Washington Post Staff Writer
Published in the Washington Post Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The first family of jazz was there. The first family of the United
States (minus the nation's No. 1 jazz fan, who was busy with
health-care reform) was there. And 150 talented young jazz musicians
were in the White House, too, all celebrating an original American art
form in the most exclusive jazz workshop this city has ever seen.
First lady Michelle Obama told the group that jazz was always in the
air when she was growing up in Chicago. Her grandfather put speakers in
every room of his house, turned up the stereo and listened to music all
day long. "At Christmas, birthdays, Easter, it didn't matter," she
said, "there was jazz playing in our household."
Now that she's in the White House, the beat goes on. "Today's event
exemplifies what I think the White House, the people's house, should be
about," Obama said.
The event took place in conjunction with the Duke Ellington Jazz
Festival, Washington's largest music celebration, which concluded last
night with a concert at the Kennedy Center. The students, who were
chosen by their teachers, participate in programs sponsored by the
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which paid for some of them to fly
to Washington.
Parts of the White House became an elaborate rehearsal room, where
students from 8 to 18 absorbed the feeling of jazz and the blues from
those who know it best. The entire Marsalis family — father Ellis and
sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason — participated, along with
Cuban jazz master Paquito D'Rivera and D.C.'s own Davey Yarborough,
passing along jazz tips and the larger lessons they've learned from
music. In one workshop, the students paraded across the stage of the
East Room, improvising variations on the blues under the gaze of the
portraits of George and Martha Washington.
"Blues is what connects us to the earth," Wynton Marsalis told the
students in his advanced tutorial. "It keeps us grounded, gives us the
spirit behind this music. It makes us holler and scream and shout
through our horns."
After the intensive hour-long workshops, conducted in three separate
rooms of the White House, the students gathered in the East Room for a
brief concert featuring D'Rivera and a teenage combo, including three
D.C. area musicians: Elijah Easton on sax, Zach Brown on bass, Kusha
Abadey on drums. "This kind of interaction was the first of its kind,"
said Thomas R. Carter, president of the Monk Institute, who has
presented jazz events at the White House during the past three
administrations. "It was groundbreaking and truly sets a precedent for
bringing music education itself into the White House."
The Obama administration plans to continue its hands-on program in
arts education in the future, but it was jazz, America's indigenous art
form, that got the first turn in the spotlight.
"There's probably no better example of democracy than a jazz
ensemble — individual freedom, but with responsibility to the group,"
said Michelle Obama, who was wearing a white skirt and sweater.
For longtime Washington jazz musician and educator Yarborough, it
was important to see not just the history of jazz honored at the White
House, but its future as well.
"To be able to witness the music being perfected in the White House,
to be requested to bring my band here," he said, "is a wonderful
honor."
The first lady was joined at the afternoon concert by her mother and
her daughters — because, she said, she wanted to introduce the girls
to "all kinds of music other than hip-hop."
As Marsalis and D'Rivera swung into Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in
Tunisia" to bring the day of jazz to a close, the first lady bobbed her
head to the music, and 150 students had an experience they're not
likely to forget.
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Suzy S.