The weekend events were under the direction of the founders of the conference, Bill Hasson and Vishnu Wood, and was sponsored by a collective of student and college organizations, and by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA).
On Friday night, Sonny Fortune and his sidement, Tom Browne on trumpet and percussion, Charles Eubank on piano, Wayne Dochery on bass, and Doug Hammond on drums, transformed and saturated a large audience at Hampshire College Robert Crown Center with music that was dynamic and vitally alive.
The workshop included as panelists Vishnu Wood, a panelist on the NEA; Reginald Workman, Director of the New Muse Community Music Work- shop of Brooklyn; Stanley Crouch, noted music critic; and Joe Brazil, Director of the Black Academy of Muse in Seattle, Washington.
Wood emphasized, among other topics, that the 1977 allocation for Jazz, a category of the NEA, was $644,000.00 out of a budget of $13,327,000.00 or 4.8%; Workman commented that New Muse was created "out of the need in the Black community to establish cultural organizations that deal specifically with music and the perpetuation of this part of our heritage."
The sophisticated giant of Black Classical Music, Dexter Gordon, performed at the UMass Student Union Ballroom. Accompanying Dexter's liquid but bold tenor sounds were George Cables on piano, Rufus Reid on bass, and Eddie Gladdin on drums.
Dexter played many old tunes along with new material from recent recordings. A tight rhythm section completed a strong and very moving musical unity that excited everyone there. That final concert of the unforgettable weekend made clear why Dexter Gordon is called the "living legend of the tenor saxophone."