“Let Freedom Swing”

Let Freedom Swing brings outstanding jazz artists and performances to community audiences, today our 8th graders were the enthralled audience. Inspired by conversations between former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, Let Freedom Swing includes three jazz concerts: Jazz and Democracy, Jazz and the Great Migration, and Jazz and Civil Rights.

The first show show was Jazz and Democracy.  

On January 27th the show is Jazz and the Great Migration.

“The largest human migration in American history began in 1915. Over the next half-century, nearly six million African Americans packed their belongings, left their homes in the Jim Crow South, and set out for the big cities of the North in search of jobs and freedom. Known as the “Great Migration,” the poet Alain Locke wrote, this mass movement was “a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern.”
City life in the North was immeasurably enriched by the arrival of so many strangers from the South. But American culture was transformed forever because jazz was part of the newcomers’ baggage.”

The 8th Grade will see the final show of the trilogy, Jazz and Civil Rights, in March. The shows compliment the 8th grade’s social studies curriculum.
You can read more about this Jazz series HERE.