{"id":74448,"date":"2025-11-21T16:30:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=74448"},"modified":"2025-11-21T16:30:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:30:27","slug":"marion-hayden-a-detroit-jazz-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2025\/11\/21\/marion-hayden-a-detroit-jazz-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Marion Hayden: a Detroit Jazz Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cShe’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.\u201d
\n\u2014Regina Carter<\/p>\n

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<\/em> is a treasure trove of photographs, prose, poetry and memory. The book\u2019s 10\u201dx10\u201d dimension looks like a classic album from the be-bop era and is packed with images from concerts, rehearsals, posters, albums and Hayden\u2019s own family album. <\/p>\n

A special insert: \u201cLessons in Lineage\u201d is a beautiful tribute to Hayden\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore 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.<\/p>\n

I decided to teach that way myself. Kenn understood how wonderful that is for students. It reminds them that this music has deep roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Stryker points to Detroit Jazz City<\/em>, a 2015 album on Blue Note \u201ca celebration of the city\u2019s jazz tradition,\u201d he writes, where, \u201cHayden 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.\u201d<\/p>\n