Julian Jackson gets Les Sher’s Jazz Scholarship

Humboldt Area Foundation every year offers a scholarship to people spreading the love and knowledge of jazz in the community. KMUD is proud to announce that our very own Julian Jackson won it this year.

The following is what Julian submitted for the scholarship:

I have listened to Lester’s jazz show on KMUD for as long as I could remember, though I have to admit, despite already being a part of KMUD by this point, until the summer of my freshman year I didn’t think I really liked jazz, only thinking of it as the slow cocktail bar jazz of a drummer, bassist, and a seemingly one scaled trumpet player. Then, as I’m sure is many rock fan’s introduction to the genera, I stumbled across Herbie Hancock’s song “Watermelon Man”. Never had I known that jazz could be this funky! This led me down a path of Jazz fusion discovery, from Lonnie Liston smith to Masayoshi Takanaka, until I discovered Alice Coltrane. I had always loved more abstract psychedelic or spiritual music, and what is considered her “spiritual jazz” will take you on such a journey unlike no other. She then sort of helped me find the beauty in the more mellow old school jazz, which I discovered upon close inspection, actually does get as exciting as the fusion stuff, just with the more classic instruments, and sometimes a Sax really can shred harder than a guitar, only to be looked past as lounge music.

Now, I have been hosting Lester Leaps in, on every other Sunday from 7-9pm on KMUD for this past half of a year, and I plan to do it until December of this year when I move away from Southern Humboldt to pursue my Journalism Career, which will certainly include plenty of Jazz related stories thanks to my love of jazz and background in music journalism at KMUD.