“Grown folks music.” It’s a phrase proudly used more and more these days to describe styles of music that are otherwise deemed commercially irrelevant if not embraced by the hotbed demographic of 18 – 34 year olds. Thankfully, there is life after thirty-four and that moniker proclaims, “Hey, we’re here too and you young’ uns can have ‘your’ music, we’ve got our own.” But is there really such a thing as “grown folks music” or for that matter, “young people’s music?” Can’t what you like be more about exposure and simply what moves you both literally and figuratively regardless of age?
Jazz is certainly one of those genres that, for the most part, lives within the arena of “grown folks music,” but no one told a young Keanna Faircloth that when she fell in love with the music. “I was introduced to jazz probably when I was eleven years old,” says Faircloth. The recently tapped Afternoon Jazz host at fabled jazz radio station WBGO, grew up playing classical piano, but admired the sounds of jazz she heard early on. It’s something her parents astutely recognized and gladly fostered. “I was kind of a weird kid. I would just want to sit around and listen to jazz. The first album I remember I fell in love with was Miles Davis’, Kind Of Blue. I remember being in middle school, just sitting and studying that record,” she recalls as the album cover hangs prominently on the wall behind her. “My parents really did just nurture my love of jazz and I think I loved jazz even more than they did. And they would take me to clubs. I was the only kid in Blues Alley in DC where I grew up.” She even remembers having the chance to play for legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck when she was 12. “I got to play (acclaimed track) “Take Five” or at least my attempt at playing “Take Five” for Dave,” she jokes. “I really love all types of music. I find beauty in almost every genre of music, but jazz is near and dear to my heart.”
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