This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Juneteenth Jazz Arts Festival in Las Cruces. The festival is an annual free series of Jazz and Black American music concerts, lectures, and more, happening June 13th-22nd. Local percussionist Derrick Lee is the festival’s lead creative director, and he recently spoke with Scott Brocato about the festival.
Scott Brocato:
First of all, give us an overview of the festival and the festival's goals.
Derrick Lee:
The goal has always been to just create community around the (Juneteenth) holiday, celebrate the holiday, educate people about the holiday and just create a space of community and fellowship through jazz, through music. Well, I should say, through Black American Music, widely known as jazz, and we'll get into that later.
I thought that jazz was the perfect sort of vehicle to kind of, you know, educate people and sort of celebrate this holiday and also bring community. It's very creative, it's a very interactive type of music, and it is also a very communal type of music.
Scott Brocato:
And it's very American.
Derrick Lee:
Very yeah, absolutely. It's an American art form. It is very similar to storytelling, right? Even the maintenance of history through storytelling, right? The history of America is in the music, and oftentimes you go out and get a jazz record and you look at the liner notes and you learn about the people, the players, and a little bit about their lives and music. Maybe you can dig deeper now because you have the Internet. But if you just listen to the music itself, it has history in it. It's storytelling. It's sort of a dissemination of life experiences and history and notable historical events, and the picture snapshot of the society at the time that it was recorded. So all these things are in jazz, whether it's recorded or live. And so I think it's the perfect way to reach out to people and communicate.
Scott Brocato:
Well, some people are still a little bit intimidated by jazz who might be new to it. What would you say to those (people) to help them sort of ease their way into (jazz), or would you recommend a “gateway” artist or album?
Derrick Lee:
Well, I don't want to gatekeep (laughs), so I don't know if I should recommend a gateway album. But I appreciate the question, because it is a little difficult for some people to get into, I think, because there's a lot of people out there...I don't want to say “academics”, but there's a lot of people who are, like, you know, “jazz is this higher art form” and everything. I mean, music is a higher art form. All music. And you treat it as such. This is music, and it is really music for the people.
And so just listen, that's all I would say. Just listen. And you know, your ears are the best judge. Your ears are the boss. So if you say, hey, there's a jazz record here and it's Sun Ra, or Ornette Coleman right? You pop it in. You're like, “oh, my good Lord!”. Like, you don't know what's going on. That's okay! Take it out, let's look for something else. Maybe a name that you recognize, like Miles Davis, or Billie Holiday. And then you're like, oh, I can get with this. You let your ears be the boss.
But I just encourage people who want to get into jazz, or even who are curious: don't shy away. Don't be intimidated. Just use your ears, you know? Don't read about it. Listen. That’s the best way. It's the best advice for players. It's the best advice for listeners.
Scott Brocato:
What are your responsibilities as the festival's lead creative director?
Derrick Lee:
Well, a...a lot. So I book the artists. I do sort of a general musical direction, although most of the artists, if not all of them, have musical autonomy and creative freedom so they can bring what they want to the mix. The only direction that I actually put my hands in with many artists was just to ask them to at least have half of their set list feature black compositions, black-composed music, because we just live in an area where there's not a lot of black presence to, you know, (play) live. We don't have a lot of black musicians here, as opposed to other people, or rather other areas. And so I want to put that representation in the music if we can; you know, have it live and in person with the players. But otherwise, they just go. And that's really easy in jazz because it is Black American music. It was founded by the black community here and on this continent. And so it's not hard to represent that through the music.
Scott Brocato:
You’ve developed such a large network (of musicians) that you already know who you'd like to go to first as far as artists to choose from to play at the festival?
Derrick Lee:
Not necessarily. But when this started, this kind of started unexpectedly for me five years ago. And at the time, I had already developed, just as a player and a working musician, a vast sort of network. I don't know if I should use the word “vast”, but especially for the state and this region, the Southwest region, I know a lot of good musicians in this region. I mean, they were very generous to let me play with them, because I don't know if I should be on stage with them. But I have great relationships with the vast majority of these musicians, so it was really easy to kind of call on them to help with this effort. And then through the last five years, I've made even more connections, which is really cool.
But I don't really have a plan, usually. I just...I think about it, and it's just like jazz: I improvise. I think about who's available, who haven’t I worked with in a while, who's asked to work on the festival. You know, just a bunch of different factors: what kind of music have we had in the past and where we'd like to go this time? Like this year, we have a Dixieland group. We've never had Dixieland in the festival before. That would be the Rio Grande Revelers. I've played with them a couple of times, maybe twice. But yeah, I just thought that would be really neat to bring. Also, we have some classical chamber works, black-composed, which is the first time that I've introduced non-jazz into this festival, and so I thought it would be kind of cool to do that. And that the same group who's playing that will be backing up one of our headliners. So that's kind of cool. But I don't really necessarily have a plan. I just, I play it like I play music.
