Down Beat magazine is an American magazine of Jazz and contemporary music. It was born in Chicago in 1934 and for over 80 years it has been telling Jazz music from inside, the best technical and technological innovations in the world of musical instruments. Written in English, its dissemination purpose has made it famous at times over the course of its long history, with some columns that over the years have become important evaluation elements for experts in the sector.
Gil Evans, Blue Mitchell, Chuck Mangione are some of the names whose history is being written on Down Beat Magazine. Very interesting are also images and technical instructions on how to use some of the technological innovations of the era when it was not the internet but electronics to animate the world of music and sound.
This collection of magazines from the 70s that we made available on Frab's particularly interested us despite the large circulation of the time, especially in the United States. The strongly 70s iconographies, also replicated on the cover, the careful study of musical instruments and equipment that at the time represented a real turning point, the ability of his texts to act as a public echo to a musical genre that has ridden generations . Down Beat is an editorial object that manages to represent and crystallize in its pages all the charge and power of complex but hopeful years also in the musical panorama. It is a very true historical photograph that tells us about the past of music magazines and their ability to adapt to their time, when compared with today's print publications.
Each issue is available in a single copy at Frab's. The magazines have all the pages and the contents are fully visible. The volumes may show signs of aging such as some abrasions, folds, light spots of humidity.