If you’ve scrolled past a dimly lit, speakeasy-style photo of a jazz band somewhere in China that looks like a scene out of the ’50s, chances are it was taken at the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai. For the past 46 years, the night scene there has followed the same rhythm where, at 6:30 PM sharp, the Peace Hotel Old Jazz Band steps onto the stage within the Jazz Bar. With suits pressed and bow ties fixed, they play every night of the week, keeping pace with a city famous for its entertainment and nightlife buzz.

“We play a six-hour gig at the hotel bar every night, all year round, starting from 6:30 PM,” one member explains. The crowd is never the same: tourists, students, regulars, or politicians. Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand, Barack Obama, and Hollywood actors have all found themselves in the same room as bar-goers since the bar first opened its doors in 1979.

The six veteran musicians are not weekend players. Instead, hail from the Shanghai Symphony and other top ensembles, and their careers have once carried them to more than 20 countries. Now they hold a Guinness World Record as the oldest performing jazz band in the world, with an average age of 82. At 99, former trumpeter Zhou Wanrong still joins from time to time, no longer blowing brass but shaking maracas with ease.

What keeps the music alive is its responsiveness. “We use Western jazz techniques to play the golden oldies, and our live show is audience-oriented… what we play on the night depends primarily on the kind of audience we have.” That instinct to read the room has carried the band through decades of shifting tastes in a city that reinvents itself faster than most.

Night after night, the Peace Hotel Old Jazz Band proves that jazz in Shanghai isn’t purely a nostalgic keepsake of its 40-year heritage at the Art Deco–styled hotel, but rather a continuous, lived history still being played. Speaking of playing, please enjoy an old-timey clip of the Peace Hotel Old Jazz Band in action below.

Cover image via North Sea Jazz Festival.