the late 1980s. Afterwards, she played with Van Morrison, as a guest musician on his album “Live in San Francisco”, and in 1990 she played with Pink Floyd at Knebworth festival, in front of an audience of 130,000 people. She has been a guest of Nišville for several times, and in 2017. she has been appointed honorary citizen of Nish. She is nicknamed “funky candy“.
• Solomon Burke (1940-2010) American soul singer and songwriter, who started out as a radio host on a show about soul music. Later on, he signed a record contract with Atlantic records, thus starting his career. During the 1960s, he issued a series of hit singles, the best known of which is “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”, the song that went on to be covered by many musicians worldwide. His staple genres were blues, rhythm and blues, and soul, garnering him the titles “King of Rock” and “Bishop of Soul”. Some also refer to him as “Muhammad Ali of Soul”
• Shaban Bajramovic (1936-2008) A singer of Gypsy and Serbian traditional music, nicknamed “King of Gypsy music”. He recorded 20 albums and around 50 singles, and wrote and composed more than 700 songs. His fans describe him as a remarkable singer of exquisite quality, “one who sings from the heart and soul”. The quality and lasting impact of his songs has been solidified when his performance of the song “Djelem, djelem” was chosen as the global anthem of the Romani people. Although in bad health, he took part at the Nišville Jazz Festival in 2005. Time magazine chose him as one of the top 10 blues singers in the world.

The jazz museum holds a special place for two separate thematic exhibit sets, dedicated to the American King of Soul, Solomon Burke and the Nish-born, Balkan king of Gypsy music, and one of the top 10 blues singers in the world, Shaban Bajramovic. Shaban’s corner is garnished with a replica of his statue from the Nishava quay which was made by the sculptor Vladan Ashanin.

The museum also finds enough room for the video recordings from Nišville TV, as well as the recordings of interviews, press conferences and plenty of other materials about world-famous jazz musicians.

The festival committee has called upon all jazz lovers to actively participate in the creation of the jazz museum, by donating financial means or interesting exhibit from their personal collection. Many musicians have already sent their video recordings, and Lari Vuckovic, a renowned pianist who has been living and working in America for more than 50 years, wrote a dedication on his anthology LP issues from USA. Nišville Jazz Museum collaborates with world famous American Jazz Museum from New Orleans in order to obtain other jazz artifact and memorabilia.

OPEN TUE to SUN: 10 AM to 08 PM

Entry costs 1 euro.