After getting a great response from the stuff we posted about the 2008 Detroit Jazz Festival, decided to see what we could find (in the YouTube archive) about previous Detroit Jazz Festivals.

Here’s a sweet compilation of scenes and sounds from the Detroit Jazz Festival 2007.

Watch closely, and you’ll see Mr. Travelin Blues show up on this flick too!

Mary Oliver and Wolter Wierbos at Detroit Jazz Festival 2008

You can find more photos by following Juan N’s photo stream on Flickr.

This photo was taken at the Detroit International Jazz Festival on September 1, 2008

This is Derek Trucks and his band playing “I Wish I Knew” –  recorded live at the 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival, September 1, 2008.

The full title of the song is “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”.

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say …

The song was written by Dr. Billy Taylor (along with Dick Dallas?) back in 1954. It was originally recorded by Nina Simone in 1967 on her Silk and Soul album. Billy Taylor also recorded his own instrumental version back in 1967. He said that he wrote the song (perhaps his best known composition) for his daughter Kim, describing it as a very spiritual song.

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” was used as a theme song on the BBC, a theme song for the 2004 Olympics, as music for a Coca-Cola commercial, and also served as an anthem for the civil-rights movement.

The video quality (on this youtube video) is not that great, but I think it’s the perfect way to close out this labor day weekend I Love Detroit series, and as Mike Mattison sings at the end of the video — Everyone Should Be Free!

It’s just like Donald Miller said in Blue Like Jazz: “jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery…  it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul … It is a music birthed out of freedom.”

View and download larger version on Flickr Photo

This is Derek Trucks and his band playing at the Detroit 2008 Jazz  Festival with the Millender Center in the background. Derek first impressed the  music industry playing guitar as an 11 year old child prodigy. By age 12 we was playing professionally and touring.

Billy Holiday Review Featuring Sky Covington on Flickr

Sky Covington sings at Pontiac, Michigan Arts, Beats, and Eats Festival on August 31, 2008.  Sky typically performs the songs of Billy Holiday (1915-1959), who was an American jazz singer and song writer. Billy Holiday is perhaps best remembered for song, Lady Sings the Blues, which has become a jazz standard.

You can see more photos by following Cherie S’s  photostream on Flickr.

Detroit 2008 Jazz Fest on Flickr

Here’s another photo of Sean Dobbins of the Modern Jazz Messengers.

Detroit 2008 Jazz Fest on Flickr

This is Sean Dobbins and the Modern Jazz Messengers, on Saturday night, at the 2008 Detroit Jazz Festival.

Making friends at the Jazz fest on Flickr

Jazz Hands on Flickr

Jazz Piano Art - found at Detroit River Days

Back in April, I started talking about creativity, innovation, improvisation … and how it relates to jazz and the blues… meditating on the mysteries of musical creativity  … compared to creativity , innovation, and risk taking in other domains (like art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, computer programming, product design, web design, etc.) … pondering the amazing results that often happen when a skilled musician begins  to improvise with a good idea and the right attitude.

Surprising success and fantastic results can happen in your life (or your business) when you understand how it all works.  Innovation – It’s not a new idea, and I’m not the only one talking about this. I’m just improvising on a great theme.

Nick Sieger (no relation to the Detroit rocker Bob Seger) wrote a great article in July called Jazzers and Programmers. I found Nick’s article while researching some things about Ruby on Rails, and JRuby.  NIck describes the history and styles of jazz and compares it to the history and styles of programming. He talks about jazz fundamentals, and compares the rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums)  to programming libraries, frameworks, and patterns. He compares Bass-Drums-Piano to Model-View-Controller. It’s really great stuff — and even includes a musical score from one of the jazz standards, Blue Monk.

Nick spiced up the article with nifty quotes from famous jazz musicians like: “It’s taken me my whole life to know what not to play” – Dizzy Gillespie … “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple” – Charles Mingus  …  I won’t steal anymore of Nick’s thunder. Go read the whole article.

Are you catching my drift? We’re not done with this jam session yet. I’m just taking a breather in between songs.