“It’s mainly to expose my community to jazz music,” Woodard explained, “and provide an alternative to what’s in popular culture-or what’s in popular culture in the general media.”īorn 61 years ago in Kansas City, Missouri, Woodard grew up in Iowa City, where his father, Fredrick Woodard, Sr., was a professor of African American and World Studies and English at the University of Iowa.
Cultural Council, the City of Boston, and the Mabel Louise Riley Foundation.
#IOWA CITY JAZZ FEST FREE#
This Saturday (July 30), the free event will return to its original location, at the recently renovated Mary Hannon Playground on Dudley Street, with support from the Mass. In one sense, that’s the goal of the Dudley Jazz Festival, launched in 2016 by the group’s leader and main organizer, Fred Woodard, Jr. If the music has roots and branches, what comes off the tree has to find its way back home. He settles in with probing taps on drums and cymbals, perched right near the tank and a wall crowded with the faces of jazz icons-Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, James Lee Jamerson, Lionel Hampton, and Sonny Rollins. “It’s going to be an interesting night,” says percussionist Matthew Williams, after gulps from a gallon jug of water. In a setting furnished with an oil tank, washer and dryer, and shelves crammed with vinyl record albums, there’s barely enough room for the jazz quartet. As the sun goes down on a hot Wednesday in July, members of the Fred Woodard Collective make their way through the backyard for a basement rehearsal at a house in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood.