--Written by Melissa Milton

When you tune in to Wednesday's version of Jazz from Jax Brewery on WWOZ, the impeccably curated playlist of classic modern jazz that you'll hear, and the resonant voice behind it, belong to Dr. Al Colón.

"I call it classic modern jazz by design. It represents the music that I like and which I think serves as a ground floor since the 1940s for the music that we hear today, not only in jazz but in other expressions as well. I wanted to blow up the idiom of modern jazz and play the best music I could assemble."

Dr. Colón brings his lifelong love of jazz as well as his 45 years of service in higher education to bear in every program. As the retired National Endowment for the Humanities professor explains, "I want to entertain, but I also want to educate and open people's horizons, and more than anything I want to humanize this art form and the culture it's embedded in."

"I like to throw in things, biographical things, timeline things so that people will understand where this music came from, what the artists overcame and what they had to contend with and how the music was both a force that impacted the larger culture but it also derived from the culture as well. I try to massage that dialectic."

Before there was jazz, before there were dialectics to massage, there was baseball. Born in Alabama, raised in Jamaica, Queens, Dr. Colón grew up across the street from one of baseball's most iconic and historically important players. He and Jackie Jr. were playmates, and Dr. Colón's earliest baseball experiences were at Ebbets Field, where his playmate's father, Jackie Robinson, led the major leagues out of the past and into the future. One of Dr. Colón's prized posessions was a well-worn glove, given to him by the man who used it for years while wearing number 42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. WOW!

Thanks to another childhood neighbor, Dr. Colón discovered jazz. As a teenager, he would hear music and joyfully shouted affirmations wafting up from the wood-paneled basement of Bill McKinney, and his curiosity led Dr. Colón downstairs. A deep friendship took root, cemented by many shared experiences including outings to the original Birdland jazz club in Manhattan where Dr. Colón heard jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstein, Oscar Peterson, and Dinah Washington perform. Again, WOW!

Dr. Colón's journey, as a student and an educator, an anti-poverty organizer and an anti-racism activist, eventually brought him to New Orleans in 1998, and many years later to WWOZ in 2014. Becoming a show host and sharing with 'OZillians his love of classic modern jazz gives Dr. Colón a special outlet where all of his life's work and his passions come together. The man is the music is the journey, and Wednesday afternoon jazz listeners are all fortunate to be along for this incredible sonic ride.

"That (activist) work defines me, my music experience defines me, and my work in Africana studies define me. Those are three legacies that I claim as well as being a father and a grandfather and a husband. Those are the things that are most important to me. There would be no way for that not to be transposed over the microphone."

"I want to say that 'OZ approaches the best representation of cultural democracy in music that I've seen. For me, 'OZ represents a giant step in representing the culture of this town with integrity."