Starting February 1, 2009, Inside the Circle will present a month-long series called Jazz 101. As most of you know, February is Black History Month. Jazz is not only one of the major historical contributions of African-Americans, but it's also considered "America's Classical Music" because it was born and bred solely in the United States.

The Jazz 101 series won't be meant as a be-all, end-all look at the music. It will be designed more as an introductory "course" allowing everyone to get an understanding of where the music came from and allow for an end of the month discussion on where the music might be headed. There won't be drawn-out 4 page long posts with all of this detailed historical information. It's swaying away from that and will instead present bite-sized information, photographs, social playlists, recommendations (books, albums, etc), trivia (did you know?) and other things.

On a more personal note, as a student of jazz (it's what my college degree says) it will allow me to re-connect with a music I've kind of gotten distant from. It's a funny thing when you love music so much to have the Zune Pass come along. I've been so involved listening to other genres, styles and artists that there have been times I've neglected one of my most favorite forms of music. So this February will present me a chance to reconnect (pardon me if I get a little teary eyed).

In addition, my Zune Card (starting today) will be playing nothing but jazz for the entire month. I won't even be syncing my device for as long as possible, to allow nothing but jazz to appear on my Zune Card. Those of you with Zune Pass subscriptions can sync my card and constantly have different types of jazz to listen to and sample.

Feel free to leave me comments on Jazz 101 posts, through Inside the Circle's email address or messages to me on the Social about what you're learning and what you would like to know about as the month progresses.

I remember being a TA for Music 78A and Music 78B. Those were the non-major courses in Jazz History at the University of California, Irvine (Go Anteaters!). I would always ask students when they came into the course what did they expect to learn in the 20 weeks between the beginning of A in the winter and the end of B in the spring. 95% of the time they said that we'd spend 10 weeks on Miles Davis and another 10 weeks on John Coltrane. It's amazing how many students, at the end of taking both classes, came to me with a new appreciation for the music once they found out a bit about the historical context surrounding it.

So again, I hope that the Jazz 101 presentation is informative and engaging. I'll try my best not to bore you too much, but again feel free to let me know what you would like to know about specifically and I'll try to address them in the course of the series.

So be here on Sunday for the opening ceremonies (read: Sunday Treasures music video).

Note: The picture used is the infamous Harlem picture of many of the most famous jazz musicians. The photo was taken by Art Kane. Please visit his website to find out more about this extraordinary man. If you click on 'harlem' the image on his site includes a mouse-over display of the musicians in the photo.