
“WBGO is a miracle radio station and I’m going to tell you why.”
But before Dorthaan Kirk — Newark’s First Lady of Jazz, with her silver braids behind her headband and her welcoming smile and her eyes that have seen more of this music than most people will ever hear with their ears — does that, let’s go back to 1979. Newark had for 12 years been recovering from the riots of ’67 — six days, 26 dead, hundreds injured, swaths of the city destroyed. Resentment smoldering long after the fires were extinguished. Maybe, by 1979, Newark had not yet recovered, or maybe the trends that precipitated the riots just settled in to stay: capital flight, de-industrialization, rising unemployment, dwindling opportunity. Kirk had for two years lived with the loss of her husband, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a virtuoso whose cometary life still glows across a certain period of jazz history. Continue Reading →