 | |
| Categories | Music magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Founded | 1934[1] |
| Company | Maher Publications |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Language | English |
| Website | downbeat |
| ISSN | 0012-5768 |
DownBeat (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm that it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the "downbeat" in music, also called "beat one", or the first beat of a musical measure.
DownBeat publishes results of annual surveys of both its readers and critics in a variety of categories. The DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame includes winners from both the readers' and critics' poll. The results of the readers' poll are published in the December issue, those of the critics' poll in the August issue. Since 2008, the Hall of Fame also includes winners from the Veterans Committee.
Popular features of DownBeat magazine include its "Reviews" section where jazz critics, using a '1-Star to 5-Star' maximum rating system, rate the latest musical recordings, vintage recordings, and books; articles on individual musicians and music forms; and its famous "Blindfold Test" column, in which a musician listens to records by other artists, tries to guess who they are, and rates them using the 5-star maximum rating system.
- ^ Ron Welburn (Autumn 1987). "Jazz Magazines of the 1930s: An Overview of Their Provocative Journalism". American Music. 5 (3): 255–270. doi:10.2307/3051735. JSTOR 3051735.