musicians on the show music does so much on so many levels but when you were playing just now why did you choose what you chose what were you communicating i will tell you how happy i was to be on your show  it was for you to invite me and on and on and on i sounded happy it sounded a thank you so let's talk a little bit about your history and how we knew because clearly from the conversations you and i have had you live eat breathe sleep you think and particularly jet yes so tell us a little bit about that journey while i was very good in sports boxing football basketball and of course it is cyclical my mom and broke up i was helping my father paint his apartment and he put on a record call ready for freddie by freddie hubbard and as i mentioned it seems like oxygen finally reached my brain because of my father never saw me that still before because i stopped in the middle of painting and walked over to the record player and sat on a crate with the papers in my hands and read catching the pain and listening to this great trumpet player my father was astounded his and he didn't know what the think or what to say but he like again as i said he never saw me that still before so i asked him i said that i so love to be able to learn how to play like that complaining about me tuning on the horn and volna and i would go down to the basement of the projects or practice and i just became totally absorbed you know it's so interesting because i think most of us on some level long for that kind riven experience where there's no mystery the answer is clear this is meant for me and you clearly had that kind of experience and didn't look back and was willing to drop everything that up until that time had significance in your life and just focus on that like how extraordinary so you said you taught yourself yes and then that started at sixteen that moment and clearly when you describe it you still remember it and so within three years you told me that you were as i was on the road playing me before and it between that i was playing after six months with the y m c a jazz about it is that i can safely say that the music saved my life because it gave me not only direction but it gave me a sense of purpose and a sense of understanding that there was other things in life as opposed to just sports and i guess chasing girls yeah so it and it's some point you started your own school yes and tell us about that because you know there in your story it almost looks like there's no mystery if i am you know i'm pointed in this direction going going going and clearly never stopping at some point you started a school yeah the school  first i started a music organization in one hundred eighty one i raised six kids and what the purpose of sunday creed having my old school because i kept asking myself if music the music of jazz was able to do this to me i mean how many how could it also help other kids in his cities and in the programs so in one thousand nine hundred nine i started a school called the jazz as it is in jersey and for twenty one years that's all to the registration we had about one hundred twenty five kids with isham is even a dance program we had filled up about three the community schools helping kids and all of the concept of if this music can do this for me was when i picked up the trumpet i was totally illiterate what it can do for other kids that's in the inner cities as having the same kind of suffering that i was going through academically and also socially so if you're going to articulate it you know certainly all of us have experienced music that kind of stirs something in a sometimes it sadness sometimes it's joy sometimes it's confusion whatever it is but it's a there's no need for words  something gets evoked and something happens what is it that distinctly if you can articulate it that you think kids get from it well i like to demonstrate  when i lecture i use a simple well could be complicated some people a particular tune like this one here mary had a little lamb so then i help people to understand jazz has three very important elements melody which i just played rhythm which is very very important in music and emotions the emotions come from what what's in a person so when i play the song again so they can hear mary had a little lamb but all of the elements of jazz an improvisation is there because all jazz is is not about composition the conversation is that we're having right now the nuances and i'll voices the tones the expressions to be able to get a point across is the same thing that instrumentalists will do when he picks up his horn to convey a message wow that's all jazz is so can you do another variation s take what i was basically saying was lots of things lots of things to be able to get people's attention because it was happy it was it had river it had the emotions it had all the things that was necessary to convey to people but the other interesting thing about the music of jazz that in my opinion that is one of and others is one of the greatest form of the law marcus if you had the rules and regulations but you have your freedom of the rebellion or if i wanted to perhaps express love that could be an expression also music so that is that's what i hope people to come to understand you should listen to the music of jazz to be able to get another standing of it but listen to what the musician is trying to say he's trying to tell you a story is just like when back in the turn of the century for the one hundred years going into the twentieth century well of the creoles and the africans or people of color used to get together to be able to create jazz they didn't have any schools or anything but what they used to do was actually talk through the instrument because they are message and through some of the education and talking with the creoles and some of the other people that were there they learned how to move the scales of the different assignments to be able to send a message and that's all that jazz came about along with some of the other elements saying is it's a language it's a form of communication it's a form of expression and particularly with the population that you're working with they probably haven't been given a lot of opportunities to express or even to recognize what they're feeling exactly so do you have any students that came through your school that went on to transform their lives or you know do great a young man whose father brought him over to my house so we had a chance to sit down and talk and give him a lesson he played the clarinet in the trumpet and one of the things he had to make a decision was a going to be the clarinet or the trumpet so he decided to trumpet and we're so glad he did and here's a young man who just perhaps maybe got into some kind of trouble for the father was so passionate about getting him to the program and that was the beginning of james gives he said the opportunity to play with betty carter wynt will receive scholarships to study with dr donald byrd on and on and on and on and then it was anthony nelson who i great sex loveless and i use that word of seriously because that's what he is  sex office when i heard him play at the age of fifteen sixteen years old at the axl competition he played charlie parker ornithology note for note and then the solo and it just totally not me out and i couldn't find them after the competition because i had to do the judging but i was fortunately enough to see him driving on his bicycle and playful and i ran him then not literally no lead literally to actually invited to our program picked him up in his house on that study to get in there and put him in the hands of at the time the music director rod and schwartz a good good friend of mine who has taught mendis students in the a you