Tag Archives: Jazz

In January of 2009, a legend of American law, Sandra Day O’Connor, sat down with a legend of American jazz, Wynton Marsalis. That conversation has become the foundation for Let Freedom Swing!, a new project for schools to be launched this fall. A collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center and Columbia Teacher’s College, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Let Freedom Swing! uses video, print and web resources to explore the relationship between jazz and democracy in America. This seemingly unusual pairing of ideas can lead students to deep insights about their nation’s history and their role in society.

About the Films

America’s democracy and America’s first original art form have a lot in common. Both call on participants to engage with each other and to work together towards a common purpose. Both encourage participants to express themselves but at the same time require them listen to what each has to say. Both allow participants to reinvent the work of the past, to reinterpret it in the present and in the future. And both ask participants always to strive for “a more perfect union.”

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