Through Jazz, Reaching Students

By Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 12, 2007

Collaboration is the name of the band. The music is jazz.

The group's history goes back 30 years, and the members share a passion for music and friendship. They moonlight as a band, and they work as teachers and school administrators in public schools in the Washington area.

Ladies and gentlemen, Tracey Cutler on saxophone. He teaches instrumental music at Hyattsville Middle School. Kenneth Dickerson, the assistant principal at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, on drums. Glenn Douglas, who teaches jazz at Wilson, on keyboards. On the bass guitar, Yusef Chisholm, the instrumental music teacher at Hardy Middle School. Vocals come courtesy of his wife, Lori Williams-Chisholm, who teaches at Wilson. And on guitars, Leland Edgecombe, a professor of architecture at the University of the District of Columbia and Prince George's Community College.

They have been collaborating for most of their lives.

Cutler and Dickerson have been best friends since elementary school. They went to junior and senior high together, and they both graduated from the University of the District of Columbia. They met Douglas in junior high, and they spent their spare time practicing music together.

"We did it as much because we were friends more than just to form a band," Cutler, 48, said.

They grew up in the District, in neighborhoods where drug dealers and crime ruled at night.

Worried that the streets would curse their futures, and motivated by their music teachers, they harmonized as a way to escape. Unlike many of their classmates, they retreated to the basements in their houses and played up a storm.

"Our streets were mean," Cutler said. "It was crazy. It was very easy to get caught in the streets."

A few years later, recognizing the positive impact of music on their lives, they decided to present their work to the public: Their collaboration morphed into Collaboration.

They were in high school when they gave their first public performance in 1977. Today, they have fans in several states.

In the early 1970s, when the band was still in the making, they played many genres of music. But it was jazz that stuck.

Douglas, 48, recalled the turning point in 1975, when jazz legend Billy Taylor performed at Roosevelt Senior High School, where Douglas was a student.

"When I was playing before, I felt that there was another side of music that I wasn't touching," he said. After he listened to Taylor perform, he said that he knew what was missing, "it was definitely jazz."

Now, they travel around the country performing four or five times a month. Often they appear at one another's schools, "to expose our students to good music."

The benefits are twofold: "It lets the students know that we are not only teachers who give grades. We are trying to pass this to other generations," Dickerson said.

Chisholm, 45, believes so strongly that music has the power to change destinies that he has reached into his pocket to buy guitars and give them to students who can't afford them. "Because music saved my life, I believe it can save other lives," he said.

The band members view their music as an obligation as well as a pleasure.

"We can't be selfish," Cutler said. "You have to lend yourself to society. We want the music to reach people and change things. Through creating an atmosphere that is relaxing and peaceful, we take away the anxiety of the place we live in. It creates a glimmer of hope for young people."

In 1994, Dickerson was named teacher of the year for his outstanding achievement in music. It came with a $50,000 award in cash and equipment, which he said they are still using to teach students.

The years of hard work have paid off at school, too. The band mates have noticed the effect of music in students' performance in school and in their careers after graduation. Music disciplines students and strengthens their personality, Dickerson said. "One common fact with all the students is that they are all productive citizens.

"The discipline they've got from music have made them better," he said. "It made us better."

Sometimes people asked the teachers whether it was wise to walk the path of music and make educating the audience their main task. But they do not doubt their mission.

"The true success to us is about helping other people," Dickerson, 48, said. In the future, "people are going to talk about your contribution and what you did for them."

The group will perform Sunday at the Islander Caribbean Restaurant and Lounge, 1201 U St. NW.