Mission Accomplished!

Today Operation Jazz Band finished their week in Healdsburg by playing in concert before all SIX fifth grade classes: Fitch Mountain Elementary, St. John School, Alexander Valley School, Geyserville School, Westside Elementary School, and Sonoma Country Day School! About 200 students in all filled the Raven Theater in Healdsburg to hear what Operation Jazz Band really sounded like.

During the past week Operation Jazz Band, led by Babatunde Lea, had broken down into the main sections of a jazz band: drums, rhythm, horns, and vocals. Those sections then visited all six schools to demonstrate their instruments, discuss the history of jazz, teach the different forms of jazz, and introduce the children to basic musical concepts. Criss-crossing the town every day, two teams of musicians in caravans dashed from one classroom to the next entertaining the kids and getting them introduced to their musical art form, the one true American musical art form: jazz.

This was the ninth year for Operation Jazz Band, sponsored by the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. This year Operation Jazz Band members were:

• Babatunde Lea: band leader, drums, and percussion
• Clairdee: vocals
• Ken French: piano accompanist
• Dave Bass: piano
• Gary Brown: acoustic bass
• Angela Wellman: trombone
• Khalil Shaheed: trumpet
• Richard Howell: saxophone

As mentioned, the musicians took to the stage as a full band all together to play for the children. The kids, having become acquainted with the musicians in the intimate settings of their classrooms, greeted them as they took to the stage with screams and raucous applause akin to the screaming teen girls meeting The Beatles at JFK!

All week long the musicians prepped the kids to not only listen to jazz, but to participate as well. Babatunde Lea took to the stage with his call-and-response chant in Yoruba (from Nigeria, and presented phonetically):

“Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go YA! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go YA”

… all the while keeping the beat on a shekere. Then the band launched into an vibrant take on Dizzy Gillespie’s “Birk’s Works”:

Then the band brought the lovely Clairdee onstage to the roars from the kids, and she cooled the children down a notch with a wonderful version of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies”:

Highlights for the kids include audience participation; Dave Bass had taught the kids Ray Charles’ version of “Hit The Road Jack”, with boys and girls singing the parts appropriately! Clairdee got the whole audience singing “Let The Good Times Roll”, and then brought up a select group to join her in free-form scat:

With our culture in full gear to the future, our children often do not get introduced and familiar with so much of our cultural history such as art, music, and literature. Mainstream media focuses on the here and now, with radio pretty much focusing on the hear and now. Many kids only know about jazz as background music for car commercials or guys in Ray-Bans and berets. Operation Jazz Band is unique to Healdsburg, and to-date thousands of kids have been introduced to the musicians who perform jazz for a living, hear jazz from swing to Afro-Cuban to bebop, and come to understand that it is part of their musical heritage that they can embrace and enjoy.

Next Friday is the 11th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival Gala Dinner, Dance, and Auction at the Vintners Inn in Santa Rosa. This annual Gala raises money to fund Operation Jazz Band and other jazz education programs sponsored by the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Please come, enjoy a wonderful dinner, dance to great jazz, and bid high and often – knowing your dollars will help our children know and appreciate jazz.

Fortissimo! “Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go-yah!”

Soon you will hear some 5th grade kids chanting that in a few weeks! In case you don’t know, here is my report on the 2008 OJB:

Operation Jazz Band is one of the key music education programs sponsored by the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Today was Day 2 of Operation Jazz Band Week, which entails a group of Northern California jazz all-stars breaking down into band sections (percussion, rhythm, vocals, horns) and spending an hour a day in one of the Healdsburg/Geyserville 5th grade classes performing and telling the kids about their instruments, the history of jazz, how a jazz band works, and how many hours they practice a day.

I spent the morning being driver for the leader of Operation Jazz Band, Babatunde Lea. A jazz drummer and percussionist, Babatunde founded Operation Jazz Band with Jessica Felix, artistic director of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, eight years ago. Babatunde has incredible rapport with the kids, animating the African, Latino, and American heritage of jazz for them. They learn about call-and-response, swing, improvisation, and many of the past and current masters of jazz. Babatunde keeps the kids involved, with call-and-response throughout his time, and works in the history of jazz from Africa to America, and music styles from chant to bebop in one hour flat.

In the afternoon I accompanied Art Khu (piano) and Dave Ewell (bass) to Geyserville, where they demonstrated, performed, and talked about the history and role of bass-piano rhythm component so critical to the musical idiom. The kids are uniformly impressed by the size of the acoustic bass, and how cool the electric piano is (no, we aren’t hauling around a baby grand …). Art and Dave reinforce the basics, and introduce the more complex elements of jazz.

Digital camera in hand, I snagged about 40 photos or so, and have posted them into a slide show montage:

This year Operation Jazz Band is Babatude Lea, Drums and Percussion; Dave Ewell, Bass; Art Khu, Piano; Khalil Shaheed, Trumpet; Richard Howell, Saxophone; Angela Wellman, Trombone; Ken French, Keyboards; and Clairdee, Vocals.

The Operation continues all this week, culminating in a free jazz concert for the kids this Friday at the Raven Theater. All of the 5th grade classes come, and the children finally get to see the whole band together, playing songs they’ve heard in pieces throughout the week. The greeting the musicians get as they take to the stage is like the Beatles playing in Shea Stadium in ‘65 – a roar that is heard to Geyserville, easily! Little do they realize that they are hearing literally some of the best jazz musicians in California!

For many kids, this is the only time they will ever hear jazz as a musical performance. Most of them hear it on cartoons, for commercials, background in restaurants, etc., never realizing their American musical heritage is there to explore and enjoy.

Operation Jazz Band happens because of the generosity of those who came to this year’s 10th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival Gala. Through the event and auctions, we raised $50,000, which directly supports Operation Jazz Band, Tacuma King’s Percussion, Song, and Dance Workshops – also happening now through the start of the Festival in June – and workshops with the Healdsburg High School Jazz Band. From one that has been privileged to help out with Operation Jazz Band, Tacuma’s class, and listen in on some of the workshops, I can’t fully express how cool it is to see children get turned on by great musicians playing great music. It is something really special, and if you ever get a hankering to volunteer to witness it, just call the Festival office.

But I’m not giving up my slot on the roster anytime soon!

Paul Tincknell, Volunteer