It was a full house at the Des Moines Art Center last Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of fans and supporters came out to witness the 50th Anniversary performance of Penny Furgerson’s amazing Gateway Dance Company. I first met Penny Furgerson and her dear, devoted and hugely talented husband the late Lee Furgerson Sr. in 1974 along with their three boys Lee, G. Thomas and John when we were all beginning to work with the Iowa Arts Council under then-director Nan Stillians.
50-years ago, The Iowa Arts Council and the Des Moines Art Center were central to my process of meeting and working with Penny and so many other Iowa artists of that period. Blessed with the Iowa Arts Council’s system of performing arts grants, and augmented with an art center Auditorium as a showcase venue, Central Iowa created a vital system for nurturing Iowa’s multidisciplinary array of world class artists.
Stepping beyond my rock/blues band foundation, I began to draw on new sources of creative challenge. Fajilawa, an incredible, almost mystical ensemble led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gary Gray and flautist Linda Dillon was part of a new experience.
I saw Fajilawa perform at the Art Center’s Levitt Auditorium for the first time in the mid-70’s. Gary and Linda created beautiful performances with virtuosity grounded in timeless traditions of storytelling and mystery. I joined them as a vocalist and bassist switching from my electric bass to an acoustic bass guitar from Mexico called the Guitarron.
Gary built and played his own Mbiras, a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. He was a very effective vocalist too. Wendy Allen, pictured below at right, was an incredibly flexible and creative percussionist.
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The late 70’s were a relatively positive period for the Arts in Education. America entered into a cultural ‘free-trade-agreement” with the world where American Dance, Jazz music , Theater, Sculpture, Design, Architecture, and Film-making were giving and taking, depositing and borrowing, learning while also teaching, listening, collaborating, planning and dreaming with local educators both high school and collegiate. America was, in many ways, a setter of trends but in turn, America would’ve been dead in the water without African-Asian-Middle Eastern and Central American influences, matrices and stories for inspiration and templating.
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In 1979, Larry Ridley the NEA’s Jazz-Artist-In-Schools (JAIS) Executive Director came to Iowa to kickoff year One of the Program. It was a landmark event for the performing arts in Iowa. Local teaching artists including trumpeter Willie Thomas, composer and teaching artist Marcia Miget with yours truly led workshops with high school Jazz musicians from Des Moines and surrounding communities.
It was a thrill for everyone from students to Arts Council administrators to the Visiting Jazz Artists from New York City. Look closely and you’ll see Penny and Lee’s sons Lee Jr. on drums and G. Thomas, Saxophone in there ready to learn about the music and their place in it.
Upper Row: Seated Larry Ridley Bill Fielder, Marcia Miget, Dartanyan Brown Standing: Horace Arnold Charles Rouse, Ken Barron- Tom Furgerson - Willie Thomas Second Row left Second Row Center: Ridley et. al Second Row Right: Tom Fergurson jamming with workshop leader Dartanyan
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Upper Left: Lee Furgerson Jr. drums with Horacee Arnold Upper Center Pianist Kenny Barron Upper Right; AIS director, bassist Larry Ridley Lower Left: Vibraphonist Ken Jolls
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Upper Row Left: Omaha Flautist Preston Love Sr.
Bottom Row Left and Right: The Furgerson Brothers play while (center) pianist Kenny Barron and Preston love listen and offer advice.
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Why anyone would cut off incredible summer experiences for Iowa youth is beyond my imagining.
I will always give credit to Ridley, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Barron and the scores of other Jazz artists for taking on the project of crafting a more comprehensive approach to the study of Jazz music. An approach which demanded that Jazz be taken as seriously as any European-centered music. Jazz music, An American artform worthy of intellectual study while also providing emotional balm to the soul to the listener and player.
That the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) and the NEA(National Education Association) agreed that the nation’s children should have an awareness of Jazz music was deeply significant.
However, we went a step beyond, by teaching the music yes, but more importantly highlighting the history and cultural matrix from which those art forms originated. It was only then that you could understand, contextualize and hopefully internalize for yourself the music’s relevance to your life regardless of race, color or creed.
Those 10 years (1975-85) represented a fertile ground for Jazz in Education. By the time the Reagan Administration defunded our program in 1985 (remember “defund the Left”? ) Jazz programs were beginning to proliferate nationwide. Today in 2025 it is a rare middle- or high school in America that doesn’t have a jazz band (or two).
So yes, I’m gratified to have had a part of that growth but I at the same time, I feel a special sense of discomfort and of loss when I read how folks supposedly tasked with offering educational opportunity, so obviously (and willingly) flout their responsibility to offer students such rich and available summer opportunities to grow.
It’s been an incredible 50 years since Penny and I began our separate-but-related efforts at bringing people together through the arts. Doing this work for 50 years has only reinforced for me how blessed I have been to share my talent, with so many people willing to create, to dream, and to understand for themselves what this creativity thing is all about.
Amen, and Huzzah to Penny, her family and the Gateway Dance Company
Thanks for sharing that bit of Des Moines jazz history!
John
Thanks for the history lesson and the reenforcement of the need for diverse and soul based education! During that ten year period 1975-1985 I was teaching in southwest Iowa. It was not at the same expressive level as Des Moines, but at least close enough to Omaha and the Old Market. Thankfully my three young people were very up to date on the music scene and kept me somewhat educated. Thus, mixed in with my CD's by Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams and a nice collection of jazz pianists, I have Queen and BR5-49. In my experience beginning with traditional classical, through my father's 1920 and 1930 jazz record collection, music done with intelligence and soul is timeless. Thanks for your recognition of those qualities.