Celebrate Black Women in Jazz!

Over the weekend, I saw the renowned jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson at Yoshi's Jazz Club in the Bay Area. The event was amazing! Wilson has the ability to engage her audience with clarity, ease and seduction. I highly recommend a visit to Yoshi's to anyone who loves live music. The venue is intimate and cozy. It has become a premiere venue to hear great, live, jazz music.

Prior to going to the concert, I heard a lecture from Historian and Professor LaShonda Katrice Barnett as she talked about her book, "I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft." Barnett offered great depth and context to many black female vocalist we've taken for granted and have not gotten to really know beyond their music. Her book features private and intimate interviews with great writers such as Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone, just to name a couple. I purchased her book and look forward to learning more about the lives of these women.

I've become a huge fan of female jazz vocalist. Some of my favorites are Shirley Horn, Carmen McCrae and Etta James. Jazz is a musical genre that is almost lost in the black community because black folks neither buy jazz music nor attend jazz concerts at the same rate as do other groups. Jazz is considered the first musical genre rooted in the United States experience, having been created in New Orleans, Louisiana by enslaved Africans. (SOURCE). I intend to spend more time cultivating my interest in this musical genre, sharing it with young people and learning more about its history. If you are a jazz enthusiast who happens to be black, share the art form with your children so that the genre continues to be known to and appreciated by children of color.