Explore the Museum
is telling the story of Jacksonville's
music history.
The Jacksonville Area Music Museum (JAMM) is the Jacksonville Historical Society's tribute to the rich musical history and culture of Northeast Florida. Constructed within the restored Casket Factory campus, the JAMM is a space for performance, education, reflection, and inspiration. Through sounds, sites, and stories, the JAMM is fusing folk-historical traditions with new technologies to bring Jacksonville's music to a new generation of listeners.
Music has been an integral part of life in Northeast Florida since before the area's sixteenth-century colonization. In the Pre-Columbian era, song, dance, and instrumental performance thrived within the cultural and ceremonial practices of indigenous groups such as the Timucua tribal confederation.
As Spanish and African arrivals established some of the earliest U.S. colonial settlements in the sixteenth century, they brought their own sets of liturgical, folkloric, and sonic traditions to the area--setting off a rich and complex history of musical fusion and innovation.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from blues pioneers to southern-rock stars, artists from the Jacksonville area made their mark on both local and popular music as a whole. The JAMM is committed to honoring this legacy by sharing the story of the First Coast's music and its impact on the wider world.
While many of the JAMM's subjects and materials have local origins, their implications are universal; the oral histories and artifacts within the museum speak to the depth, variety, and overarching commonality of human experience. For more information on the museum, see our story, or contact us to tell your own.
