Boston - Worcester Jazz Hero
In stressing that she is “a volunteer host” on Worcester, Massachusetts Public Radio WICN-FM, Jazz Hero Bonnie Johnson makes an important point about local heroes we often overlook: the people who effectively donate their time and knowledge via unpaid slots on public and community radio. Johnson’s “Colors of Jazz” will have occupied the Sunday noon-to-4 p.m. slot for 14 years come July, and in the process the Worcester native has become the area’s prominent jazz messenger.
This was not a path Johnson always felt destined to take. “I sang in a traveling church choir from age seven to 17, so I’ve been in service all my life,” she recalls, “but my era was hip-hop and I spent my teenage years collecting 12” singles and deejaying. My mother had jazz records, but to her it was just music and she didn’t call it `jazz.’ To me, jazz meant a type of dance.”
That changed after Johnson attended Howard University as an engineering major and became attracted to the ballads and slow jams on the university radio station program “The Quiet Storm.’ From there, she listened further afield. “I would hear some classics and realize, `Oh, my mother had that record.’”
While Johnson has put her degrees to work in what some would call her day job, she feels that “Colors of Jazz” has provided her with an opportunity to become a community voice. In addition to her board work with Music Worcester, Meet Boston and JazzBoston and her efforts producing a concert of women artists to mark Women’s History Months, she finds jazz becoming relevant to her many non-musical efforts. “My mantra is `Jazz is the passport to the world,’” she says, “and whenever I’m invited to speak, whatever the subject, I start with that point and go from there.”
She is determined to build her audience and the music’s, to teach and to learn. “I never planned to build bridges between people. A bridge between musicians and listeners, that’s a privilege. Music is a great way to broaden your network and to learn. When fans and people I interview mention music I don’t know, I always check it out. I learn from the stories people share.” Just as Jazz Hero Bonnie Johnson’s listeners learn from “Colors of Jazz.”
—Bob Blumenthal
Author, JJA board member
