The 11th annual Cambridge Jazz Festival at Danehy Park this Saturday and Sunday will be about more than music, said Larry Ward, executive director of the Cambridge Jazz Foundation.
“I always tell people ‘music is what we do,’” Ward said. “I’m never worried about the music … it’s ‘how do we do other things that engage the community and make people feel good and figure out ways to enhance their experiences at the Cambridge Jazz Festival?”
This year’s events include a music therapy session led from the stage by Berklee faculty, children’s singalong sessions and a pop-up museum showcasing the evolution of jazz. Attendees will also get to enjoy food from various cuisines — Jamaican, Indian, Latin American and much more — and purchase merchandise from a variety of vendors, several of whom are young entrepreneurs between the ages of 12 and 18.
“I want [attendees] to get a sense of being comfortable,” Ward said. “And not just enjoy themselves but enjoy the experience that the festival provides.”
Ward, a former Cambridge city councillor, co-founded the festival in 2014 with Ron Savage, the foundation’s artistic director. The festival has run every year since then – excluding 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 isolations.
Making jazz accessible for all
Ward expects 20,000 people to attend this weekend’s festival. The events run from noon to 6 p.m. each day. This year’s lineup of eight acts includes artists such as Kavita Shah, TRIAD+, FAZZ and The Tia Fuller Quartet. The festival is free to all – the costs are offset by a $150,000 fundraising effort that takes an entire year to pull off. Fundraising, Ward said, is challenging but worth it to make jazz accessible to all.
“Jazz is expensive, to go out and pay at a club to listen,” Ward said. “We wanted to make sure that everybody was exposed to the music in some form. It’s the only … form of music that was born and bred in America.”
This year’s festival is run by 85 volunteers. Maria Amalia Quesada, operations and systems director of the Cambridge Jazz Foundation, said some of this year’s volunteers include students from Panama and Costa Rica studying in Boston for the summer.
“They also wanted to join the festival team and gain some experience,” she said. “It’s a huge family effort.”
Savage and Amalia Quesada are both musicians: Savage is a drummer (and the interim provost at Berklee College of Music) and Quesada a vocalist. Amalia Quesada said the fact that the festival is operated by a musician – as opposed to business executives more focused on making money – makes it unique and more authentic.
“We always have local artists, but it’s also very rooted in supporting the local ecosystem,” she said. “[It promotes] better treatment for artists as well, because someone who has been on the other side can also understand all the nonsense,” she added, referring to the intention behind selecting audio systems, instruments, space and pay rates.
CAMMY awards and scholarships
The festival also recognizes the city’s “unsung heroes:” it gives the CAMMY to people the organizers believe are making a positive impact in the community. This year’s recipients include Tia Fuller, who’s spent over 10 years as Beyoncé’s lead saxophonist, and Keith Mascoll, an actor and educator who’s created a multidisciplinary project that aims to help Black boys and men address, process and heal from trauma. Others to be recognized:Acting Police Commissioner Pauline Wells; Pardis Saffarri, the city’s director of economic opportunity and development; Jo-Ann Fergus, executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association; and Anne Bost, one of the festival’s long-time video coordinators.
Ward said his team honors people who are respected in their community and are “doing the work.” That “work” is making the lives of others better, regardless of what they actually do.
“I don’t care if you pick up garbage, I don’t care if you write music, whatever it is you do, you’re gonna enhance the life of somebody else,” Ward said.
It also gives out two $1,000 scholarships to graduating high school students. The scholarships, which are supported through the same funds that support the festival, will go to Laurent Valentin and Lakya Farmer, two Cambridge Rindge and Latin graduates who will be attending college in the fall.
The idea for student scholarships was born from Ward’s own experience at Boston University, where he didn’t have a lot of money and would lie to his peers to get out of going to dinner. He said the scholarships are “pizza money” that he hopes takes students out of awkward situations.
“Being social is a huge part of college,” Ward said. “So we give them a thousand dollars … and allow them to use it as they see fit, hoping that they’ll be responsible.”
The Cambridge Jazz Foundation has already started a donation campaign for next year’s festival, something it doesn’t normally do. Organizers hope to raise $10,000 by Sunday night as a step toward ensuring next year’s festival will remain free.
“The reality is that it’s getting harder and harder to get funding,” Amalia Quesada said. “It’s good for people to realize that this takes a lot of effort.”
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