Not everyone has the opportunity to go to music school. Many cultures don’t even have formal music education. When rock music came about, the first performers to gain widespread attention certainly didn’t have anyone teaching them how to play.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band has a different idea on spreading musical knowledge and appreciation.

The band will stop in Columbus as the opening act for rock band My Morning Jacket on Sunday.

Preservation Hall is located in New Orleans’ French Quarter, and serves as both a music venue and a neighborhood icon of culture. It was founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe to conserve New Orleans jazz.

Their son Ben is currently the director of Preservation Hall, which serves as a headquarters for a band of musicians that derived their name from the building.

Some of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s original members had connections to such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. The band started touring in the early 60s, shortly after the Jaffes took over.

The tradition of New Orleans jazz is based on educating musicians across generations.
“Not many modern bands are as active in their community as Preservation Hall,” Ben Jaffe said. “As a band and an organization, we feel a huge responsibility to give back to our community what it’s given us. We’re a band that exists because of the people who came before us.”

No one ever sat down and wrote a book on New Orleans jazz and explained how to play, he said. The art form is handed down from veterans to younger musicians through an educational program housed in Preservation Hall. Current teachers were taught using the same method from the generation before them, and the cycle continues today.

This devotion to community and cultural empowerment through musical education did not go unnoticed, however. In 2006, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band received the National Medal of Arts. Jaffe said he broke down in tears when he heard the news.

“I can remember receiving the phone call and really not being able to process the information because it’s the highest honor that an artist can receive,” he said. “I was so happy for the band members and for my mom.”

Aside from teaching younger musicians on a local level, the band spends much of the year touring, both nationally and internationally.

Most notably, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has taken several trips to Thailand, whose king recently invited them back.

“He’s very interested in establishing a school for New Orleans jazz in Bangkok,” Jaffe said. “That’s a huge thing we’ve been working on and hope to announce later this year.”

Recently, the group has secured a tour opening for My Morning Jacket, a rock act. Though the bands are distinctly different in style, My Morning Jacket’s singer Jim James came to Preservation Hall to collaborate on two songs, “St. James Infirmary” and “Louisiana Fairytale.”

“He was immediately enchanted by Preservation Hall and the musicians who play there and what we do. So when we recorded the two tracks, we didn’t know at the time what it would lead to. It was just unspoken that it was the beginning of a longer relationship,” Jaffe said.

When My Morning Jacket decided to go on tour this year, James asked the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to come along.

As for spreading the word of the New Orleans jazz movement beyond its city of origin, Jaffe thinks it has been received very well.

It’s heartwarming to connect with an audience that has no familiarity with the genre, considering it’s not on MTV or popular radio, he said.

“There’s something about New Orleans music that touches a universal nerve with people.”