The Jazz Museum in Harlem recently celebrated the culminating event of its Harlem Speaks Education Initiative, an 8-week program in jazz history sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Over 40 juniors and seniors of the Frederick Douglass Academy participated in the program, learning about jazz culture as it relates to American history via interviews with senior artists whose lives and careers took jazz and history beyond just textbooks, recordings and video clips. Octogenarian trumpet great Joe Wilder, and Jacquie "Tajah" Murdock, Apollo Theater dancer in the 40s and a superb dance historian, engaged the youth during four of the eight sessions, bringing history alive.

The Saturday, January 14, 2006 event ran from 10am-2pm, and featured:

• Student performances
  
  
• Panel discussion with Tajah Murdock, Joe Wilder, band leader and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Colon, and Jean Bach, filmmaker of "A Great Day in Harlem."
  
  
• Film-"A Great Day in Harlem," an Oscar-nominated
  documentary about the historic 1958 Esquire magazine photo of jazz musicians taken on the steps of a Harlem brownstone.
  
  
• Musical performances by the Christian McBride Duo (with Loren Schoenberg) and the Joe Wilder Quartet (with dancing by Tajah Murdock!).

Please visit the following photo gallery.

The Harlem Speaks Education Initiative

In this course, students learned about the vibrancy of jazz and the magnitude of the achievements of its practitioners. Through the method of Oral Histories students gathered and preserved historical information through recorded interviews with the participants. Students made connections by gaining a larger understanding of the role of music and musicians by learning about the music of famous jazz musicians, different styles of jazz and by tracing the history by means of interviewing honorees, musicians and others connected to jazz, through independent and group research, deepening their historical and cultural understanding of music.

Mr. Sabb, Tajah Murdock guest speaker, Ms. Bramble, Mr. Thomas at Saturday Academy, October 15, 2005