Jamal’s Archives Come Home

PHOTO BY KAHMEELA ADAMS-FRIEDSON

The boxes full of memorabilia arrived at the University of Pittsburgh Library System in August 2024. Inside lay a world of sound. Sheet music scribbled on staff paper and handwritten notes for compositions that might never have been recorded. A scrapbook lovingly assembled by a devoted mother. Photographs of a young prodigy — and the elder master he became.

The collection of East Liberty-born jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal was donated to Pitt’s Archives & Special Collections by his only child, Sumayah Jamal. She said that there “could be no better home” for her father’s materials than the university’s collection.

Jamal, who died at age 92 in April 2023, has an almost profound resonance to Pittsburgh’s musical legacy. Born in 1930, Jamal grew up in East Liberty, attended Westinghouse High School and studied under Mary Cardwell Dawson, the renowned opera singer and founding director of the National Negro Opera Co. She signed a photograph encouraging his talent when he was about 5 years old.

Significantly, the Jamal archive takes its place among a collection rich with Black cultural memory. The Pitt library team has collected primary source material of the city’s Black community since 1964, beginning with papers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It now stewards the papers of playwright August Wilson, saxophonist Sam Rivers and political leader K. Leroy Irvis. In the same archive “community” are the papers and personal possessions of other writers, social leaders and creatives, including principals with the now-closed Kuntu Repertory Theatre, a student/community-based troupe that highlighted Black culture and issues.

Together, they trace the arc of Pittsburgh’s African American creativity — contributing to what Jamal called the “Miracle City” because of how the Steel City’s blend of culture, art and industry resonates far beyond its borders.

Jamal made his mark in the “Miracle City” before carrying his sound to the world, selling millions of albums and influencing artists from Miles Davis to Jay-Z.

The scope of his archive is staggering. It reveals the mind of a man who “breathed music,” says Kallie Koch, music cataloger and archivist for the university library system, who processed sections of the collection.

“It was fascinating to see how many of his scores were untitled,” she says, noting the number of drafts in the collection. “But if you could read music, you could almost hear in your head what he was planning.”

The materials move from analog to digital: reel-to-reel tapes and LPs alongside CDs, hard drives and Jamal’s laptop, filled with his late-life recordings. Also gifted separately were two 9-foot-long Steinway grand pianos that Jamal treasured. One sits in the Department of Music at Pitt’s Bellefield Hall; the other can be found at the Afro American Music Institute in Homewood.

The institute was run by James “Dr. J.” Johnson, a friend to Jamal who died in March at age 76. Ed Galloway, associate university librarian for Archives & Special Collections at the Pitt Library System, says Johnson described Jamal’s piano as “magical.”

“People sit down in front of it, and they lose time,” Galloway says.

Jamal’s archive stretches well beyond music. There are personal letters, contracts, photographs and scrapbooks that likely his mother or another family member kept, documenting his journey.

“The scrapbook starts with the earliest articles about his career and ends in the late 1970s,” says Kathryn Miller Haines, head of the Center for American Music with Pitt’s Archives & Special Collections. “It tells the whole story.”

His faith runs through the papers as well. Jamal converted in 1950 to Islam in Detroit and lived as Ahmad Jamal for more than seven decades.

The archive’s reach is just beginning. Jamal’s daughter has launched efforts to raise funds for a wing in his honor at the Afro American Music Institute. Pitt is preparing public programming, exhibitions and research opportunities that will let new generations encounter his work.

“Ahmad Jamal’s archive doesn’t just preserve one man’s genius,” says Galloway. “It places Pittsburgh at the center of the global story of jazz.”