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Blue & Jazz Festival Announcers

Blue & Jazz Festival Announcers image
Parent Issue
Day
6
Month
September
Year
1974
OCR Text

photo: Mary Wreford

John Sinclair is Creative Director of the Blues & Jazz Festival and of Rainbow Multi-Media of Ann Arbor. Over the years he has come to public attention for helping to start a variety of activist organizations, beginning in 1964 with the Artist's Workshop, a gathering point for poets and musicians in Detroit. In 1967 the Workshop transformed into Trans-Love Energies, which managed the MC5 rock and roll band, helped produce the Grande Ballroom concerts, and published the Warren Forrest SUN newspaper, the immediate predecessor of the Ann Arbor SUN. Trans-Love transformed into the White Panther Party after repeated instances of harassment by the state, local and federal governments. From the White Panther Party came the Rainbow People's Party, which existed until this year.

Known as a writer, poet, graphic designer, band manager, and political activist, Sinclair's interest in black blues and jazz music, which spawned the Festival you are attending, goes back to 1962. Since that time he's written on the music for Jazz and Pop, the Artist's Workshop Press, down beat, the Fifth Estate in Detroit, and many other publications, including the Ann Arbor SUN. Additionally, his written work appears in two books, Music and Politics, published in 1972 by World Publishing (along with written work by Robert Levin), and Guitar Army , published by Douglas in 1973, which consists entirely of Sinclair's own writings. In 1969 the State of Michigan sentenced Sinclair to nine-and-a-half to ten years for possession of two joints of marijuana. John spent 2 1/2 years of that sentence locked in segregation in the penitentiary while the courts debated his challenge of the state marijuana law as unconstitutional. Eventually the Michigan Supreme Court agreed with the challenge, and overturned the harsh state weed law, setting Sinclair free, after a variety of musicians, including John and Yoko Lennon, played a mammoth benefit aimed at gaining his release.

Chinner Mitchell is an Ann Arbor home-boy who also announced at last year's Festival at Otis Spann Memorial Field. Chinner was born in 1947, but didn't get deep into blues and jazz until a stint in the penitentiary. After release from prison, he helped form the Michigan Committee for Prisoner's Rights, and began working as an announcer for Rainbow Multi-Media. Chinner helped co-host an irregular radio program on WNRZ-FM during its heyday with Bob Rudnick, and currently hosts a record-hop at Flick's bar in Ann Arbor every Wednesday.