Tag Archives: Teacher Musicians

Hip hop musician J-Live: He was once a junior high English teacher

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Hip hop artist J-Live was once a junior high school English teacher.

Fans of hip hop music may be familiar with an internationally known rap artist known as J-Live. The musician’s music has been popular with listeners of hip hop for over 20 years. But did you know that he was once a junior high school English teacher?

J-Live was born on February 22, 1976, in Spanish Harlem in New York City. His given name was Jean-Jacques Cadet. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Albany, State University of New York.

After earning his degree, J-Live taught junior high school English, first in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and then in Bushwick, Brooklyn. His career as an educator spanned from 1998 to 2002. “The degree in English sorta gave me the leg up,” J-Live once explained. “The experience teaching English just gave me something to talk about and a whole other perspective in terms of my experiences. And how to write songs that hit home when you have an intended message,” he continued.

Early in his teaching career, J-Live began to make hip hop records. The musician, who also uses the stage name Justice Allah, has released eight albums to date. His second album, All of the Above, released in 2002, sold 30,000 copies. In addition to creating hip hop music, J-Live has worked as an emcee, DJ, and producer. He is  actively involved in workshops, classes, and speaking engagements. In fact, he is known worldwide as a “hip hop teacher.”

Will J-Live ever return to teaching? “I am kind of pivoting into a more educational space,” he admits. “I’ve had the good fortune and opportunity to do some speaking events and workshops, and the opportunity to teach with Next-Level Hip-Hop, which is a State Department program run by the University of North Carolina,” he says. And, “I’m teaching DJing in Croatia for a couple of weeks.”

To learn more about J-Live, you can read this online article at Prefix.

Art Garfunkel: Famous musician and former high school math teacher

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Art Garfunkel: Famous musician and former high school math teacher

Almost everyone has heard of the famous musician Art Garfunkel of Simon & Garfunkel fame. The duo brought us such famous hits as “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Sound of Silence,” and “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.” But did you know that Art was once a high school math teacher?

Art was born on November 5, 1941, in Forest Hills in Queens, New York. He was the middle of three sons born to Jewish parents, Rose and Jacob Garfunkel. Art earned his Bachelor’s degree in Art History at Columbia College in 1965. He earned his Master’s degree in Mathematics at Columbia University in 1967. He also completed coursework towards a doctorate in Mathematics Education.

Art met Paul Simon when they were in the sixth grade together at Forest Hills Junior Elementary School in Queens. The two were cast in a school production of Alice in Wonderland, and the long-lasting musical partnership blossomed from there. As adults, Simon & Garfunkel won five Grammy awards together, two in 1968 and three in 1970. In 1990, Art and Paul were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The celebrity once confided that if he had not had a career in music, he would have been happy with a career as a teacher. “I loved the curriculum. I loved the act of teaching,” Art once confided. In fact, in 1971-1972, after his breakup with Paul Simon, Art taught math to high school students at the Litchfield Preparatory School. The school is a private academy located in Litchfield, Connecticut.

To learn more about Art and his experience in the classroom, you can read this online the article at Forbes Magazine.

Noise pop musician and former teacher Alexis Krauss

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Former teacher and noise pop musician Alexis Krauss of the band Sleigh Bells.

There are many talented individuals in the entertainment industry who have also served as classroom teachers. One of these is Alexis Krauss, a singer and songwriter who from the noise pop duo called Sleigh Bells.

Alexis was born Sydney Alexis Krauss on September 27, 1985. Her father is a professional musician and her mother is a registered nurse.

As a young child, Alexis studied music and performed in numerous musical theater productions. When she became a teenager, she sang lead vocals and played the bass guitar in an all-girl band. The group recorded two singles and even produced an unreleased album.

Once she graduated from high school, Alexis enrolled in college at first Marymount Manhattan College, and then Pace University. She majored in political science, and then she decided to go into teaching.  “I was studying poli sci and international studies and was doing a lot of research on the right to education and children’s education,” Alexis once revealed. “I ended up joining Teach for America. I taught for two years in the south Bronx, and that was one of the most, probably the most, rewarding and challenging things I’ve ever done,” she expressed.

