Musician creates opportunities for Black jazz musicians

 Musician creates opportunities for Black jazz musicians

By Tia Carol Jones

Ernest Dawkins was always drawn to music. He considers himself a Scientist of Sound.

Dawkins can recall a time when 63^rd, 47^th and 43^rd Streets were filled with night clubs. He would go to the Regal and see the Motown Revue.

The music was accessible. It was being played in the community and had a communal feel.

Dawkins is a saxophonist and the executive director of Live the Spirit Residency. He didn’t start playing the saxophone until he was out of high school. At the age of 8, he was playing the bass and would take lessons downtown. In his teens, he started playing percussion for rock bands, mostly on the North side.

Live the Spirit Residency produces the Englewood Jazz Festival, which is in its 23^rd year. There is also Live the Spirit Big Band and the Young Masters, where Dawkins recruits some of the best and brightest to mentor.

Dawkins has always been a proponent of having an institutional music training, as well a musical training in the community.

“Music is transmitted through people, it’s not transmitted through certain ways of teaching it. It’s something you have to experience,” he said.

Dawkins likened musical training to a Baptism. A person goes into the water and when they come out, they become better, incorporating tools and techniques. He believes music is communicated telepathically through the ethos and one has to learn the language. It is a process.

Dawkins has played next to some of the greatest musicians and that is one way he learned to play music. Hearing a musician bend a certain note, putting a certain turn on a line, and attempting to mimic those devices is how Dawkins learned the language of music.

Dawkins started the Live the Spirit Residency after receiving a grant. He wanted to set up some communal structures related to the arts, that would become institutions. He partnered with the Muntu Dance Theatre, the Community Theater Workshop and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Dawkins started Live the Spirit Big Band, and he paid the young people in the band. Dawkins believes in paying artists for their work. That way, the art continues because musicians are able to make a living off their craft.

Dawkins created the Live the Spirit Residency and Live the Spirit Big Band mostly for Black musicians, because he is seeing a decrease in young Black musicians playing jazz.
Dawkins teaches young musicians how to compose music. It can enable a musician the opportunity to make money, outside of performing, because those musicians can be paid from the residuals of the music. He advises young musicians to come up with a five year plan or a 10 year plan that includes releasing music once a year. It builds their discography and they can make money from that music. Everything Dawkins does is free to the community, including his senior band.

On Friday, April 1, at the Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72^nd St., Dawkins will perform his piece “Refound Connections,” which he was commissioned to write. It is about his reconnection to the South and his roots there. The piece is  symbolic of that. He recently performed it in Durham, North Carolina.

On Saturday, April 2, there will be a live streamed session with Isaiah Collier. Collier is a composer, saxophonist, drummer and activist.

For more information about Ernest Dawkins, visit www.ernestdawkins.com.

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