From Sun Ra to Seniors: Brooklyn Celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month

By Fern Gillespie
Brooklyn is steeped in Jazz history. During the 1930s and 1940s, Jazz icons drummer Max Roach (1924-2007) and pianist Randy Weston (1926 – 2018) were childhood friends who grew up in Brooklyn. They were classmates at Boys High School in Bed-Stuy, and both were considered music prodigies. Weston would often reminisce about hanging out at Roach’s house as a youth and meeting Jazz icons like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

To celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month, Our Time Press reached out to two Black Brooklyn organizations that have a mission of presenting, preserving, and promoting Jazz.
“You look at Max Roach and Randy Weston and all of these great musicians who were also residents of Brooklyn who are in the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium Hall of Fame,” Clarence Mosley, Jr., chairperson of Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, told Our Time Press. “They really brought out the culture. You look at Max Roach and when his records were talking about “Freedom Now” and Randy Weston incorporating the African tradition in his music. These musicians are cultural icons.”

In 2011, Jitu Weusi, then chairman and co-founder of Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, persuaded Mosley to lead the cultural nonprofit. Mosley was a banker who grew up in Brownsville and had performed as a jazz pianist through college.

For Mosley, his banking business skills have been an asset to the organization. “We have partnered with Investors Bank to provide a seminar on financial literacy for musicians to help them better manage their finances and look for opportunities to save money for retirement,” said Mosley. “We also partnered with some older adult clubs, specifically the Fort Green Council. We started doing what we called the “Noon Time Jazz Series.” It’s a free service where we engage musicians to perform at the various older adult clubs.”

This April, the “Noon Time Jazz Series” is being held at older adult clubs in Brooklyn. Current performances feature saxophonist Bill Saxon, singer Camille Gainer, drummer Brandon Sanders, saxophonist Reggie Woods, saxophonist and singer Camille Thurman and bassist Kenny Davis with Eddie Allen

“We’re also doing programs to help the young kids learn about music,” said Charles Dougherty, Executive Director, Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium (CBJC)and an educator and musician who has performed with Stevie Wonder, Monte Alexander, and Melba Moore. “We fund after-school programs for the kids to learn instruments in their primary years.”

Upcoming CBJC events include the Cultures United Jazz Festival beginning on May 18. On May 20, CBJC will hold its 25th Anniversary Gala. This milestone gala honors the founders of CBJC: Alma Carroll, Torrie McCartney, and Viola Plummer and longtime supporter Annette Robinson. In addition, Jitu Weusi, CBJC co-founder and founder of The East, will be inducted into the Brooklyn Jazz Hall of Fame.

“There is a saying that says ‘Jazz is what liberates you the most,’” said Mosley. “If you listen to any form of music from the African Diaspora, Jazz is a very important part of that. You can hear the blues, gospel and all of that coming through the music. It’s a continuum of our culture.”

At Sistas’ Place, Jazz Month and Poetry Month merge with an April month long celebration of Sun Ra (1914-1993), the iconic Jazz icon and poet. The Jazz concert series “Satellites of the Sun: The Music of Sun Ra,” features the music of Sun Ra and the people he chose to be part of his Sun Ra Arkestra over the decades. The Sun Ra alum performing are The Dick Griffin Quartet, Robert Rutledge & George Gray Quintet, Alex Harding & Anthony Nelson Quintet and Ahmed Abdullah’s Diaspora.

Jazz trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, the music director at Sistas’ Place and concert producer, is the author of the memoir “A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra.” “It’s my 50th anniversary of working with Sun Ra. My first gig with Sun Ra was at The East. I worked with him for a span of 22 years,” Abdullah told Our Time Press.

The cosmic style of Sun Ra made him a cultural pioneer of Afro-Futurism. “I think it’s a fitting label because he was talking about creating music for the 21st century — the music of the future,” he said. “Now it’s the 21st century. His music is totally appropriate for the time we’re living in.”

When Sun Ra was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, it was during the era of Ragtime. “He played every genre of the music. He played Ragtime, Swing, Be-Bop, Jazz and Fusion,” said Abdullah, who teaches Brooklyn youth about Sun Ra and serves as an adjunct professor at The New School, where he teaches a course on the music and philosophy of Sun Ra. “Sun Ra was really about the Black community. Having spent the first 32 years of his life in Birmingham, he was about trying to move our people forward. It was in his being.”

To Abdullah, jazz was the music that was given to this country to civilize this country. “It is the music of the spirit and liberation,” he said. “To raise the level of awareness and consciousness of the people in America to a higher level.”
For information on Sistas’ Place, contact www.sistasplace.org/
Contact Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium at www.centralbrooklynjazz.org/