Donald Vega

It, it, it's another great story.

Donald Vega, Nicaraguan, uh, immigrant, came over, snuck across the border with a coyote, had to hide in the, in the, in, in, in, in the, in the, in the, in the, uh, under the seat of a station wagon.

Uh, showed up at Crenshaw, didn't speak English, had a cleft lip, kind of deformed lip.

I asked him, "Did the, did the Black kids at Crenshaw tease you about that lip?" He's like, "No, they embrace me.

They, they, uh, got a benefactor to fix that lip, help him with this problem he had hearing.

Now he's a professor at Juilliard and one of the, uh, most renowned jazz pianists in the country.

Donald Vega.

If you like jazz, check him out.

That's 30.

Donald Vega, Pete Washington, Jeff Tain Watts, Lenny White, Eric Wyatt, and Victor C. UN.

36.

Right? 36 musicians going to be performing at the Sonny Rollins Memorial.

Don Steele, the head of the studio, sit in her classes and audit her classes to get a feel for kind of what she was going through.

Donald Vega, a great jazz pianist from Nicaragua.

You know, so the stories of the people that most people haven't heard of, to me, are the most fascinating ones.

But it was an opportunity to kind of chronicle all these great stories, man, put them together into one book, pay homage to the school that I think is the most iconic school in terms of just name recognition, I think, in the United States right now.