Local jazz camp helps preserve the musical legacy of NOLa
15th July 2024 · 0 Comments
By John Gray
Contributing Writer
(VeriteNews.org) — Akeel Haroon aspires to become a professional musician. In addition to studying music at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the 18-year-old New Orleans resident has spent part of the last six summers learning from legendary musicians such as Donald Harrison and Darrell Lavigne.
“The instructors are crazy good,” said Haroon, who plays tenor saxophone. “The better I get, the more I realize I have to learn and the more I realize what they know.”
Established in 1995, the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp brings in children from around the U.S. for three weeks of intensive musical training. The camp has been a training ground for musicians like Jon Batiste and Trombone Shorty. In addition to jazz, students can learn New Orleans R&B, second line dance and music production.
Jackie Harris, founder and executive director of the camp, said it was born out of necessity when public schools started cutting their music programs.
When that happened, “kids were not getting music education,” Harris said. “That affected inner city schools and inner city kids.”
“We created the program to provide a service to them, and to ensure that the tradition [of jazz in New Orleans] didn’t suffer,” she said.
Students and staff share the goal of keeping New Orleans music alive. For Haroon, the camp’s instructors are what bring him back every year.
“I believe that programs like this and [other] programs around the city are keeping the culture alive,” Haroon said.
Past instructional staff include Edward “Kidd” Jordan, who co-founded the camp, keyboardist George Duke, jazz pianist Patrice Rushen and Wynton Marsalis. In addition to Harrison and Lavigne, this year’s faculty includes trombonist Fred Wesley, whose music is being taught to campers, and music producer BlaqNmilD. Harrison, who’s played with Art Blakey, Lena Horne and Miles Davis, said the students are learning from instructors with a lot of musical experience.
“There’s at least 300 years’ of experience” among faculty at the camp, he said.
“No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are, there’s always something that someone else can teach you. And there’s always something you can teach someone else,” said Rebecca Berliner, a percussion student at the camp who traveled to New Orleans from New York City. “That process of exchange never really stops no matter who you’re interacting with.”
The camp faculty want students to understand how important music is to the city.
Like most of the instructors, Lavigne has a storied musical career and he wants to help pass the tradition on. He’s a piano instructor who has worked at the camp for 24 years.
“Kids need to be exposed to this music because…we have to keep the cultural continuum alive,” he said.
It’s also important for children to have creative outlets, Harris said.
“To parents with children, please, please enroll your child in some type of arts education program,” said Harris. “Go somewhere [where kids have] other ways of expressing their thoughts and ideas, because that’s what the arts do for children.”
As a culmination of their time at the camp, the students are played during a free concert on Friday (July 12) at the Louis J. Roussel Performance Hall at Loyola University.
This article originally published in the July 15, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
