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The Seed

Growing up, Willard Jenkins, broadcaster and artistic director of the DC Jazz Fest, found music the way a lot of kids do: by rifling through his dad’s record collection. “I learned a lot and learned the beginnings of my passion for the music,” Jenkins said.  

But when he came to �鶹��ý, he found himself without the connection to his father’s record collection and realized he had to start building one for himself.  

“It became addictive building this collection because not only was I immersing myself in the music, but I was also reading the liner notes very carefully and starting to read the trade publications, the jazz trade publications about the music,” Jenkins said.  

His first audience included  his roommates and Omega Psi Phi brothers, but eventually he started writing record reviews for the first Black student newspaper on campus, The Black Watch.  

Jenkins recalls the beginnings of Black United Students (BUS) during his time on campus and how one of their earliest protests was against the Oakland Police Department, which had come to recruit on campus. He said they protested in an administration building, but then left peacefully in what became a Black student walkout. They left a list of demands that needed to be met before they would return, including a request for the development of a Black student newspaper. Kent State met the demands, and the Black Watch newspaper was launched.  

“One of the things about Kent State is it has such a strong history of student protest,” Jenkins said. “Kent State was a very powerful experience.” 

His experience writing for The Black Watch sparked a love for writing about music and reaping the benefits from the music industry.  

“When I started writing record reviews, lo and behold, records started showing up at the Black Watch address for review,” Jenkins said. Encouraged by receiving more records, he continued to write his reviews. He also started going to a jazz club in Cleveland, the Smiling Dog Saloon, where he saw many of the great masters for the first time, such as Miles Davis, Chick Corea and the original Weather Report, among others. And by writing reviews, he was being given entrée into the club, even if he wasn’t getting paid to write.  

Power of Community

Jenkins’ dad was a newspaper man at the Cleveland Plain Dealer – part of the first generation of African American newspaper professionals – who worked as a typographer and knew all the editors. He knew of his son’s interest in writing and set up a meeting for him with Robert Roach, the editor of the Plain Dealer’s Friday magazine. Roach gave Jenkins a job to write for the following Friday edition, covering upcoming performances as previews.  

This gave Jenkins further access into the music scene in Northeast Ohio, including at what would become Playhouse Square and other clubs and theaters. Until the Smiling Dog Saloon closed and with it a lot of touring artists stopped coming to town. 

Jenkins saw an article in Downbeat Magazine about the benefits of a community-based, nonprofit organization on the behalf of jazz, like a jazz society.  

“A group of us got together and founded the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, and we started presenting concerts and performances around the community, and we helped to spearhead the development of the Tri-C Jazz Fest,” Jenkins said. 

Thinking Bigger  

Jenkins met Dr. Reginald Buckner through his work at the Tri-C Jazz Fest, and it was Buckner who sent him the opportunity at a regional arts agency.  

“I knew about the state arts agencies, I knew about the local arts agencies, I knew about the National Endowment for the Arts, but I was not so much aware of the regional arts agencies. And as it turned out, one of the regional arts agencies was an organization called Great Lakes Arts Alliance,” Jenkins said.

The Great Lakes Arts Alliance represented Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, and had put out a call for proposals to conduct a needs assessment of the jazz community in those states. 

“I was engaged by Great Lakes Arts Alliance to conduct this needs assessment, which meant that I developed a questionnaire for various sectors of the community: musicians, educators, casters, writers and enthusiasts. I was driving around the region to various places to conduct extensive interviews with people in the jazz community trying to establish the need for some kind of service effort on behalf of jazz,” Jenkins said.  

At the same time, Great Lakes Arts Alliance was having merger talks with the regional agency that represented Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota, so they merged into a nine-state region.

“They determined they wanted to make this jazz effort a core program. They said, well, we want to make this a core program, we want you to run it, but there's a catch. Our new headquarters is going to be in Minneapolis, so you got to move to Minneapolis,” Jenkins said. “We spent close to five years in Minneapolis at Arts Midwest developing this jazz program,” Jenkins said.  