Scott Brocato:
How long have you been playing music now?
Derrick Lee:
Well, professionally, probably like a little over 20 years. I was a band kid, and I started teaching drum lines after college. Not long after that, I started playing professionally because I just wanted to play some more. Once I got into college, I was playing gigs a little regularly, sometimes for money, sometimes not.
Scott Brocato:
You're referred to most often as a “jazz musician”, but you really straddle the genres. I've seen you play with many, many different artists just around here in many different styles.
Derrick Lee:
I usually tell people I'm a percussionist, okay, by discipline, so that's what I do, right? There's trumpet players and violin players; I play percussion. So if you don't use air to activate your instrument, and if you don't use a bow to activate your instrument, I'm pretty much responsible for it, with the exception of guitar.
If you want to work as a percussionist, you have to be versatile, because there's not a lot of opportunities for solo percussion as there are for a guitar or, like, a trumpet or a saxophone. You know, these people can go out there and play a solo gig if they're good enough and captivate the audience. And, you know, percussion can too. You can do a little bit more, but it's just not conventional. So I have to be a versatile musician, so that's why you see me play with all these different groups. Because if I want to work, I gotta learn how to play it all.
Scott Brocato:
Well, let's go back to the festival itself. It’s going to be across different locations. Talk about some of the highlights that we can expect.
Derrick Lee:
Well, we are bringing back one of our most esteemed headliners this year: Nat Reeves, who is from Hartford, and who actually just had a birthday, his 70th birthday. Hee'll be here in just a few weeks. And we had him a couple of years back, and we're really proud to bring him back. He's been really great and very generous in offering his time to this festival.
We also have the Joseph Dunn Big Band. I went to school with him here at NMSU as an undergrad, and he's gone on to do some really fantastic things. He currently resides in Louisville, KY, but he runs a couple of big bands out there. So he's bringing his band here. and also Tawanda Suessbrich-Joaquim-- I hope I got that right. But she's a really great young vocalist who is actually from Las Cruces. And so I thought that was really cool to include rising black artists here from Las Cruces. And so these are our main headliners this year, but we also have a lot of great, different groups. We have a great new trio that's just formed this year called The Third Line Trio.
Scott Brocato:
Some of the venues, I believe, Atkinson Recital Hall will be one...
Derrick Lee:
Yeah, Atkinson will be a venue. We're also going to be at Plaza de Las Cruces. We're also going to be at the Rio Grande Winery for a handful of dates, and I believe Young Park, we’ll actually be in Young Park on Juneteenth. So it should be pretty great. There's some really cool performances. One of them is a multimedia performance on the 14th at Atkinson Hall, so that's going to be a really cool one. We're going to do a lot of different genres on the 19th at Young Park. Nat Reeves brought a fantastic program of really great and challenging music, so we'll hear from him.
Scott Brocato:
And will you be performing?
Derrick Lee:
Yes, I will be. I was trying to get away with not doing so much performing, because like you mentioned...
Scott Brocato:
You've got a lot on your plate.
Derrick Lee:
You had mentioned the responsibilities earlier, and I wear a lot of hats, and one has to be a musician. But I was requested by several people to perform, so I'll be performing with the Nat Reeves Band. I'll also be performing with the Jazz collective on the 19th and with the big band on the first weekend. So I've got a lot of music to learn.
Scott Brocato:
And where can folks find out more?
Derrick Lee:
Our full schedule is still being updated and constructed, because there's a lot of different things in moving parts like that are like, you know, figure out a lot of fires have to put out sometimes. But if you go to https://newmexicojuneteenthjazzartsfestival.org/, that will take you to our web page. We have a new website this year, so it's just gone up and not long ago. If you check our events section, we'll have the full schedule with details. But I urge you to check often because everything's getting updated. It's been a long road to get this planned ‘cause this is our biggest festival yet. Usually, it's only been about three to five days; this year, it's nine or ten days, so...
Scott Brocato:
It's all free correct?
Derrick Lee:
Yes, thank you. It's all free. All the events on our website, every performance, every musical performance is free and open to the public. There are also other events happening in collaboration with the city in collaboration with NMSU, the NAACP. So there are all kinds of other non-musical events. But on our website you'll find all of the musical performances, which is the main body of the music, the Jazz Festival. And so they're all free, they're all open to the public, they're all family friendly and they're going to be a lot of fun.