know what inspires me is that it's something as simple as music can save kids and save lives even adults so looking at the way music is evolving today and i'm not looking to bash anything or anyone do you see degradation or is it just that it's going in a lot more different directions the good question i wouldn't say degradation but i would say it's one of the most important things that may be confusing to the masses of people because they are taking out two great elements of the music and one of them is jazz i understand what rappers i understand what rhythm and blues is i understand how important all the other different genres of the music is and how important is but when we look at jazz jazz as a classical music just like european classical music jazz is considered an afro american classical music is a music that you just can't get up and just throw a bunch of notes ago like i said it's a form of democracy you have to hear about the rules and regulations of the music of course there's no conductor because everything is brought brought by the emotions and the study of the estimate you have to learn the trumpet or whatever estimate you're playing on backwards and forwards so it can become your mouthpiece so when you look at other musics the simplicity of it takes away some of the most important elements and that's the classical element of music and that's yes everybody should be listening to duke ellington very good men they should be listening to miles not to mention some of the other places so people need to recognize how important it is to keep that element in the school system so how could it take because i get it but what's the conversation that's missing or you know in getting people in rolled in this you know it's one thing to say you should be where you can say to a young person you should be but what is it that you think could be sa maybe more powerfully well the only way is what i normally do is what we did a jazz letter to all of the students in the parents would have to go through our life skills to jazz presentation and all life a classical music they should have to study who the who the composers are like we mentioned about louis armstrong learning the trumpet in reform school do gallant in giving up a scholarship depressed university to come to do the runs of the same study with james p johnson charlie parker who dispell of along with dizzy gillespie a great musical bebop who who was totally tell self taught his mother gave him an alto because he had a drug habit at a very early age eleven years old and h lisa go over to on the other side of st louis to listen to the jazz musicians go home pick up the instrument and try to emulate what they were doing and through something inside of him hearing the word started playing bebop on his instrument and big his music has been studied right today in the in the institutions in order for you to be able to be considered a jazz musician so to speak and to have somebody play some chops you her just a little bit but he would play it so fast until like you would have to listen to the composition over and over again and all he did was take simple tunes like hi how is the moon and others and actually added a an element to it of rhythm which they call bebop here's a man and never in group is it isn't it is life picks it up unfortunately we lost a very young because of the drug habit but think of how powerful this music is and what it what it's doing for it has done for people yeah and i think what you're saying also is one of the places to start is with educators and get educators enrolled in the idea and i think no one who is in education has not heard stories about music saving people's lives so it's probably an easy now aren't yet yourself i'm going to jump around a little bit so this is a particular instrument do you have a number of instruments can you tell the difference do you have a preference where if somebody handed you another trumpet would it be as familiar as easy you know because i've never played an instrument ok but it ok to me that each of them must be distinct in some way about the trumpet and about jazz and i like to to add that a part of the elements of of how different sounds are but you have the difference saxophones b flat you have the alto you have the baritone you have the soprano all these others when these particular jazz musicians pick up a vision a to play you can automatically know who they are because of their voice through their instrument that's another unit you can i get well because we're speaking a universal language other people in other countries can say well as charlie parker or that john coltrane that's miles davis and even in india don't know who louis armstrong is opposed to who is you know to me but i won't know who the musician is performing the piece but with jazz it's a little different you'll know who the artist is so that's how interested the voices like if you were to call certain kind of music if i don't have some connection to it i will tune out and and so i just tried to you i have a hard time staying connected to and on guard jazz  me it sounds like the musicians are having a conversation but i'm left out of it and so it's not going to that extreme but there are people who will hear even you know jazz as you play it and say i don't get it and it's interesting you know because i think what happens is with a lack of familiarity we will sometimes tune things out as opposed to let them in and i heard of this study that was done where there was a a song that in this was recently that the producer spot a slam dunk this is going to be a hit a number one and it faltered and failed and they kind of looked at what was missing and somebody who i think was a sociologist or somebody like that suggested that they ask the radio stations to play it in between two familiar popular songs and they did and suddenly the song took off so it's kind of people have to you know it's people have to kind of feel somehow related before they can follow the next step into listening to some somebody who they have no relationship to that makes sense it doesn't make sense science says that there was in them like was that i forgot the term that was called like they want people to buy popcorn they would show a picture  for a second a popcorn because i saw some power brains are yeah but one of the things that i did was i did a lot of traveling around through youth centers schools doing lectures with a group media got more involved with the music and i think people too used to demand more of this music i think that's a good point so i'm going to ask you can you kind of take us through some different style awesome kind of hard without the  take you back listen to this they started playing music like this forever one of issue and all these others and then here we are today with great trumpeters like went to marcellus taking us through the history of the music in all these different types of disciplines a lot of jazz that's out there that armstrong king oliver to duke ellington and on and on and on and on to where the music is and that's why the jazz it was it was all important because we were trying to create who was going to be the next place at robeson music you know we're almost at the end of our time and first of all i want to thank you for being here i think what you have to say is really important and just i invite people to just open those doors and as i understand it you also play out  you know people can call you to ask you to come and play with different groups perform live so i invite people to check out your website and check you out because i think there's a lot to be learned and a lot of doors to be opened so thank you so much i had a lot of fun my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us