‘Music was in the community’: Ernest Dawkins celebrates the history of the Englewood Jazz Festival

Growing up in Englewood, Chatham and Washington Park in the 1960s and ‘70s, Ernest Dawkins said he knew he’d be a musician.“I always had a dream that I was playing the saxophone and I didn’t even know what a saxophone was when I was a child,” Dawkins said on the Rundown podcast. Dawkins is one of the world’s premiere saxophonists and composers. He’s the leader of several ensembles, including the New Horizons Ensemble and the Live the Spirit residency projects. He’s also the founder and director of the Englewood Jazz Festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary on Sept. 19-21. Ahead of the festival, host Erin Allen sat down with Dawkins to talk about what attendees can expect – including an encore of Dawkins’ jazz-poetry opera called “Paul Robeson: Man Of The People” – and how his South Side communities led him to a life in music.