Entertainment

Jazz Fest started stormy but then nothin’ but blue skies prevailed

LOUISIANA WEEKLY — With some calculated planning matched by flexibility, Fest fans really could do well musically despite sudden cloud bursts that warranted taking shelter by most, but not all, folks. Crazy young and old music maniacs just stood out there in their boots and rain ponchos seemingly rejoicing in the experience. Been there, done that.

Published

7 years ago

May 12, 2019

Oakland Post

By Geraldine Wyckoff

It’s impossible to ignore/forget how the first day, Thursday, April 25, of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage’s 50th anniversary began. It rained torrentially, enough so that the opening of the festival’s gates was delayed for an hour and a half. That the festival organizers were able to get it all going again so fast was both remarkable and appreciated by attendees. Of course, Jazz Fest and many regular festival-goers have much experience with downpours and the resulting muddy conditions. Let the show go on!

With some calculated planning matched by flexibility, Fest fans really could do well musically despite sudden cloud bursts that warranted taking shelter by most, but not all, folks. Crazy young and old music maniacs just stood out there in their boots and rain ponchos seemingly rejoicing in the experience. Been there, done that.

The joyful voices of Arthur and the Friends Community Choir simply drowned out the sound of the rain pounding on the roof of the Gospel Tent. A powerful ensemble of some 40-plus members, it was driven by a great band of young musicians with the drummer really hitting on all cylinders. The ever in motion, Rosalie “The Tambourine Lady” Washington, added the ring of the tambourine to the percussive element of the set that included some screamin’ solo vocalists.

Even the Gospel Tent staff was dancing on Sunday when octogenarian Andrew Jackson Sr., the leader of the Legendary Rocks of Harmony, stood at the edge of the stage and with the strength of a much younger man belted out, “I’m Still Here.” His son, Andrew Jr., joined him and soon thereafter took off his deep green jacket and got down on the floor with his microphone. All the veterans in this group, which has been together for 60 years, got into the action and spirit. The fine guitarist offered a wonderful rendition of “Amazing Grace” and even the keyboardist jumped up to dance. “Do we look good?” Jackson asked the crowd. Wow, yes they looked as good as they sounded with their green suits and vests set off by their yellow shirts.

The Cultural Exchange Pavilion, the dancing-est spot at the Fest, was a great place to be, rain or shine. It must have been around 4 p.m. Thursday, just after drummer Gerald French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band’s exhilarating set in Economy Hall that blue skies appeared in the west. It was the perfect time to celebrate by jumping on Martinique’s Chouval Bwa’s fanciful carousel, located next to the Pavilion, while the band, complete with percussion instruments, an accordionist and vocalists, plays in its center. The music so beautifully accompanies the ride on the hand-carved and man-powered carousel that looks innocent enough until it really gets going. In this case, New Orleans’ term for a merry-go-round, flying-horses, suits the ride well. Whee…

New Orleans headliners took over the Jazz Tent on Friday including established groups such as trumpeter Terence Blanchard & the E-Collective and the all-star band, Astral Project. Lovers of those deep, low tones certainly dug on the group baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis (Dirty Dozen, Treme Brass Band) put together for his appropriately titled “Baritone Bliss,” that included Lewis, Tony Dagradi, Calvin Johnson, Khari Allen Lee and more on bari plus a bass saxophonist who really held down the bottom. Dedicated to the late saxophonist Tim Green, who once played with this unit, the Bliss’ selections offered an appealing variety of genre’s from Dagradi’s “Mandela” to old-school rhythm and blues.

Saxophonist Kidd Jordan, who performed with his four musical offspring on Saturday, sat in the front row of the Jazz Tent listening to pianist Ellis Marsalis and his hugely talented four sons close out the modern jazz fest mecca on Sunday. The set was dedicated to wife and mother Delores Marsalis, who passed away in 2017. Like the Rocks of Harmony’s lead vocalist, Andrew Jackson Sr. mentioned above, the Marsalis patriarch doesn’t lay back but continues to push the music forward with his improvisations. The show was one of great jazz ability and of the musicians’ visible admiration of each other’s intuitive and educated prowess.

The Marsalis Brothers: Brandford, Wynton and Delfeayo (Photo by:

Sunday began with a one-two punch of the blues starting with the Mississippi hill country dynamo singer, drummer and guitarist Cedric Burnside, the grandson of the late, legendary R.L. Burnside. Playing in a duo and switching from guitar to drums, Burnside happily attacked the snare and tom, putting his whole body into the song “Don’t Leave Me Girl.” Burnside’s stripped-down blues style stood in contrast to that of his fellow Mississippi native, guitarist/vocalist Mr. Sipp “The Mississippi Blues Child,” who played fronting a full band with horns in the Blues Tent the previous day. Nonetheless, that the two acts shared a common ancestry was evident. By the way, Mr. Sipp demanded that everyone in the crowd get on their feet, which is just what they always want to do in the often overly restricted Blues Tent.

The commonality shared by Burnside and Mr. Sipp also, unexpectedly, prevailed when Mdou Moctar, a resident of Niger, Africa, who as a guitarist, songwriter and vocalist specializes in electrifying and modernizing the music of the Saharan Tuareg people, performed directly after Burnside. Highly influenced by guitarist Jimi Hendrix with deep roots in the tradition of his people, Moctar demonstrated the full circle of the African diaspora. The music and rhythms were, through those enslaved, brought from the continent to points west including the Southern United States and remain a strong element in the blues. Moctar embraced the influences of Black American artists thus he returned their music to its homeland. Burnside’s drumming and the forceful style of Moctar’s drummer spoke of their rhythmic roots. Music is one world.

This article originally appeared in the Louisiana Weekly.

