“She’s a historian with the music and what it means for generations. Detroit is still a great place to be from and to come through as a musician. Some places people leave, and you say it used to be a great music city. Detroit continues to have that legacy. The fact that Marion keeps up with its history and keeps it going is important to who she is and to the way that this music was originally passed on, through true mentoring. All of this is Marion Hayden. You can’t separate the music from the culture, and Marion hasn’t.”
—Regina Carter
A new monograph just landed from the Kresge Foundation honoring jazz artist Marion Hayden, the Kresge Eminent Artist of 2025. With contributions by Nichole M. Christian, Mark Stryker, Regina Carter, Bill Harris, Melba Joyce Boyd, and Lillian Walker. Marion Hayden: daughter of the way is a treasure trove of photographs, prose, poetry and memory. The book’s 10”x10” dimension looks like a classic album from the be-bop era and is packed with images from concerts, rehearsals, posters, albums and Hayden’s own family album.
A special insert: “Lessons in Lineage” is a beautiful tribute to Hayden’s local mentors in her own words that include Jazz greats Marcus Belgrave, Wendell Harrison, Kamau Kenyatta, Ray Brooks, Naima Shamborguer, Teddy Harris, Jr., Donald Walden, Charlie Gabriel and Kenn Cox. In this excerpt Hayden gives praise to Cox who took over his position teaching African-American music at the University of Michigan:
“Before he died, Kenn (Cox) was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, teaching a course in African American music history. When he passed, I was asked to take his place. That was my first opportunity to teach a music history class at the university level. I was able to get his syllabus from when he taught the class, which gave me wonderful insights into how he saw the music. He actually taught music history retrograde. A lot of people teach, starting with the most ancient. He started with the most recent things in African American music, hip hop, and then the class looks back to where each of the musical trends evolved from, ending in Africa.
I decided to teach that way myself. Kenn understood how wonderful that is for students. It reminds them that this music has deep roots.”
Mark Stryker points to Detroit Jazz City, a 2015 album on Blue Note “a celebration of the city’s jazz tradition,” he writes, where, “Hayden isn’t just in the groove here. She’s defining it, almost imperceptibly leading her gifted but less experienced colleagues to the promised land of the pocket.”
And here is a live virtuoso performance from 11 years ago at the Concert of Colors in Detroit where Hayden not only curated the entire concert but leads a big band rendition of her composition “Uncrowned King.”
The monograph Marion Hayden: daughter of the way is available for free at Book Beat and download online at the Kresge Foundation.