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WBGO Studios is launching Jazz Cabbage, hosted by Nicole Sweeney and cannabis author/historian David Bienenstock. The limited run podcast series will explore the cultural intersection of jazz and cannabis.
The series will examine topics from how the marginalization of “viper” culture inspired improvisation and integration in the early jazz scene, to the federal government’s relentless targeting of jazz musicians as part of its Reefer Madness-inspired eradication campaign.
The hosts will talk directly with musicians, scientists, scholars, cultural icons, cannabis entrepreneurs (past and current) and the vipers themselves.
“Jazz and cannabis have a long, complicated, intertwined history, but over time our understanding of this important cultural intersection has been obscured and erased until it’s all boiled down to the occasional late-night talk show joke about a reefer-smoking jazz cat,” lamented Bienenstock. “Dig a little deeper, however, and you discover a fascinating story of creating great art and a vibrant, integrated, improvisational culture from out of the margins.
Why did so many jazz musicians write and perform songs about this plant, even as the federal government used its prohibition as an excuse to target them for arrest? That’s the question Jazz Cabbage has set out to answer.”