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Arts and Culture

IN MEMORIAM: Oakland Dance Legend Reginald Ray-Savage, 67

Savage lived his life as tribute to the teachers who had shared their wisdom on art and life with him. With a palpably genuine enthusiasm and desire to bring out the best in people, and pass the torch to the next generation, he poured into his students, as his teachers and mentors had into him. His infectious energy, love of life, and generosity of spirit inspired countless souls, both inside and outside the dance studio.

Published

6 days ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Reginald Ray-Savage brought the old-school teaching techniques he learned in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company to the youth at the Oakland School for the Arts in 2003. Courtesy photo.

Special to The Post

Reginald Ray-Savage – dancer, choreographer, and beloved teacher, mentor, and inspiration to many – passed away on May 17. The Oakland School for the Arts dance instructor was 67.

Born Reginald Ray, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept. 5, 1958, he formally adopted the name ‘Savage,’ to honor the great Archie Savage, his mentor at Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center where his dance training journey began in East St. Louis, Illinois.

He soon started dancing professionally with Katherine Dunham Dance Company, making dance a way of life. His grit, tenacity, and notorious work ethic brought him scholarships to train at multiple prestigious dance institutions, including The Ailey School (NYC) and Ruth Page School of Dance (Chicago), under the direction of acclaimed ballet instructor Larry Long and Dolores Lipinski-Long.

He danced with several companies including Joel Hall Dance Company, Ruth Page Ballet Chicago, Lyric Opera, Chicago City Ballet, American Festival Ballet, and touring productions of “Music Man” and “A Chorus Line”.

In 1989, Savage moved to Oakland where he started teaching seven days a week, amassing a devoted following that was attracted to his no-nonsense, impassioned, and effective old-school teaching style.

In 1992, at the insistence of his committed core of students, he founded Savage Jazz Dance Company (SJDC). Over a span of 30 years, Savage produced more than 100 original works, and tour SJDC nationally and internationally, performing at Casa del Jazz in Rome to a packed house and rave reviews—the first dance company to receive such an invitation.

Savage built SJDC into one of the Bay Area’s most respected dance companies, creating a signature style known for its combination of disciplined training, blended with rich artistic musical expression, and raw energy.

In 2003, Savage joined the Oakland School for the Arts as chair of the School of Dance. Over the next two decades, he created, built, and maintained a strong dance program, recognized, and respected by other dance institutions for forging well-trained and resilient dancers and human beings.

The depth of Savage’s tough love and care, and the skill of his teaching and mentoring are reflected in the careers of his students who have gone on to dance with the San Francisco Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Janet Jackson, Ariana Grande, and companies across the globe.

Mark Kitaoka, a photographer hired by Savage in 2016, posted a living eulogy on the dance instructor.

“When I see the self-pride he builds in his students I am constantly impressed that people like Savage still exist in our ‘meme’ society,” Kitaoka wrote. “The kids he mentors are fiercely loyal to one another and I’m certain his methods teach each of those kids to put aside social status, race and gender and is replaced by solid loyalty for other souls.

“What Savage contributes to our world cannot be completely summed up in a few meager paragraphs but can be seen in the countless lives of those he has touched. Because of him, our world, and the world of the future is both a richer and better place.

Reginald Ray-Savage will forever be missed, remembered, and lovingly quoted. He is survived by his beloved wife, Alison Hurley, his sister, Sonia, and his brothers, Pierre, and Andre. May his inextinguishable spirit and impact live on in all the lives he touched.

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Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

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1 week ago

June 20, 2026

Oakland Post

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Books

Book Review: Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me

Though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 17, 2026

bpusa-syndication

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Simon & Schuster, SRP: $29.00, Page Count: 304 pages

Sticks and stones may break my bones.

You know the rest of that childhood rhyme, and you know it’s not true: words have meaning, and they can cut like a knife. And yet, though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

The college lecture was supposed to have been about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

It was supposed to be a lively discussion, but unintentionally it quickly veered off course. When a White student quoted a movie line featuring the “n-word,” the room went quiet, and Professor Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor panicked.

She’d grown up hearing that word, and seeing it, and she’d experienced the painful feelings attached to it. She knew who wrote that movie line. It was her father, Richard Pryor.

In her first few years, Pryor spent most of her time in a White world, hearing her mother’s tales of her larger-than-life father, and trying to grasp meaning in her father’s albums, peppered as they were with a word that was off-limits to her.

When she was six, she met her father for the first time. She began to visit him regularly.

It was fun at her Dad’s house; though he was sometimes moody, he taught her to fish and play dominoes. She became close with her siblings, fearful of her great-grandmother, and confused about a word that her father’s uncles threw around like a beach ball. It was a forbidden word at her mother’s house, but her father used it. Differently. Often.

The word hurt. She knew first-hand that it did.

“The word became a degrading slur that shackled all Black people together into a single, inescapable tribe,” she says.

So why was it okay for certain people to say it?

Knowing that, in the years since Richard Pryor’s accident and his death from multiple sclerosis, he’s become somewhat of a legend. It is a very satisfying thing, isn’t it? So is reading about him, especially from the viewpoint of one of his seven children. But his is not the only story you get inside “Something We Said.”

Wrapped around the life of Richard Pryor is the life of a word that straddles a line between danger and provocation, a word that author Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor refuses to say or even print. As she tells readers about her father and her loving-but-difficult relationship with him, she warily circles that word, as if it might bite. You may cringe, but she weighs it carefully, helping readers see it as a chameleon before always bringing us back to her father, his work, and his life before and after her and that word.

It’s a push-pull balance that holds readers fast, and keeps them there. It’s perfect for fans of this genre, or Richard Pryor, or of language – and it’s going to make you think. If you want a good memoir this week, one that may send you to your old album collection, “Something We Said” is rock-solid.