To the Capital

While he was still in Minneapolis, an opportunity arose for Jenkins to take his talents to the nation’s capital, a historic city for jazz, to become the director of the National Jazz Service organization based in Washington, D.C.  

“The National Jazz Service Organization was trying to develop itself along the lines of other art service organizations like the former American Symphony Orchestra League, Dance USA, Chamber Music America, those kinds of organizations. I became the executive director of the National Jazz Service Organization in 1989. And that's how I got to Washington,” Jenkins said.  

His time in Washington, D.C., has proven to be fruitful. He had spent the previous 18 years still staying involved and serving as artistic director of the Tri-C Jazz Fest, traveling back and forth. But when his time there ended, he became artistic director of DC Jazz Fest in 2015, running one of the country’s preeminent jazz festivals.  

“D.C. is, in terms of its historic importance in the development of the music, vastly underrated. But I think that gap is closing, and there's a growing recognition of the importance of Washington, D.C., and this music. If you only start with Duke Ellington, a native Washingtonian, and work your way forward from there, you can begin to recognize the importance of Washington, D.C., and in the development of the music,” Jenkins said.

“There was a great entertainment corridor here, the U Street corridor, which is very important to the development of a lot of music, particularly jazz. I think there’s a growing sense of the importance of D.C. in lineage of jazz,” he continued. 

An Honor

Today, Jenkins has established himself as a vocal advocate and leader for jazz music, and he was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for his contributions to the genre at a ceremony held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The National Endowment for the Arts has had a program since 1982 called the NEA Jazz Master’s program, which honors musicians who have made great contributions to music. Years ago, the NEA determined that in addition to honoring musicians, they need to honor at least one advocate per year.  

“That advocacy award is given in the name of a man named AB Spelman, who is someone who I read extensively as a young writer because he was one of the few black jazz journalists. And eventually, after writing for years, he became a director at the National Endowment for the Arts. He was one of the brain trust that developed the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master's program. So, when they decided to have an advocacy award and one advocate per year, they named it after him. It’s called NEA Jazz Masters AB Spelman Award for Advocacy, and I’m the proud recipient of that for 2024,” Jenkins said. 

It’s in the Blood  

When thinking back on his career, Jenkins thinks of himself in different parts. “I’m a journalist, broadcaster and curator, basically. And I have to break that down for people who aren’t familiar with those terms sometimes. But that’s what I am, and I say it in that order kind of because that’s the order when these opportunities arose,” Jenkins said. 

His tenure as a broadcaster began as an undergrad. “Toward the end of my Kent State matriculation, a good friend of mine had a weekly radio program at WKSU called “Exploration Jazz.” And he graduated. He said, ‘Would you be interested in doing the program?’ I said, ‘Let me check it out.’ So, I did, and I took over the program. WKSU is where I first started broadcasting,” Jenkins said.

He went from WKSU to do some radio in Cleveland at WABQ, and then to a community radio station called KFAI in Minneapolis.  

“Radio is in the blood. I've always done community public radio,” Jenkins said.

For the past 35 years, he’s been with WPFW in Washington, D.C.  

What’s Next?

From his time at Kent State during a tumultuous period in U.S. history, right after May 4 and the fallout on campus, to the creation of BUS, Jenkins said, “Kent State is a very important place in my experience because I kind of got socialized at Kent State.”  

He discovered his love of writing about music and talking about it on the radio on campus, honing his craft at The Black Watch and WKSU. Then, he took his love of music and poured it into the communities where he lived, from Cleveland to Minneapolis and D.C. But he sees himself as an advocate for the music throughout all his different pursuits and he says the two most important things for jazz now is education and making sure the music finds an audience.  

“We have no shortage of great musicians, no shortage of wonderful music being made, no shortage of great recordings being made, but we have to have more of an audience,” Jenkins said.  

But thinking about the future, he remains optimistic.  

“I see musicians evolving every day. There are so many new musicians, so many more musicians and musicians who are being informed by more than just the history of this music we call jazz, but musicians who are being informed by musics of the world, musicians who are being informed by hip hop, musicians who are being informed by so many different elements, because music is a lot broader than it once was. I see the future as bright for music.”