It was through the Teach for America program that Alexis met Derek Miller, and the two launched their careers in the music business together. They formed a noise pop duo and named themselves Sleigh Bells. The pair has released five albums together.

In addition to music, Alexis is an advocate for clean personal care products. She co-founded a website dedicated to educating consumers about the ingredients used in personal care products. The website is called Beauty Lies Truth.

Rock on Alexis.

Celebrated musician Conrad Johnson chooses teaching over fame and fortune

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Talented musician Conrad Johnson gives up fame and fortune with international orchestras to pursue a career as a music educator.

If you are a music teacher or a jazz aficionados, you have no doubt heard of Conrad Johnson, Sr., a music educator from Houston, Texas. In addition to his role as a remarkable educator, Conrad was a phenomenal musician.

Conrad once played with the legendary Count Basie, and Erskine Hawkins once tried to persuade him to join his orchestra. But Conrad declined the fame and fortune he was offered because he didn’t want to leave his family or his give up his career as a  teacher. “Conrad Johnson is one of Houston’s unsung cultural heroes,” says Rick Mitchell, former pop music critic for the Houston Chronicle. “He could have made a national name for himself with his two big bands. Instead he chose to devote his career to educating Houston’s future musicians. He is retired from the school system, but he’s still hard at work as an educator.”

Born in Victoria, Texas, the young Conrad was nine years old when his family moved to the port city of Houston. After graduating from Yates High School, Conrad attended Houston College for Negroes, and then Wiley College in Marshall in eastern Texas, where he graduated in 1941. He started his career as a music educator at Kashmere High School that same year.

Conrad made a lasting contribution to music when he formed the Kashmere Stage Band, an internationally-known school orchestra that won a number of awards during its decade-long existence. His kids always called him “Prof.” Under Prof’s tutelage, the student musicians in the Kashmere Band won forty-two out of the forty-six competitions they entered between 1969 and 1977. They recorded eight albums featuring more than twenty original compositions by Conrad, and they went on tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe.

In 1978, following a thirty-seven-year career, Conrad retired from his position at Kashmere High School. In his retirement, he continued to remain active in shaping music in Houston by conducting summer programs and in-home tutoring. In 2000, the talented educator was inducted into the Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame. The Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a magnet school at Kashmere High School, is named after him. This wonderful teacher and musician passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.

To learn more about this chalkboard champion, click on this link: The Conrad O. Johnson Music and Fine Arts Foundation.

Music educator and award-winning fiddler Colyn Fischer

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Many talented musicians also serve as exemplary music educators. This is true of Colyn Fischer, an award-winning violinist from Pennsylvania who now works as a middle school music teacher in northern California.

Colyn was born in 1977 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began to play the violin when he was only three years old. Since the age of five, he has concentrated on the specialty of Scottish fiddling. While just a teenage, Colyn studied under a number of notable American Scottish fiddlers, including John Turner and Bonnie Rideout, and several celebrated fiddlers from Scotland, including Ian Powie and Alasdair Hardy.

Following his graduation from Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City, Pennsylvania, Colyn enrolled at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. There he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance in violin from Wheaton College in 1999. He completed the requirements for his teaching credential at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 2005.

In 1993, Colyn garnered the first-place title in the American National Scottish Fiddling Championship, Junior Division. In 2005 he won in the open category in Texas, a title which he captured again in 2006 in Ohio.

Colyn first taught music in grades three through eight in the Silver Valley Unified School District in California’s San Bernardino County. He worked there from 2006-2009. Currently, Colyn teaches orchestra at Central Middle School in the San Carlos School District located in San Francisco, California. He also teaches the annual Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling, and gives private violin and fiddle lessons.

To view Colyn playing Scottish tunes, watch the You Tube video above.