About
BTWguitar.com is an organization founded by a group of extremely talented student artists at Booker T Washington HSPVA in Dallas Texas in 2019. The Guitar Department at Booker T was founded in 2014 by Steve Schrag at the request of Principal Dr. Scott Rudes. From the beginning, the focus of the department was to develop strong fundamentals of music, guitar technique, composition and listening skills allowing students to explore the diverse applications of guitar across all styles of music.
2019 brought the completion of The Production Studios at Booker T, which were funded by the generous donations of The Booker T Washington advisory board and the Crystal Charity Foundation. The Production Studios at Booker T are state of the art audio and video production facilities designed and built by world renowned designer Russ Berger.
Students quickly became involved in recording, writing, mixing and mastering multi-media works developing a new blended program which incorporates Classical, Jazz, Popular Music, traditional and non-traditional instrumentation, student composition and songwriting.
During this same time and with many of the same students Fredrick Sanders and Terrence Hobdy transitioned the Booker T Jazz department into a more encompassing program called RJAM, which stands for Root Jazz and American Music. The fundamental principle of RJAM is that Jazz and all other forms of American Music have similar Roots and have developed into many different styles as the Root Music dispersed throughout various cultures around the world. The fundamentals of RJAM are present in Jazz, Rock, Latin, Blues, Rap, Folk, Pop, Musical Theater, Country Music, Cumbia, Metal, K-Pop and the list goes on. We believe that there is validity in all of these cultural representations of American Music. We are trying to remove the stratification and bias that certain styles of music are more “sophisticated”, “cultured” or “elite” than others.