Detroit Sound

“Preservation as Resistance” is a week-long public exhibition centered around Black Detroit jazz history. Developed as part of the University of Michigan’s “Arts and Resistance” theme semester, the series will include oral histories, storytelling, workshops and a culminating performance led by bandleader, drummer and storyteller, Ali Jackson. DSC will commission Jackson to reinterpret music related to the salvaged collection of the Graystone International Jazz Museum – a community-based Black music archive whose collection DSC preserved in 2015. Jackson and his ensemble will lead a public workshop and performance that will highlight the role of reinterpretation in preserving our history and resisting the erasure of Black musicians’ contributions. Free and open to the public, and held in an accessible and historic venue in Detroit, this event will welcome an intergenerational community: elders who created history firsthand as well as young people hoping to shape our future.