US election 2024: Kamala Harris knows her jazz – why this could count with voters

‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine’: Kamala Harris’s music purchase included a classic Roy Ayers album.& EPA-EFE/Ken Cedeno/pool by Haftor Medbøe, Edinburgh Napier University and Jose Dias, Coventry University Since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee to go head-to-head with Donald Trump in November’s presidential election, interest in the US vice-president has skyrocketed. Where’s she from, what’s her background, what sort of food does she eat, what are her tastes in books, films and music? So it’s no surprise that a video showing Harris emerging from a record store in Washington DC has recently gained massive traction on social media. The footage, taken in May 2023, shows her engaging with journalists while displaying and talking about the records she had purchased. This video clip was notably shared and reposted among the European jazz community – not people you’d necessarily think would be hugely interested in the musical tastes of US presidential candidates. Harris’s purchases included three classic jazz albums by notable African American artists: Charles Mingus’s 1972 album Let My Children Hear Music, Roy Ayers’ 1976 Everybody Loves the Sunshine, and the 1959 collaboration of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on Porgy and Bess. Unsurprisingly, this kicked off something of...