Jazz radio has never had a better friend than Rhonda Hamilton. During a broadcasting career spanning nearly 50 years, she’s brought the music to a worldwide audience with her trademark warmth, integrity and composure. This year she received a fitting honor: the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy, which she’ll formally receive on Sept. 15, during a gala concert at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. (She’ll be in fine company there: the 2026 class of honorees also includes drummer and percussionist Airto Moreira; keyboardist, vocalist and producer Patrice Rushen; and singer, songwriter and bandleader Carmen Lundy.) Rhonda is now on the air at KKJZ-FM in Southern California, but during her longtime tenure at Newark Public Radio she worked with Josh Jackson, Nate Chinen and our producer, Alex Ariff. We were all delighted to reconnect with her, in a conversation brimming with insights from one of our very best.
Interview highlights
On the record that made jazz her own, not just her father's
"My father would play [jazz] all the time and there was jazz on the radio, so I listened to it all the time... But when I was in high school, a friend had this record, Ahmad Jamal's The Awakening, and I heard this record, and I had never heard anything like that before. That was the moment I feel like I took jazz as not just my father's music, but my music. So The Awakening awakened me not only to him, but the whole world of jazz."
On being the only woman in the room at WBUR
"When I did first start at WBUR, I was the only woman there, and that experience helped me learn how to stand up for myself, because there were other men there and they would just almost act as if I didn't exist, or that my opinion didn't matter. If I was supposed to be doing something on the air, they could just cancel me out. So that was a good experience, teaching me how to stand up for myself."
On realizing radio was her profession, not just her job
"To come to WBGO and be in the New York-New Jersey market, that's when I realized that I was doing it professionally... Sometimes you know that a job was meant for you, and that's how I felt about that. And it's interesting, because hearing people say the impact that I've had on them is something I hadn't really been aware of, because you just do your work. You go to work every day, and you do it."
On why nobody in jazz sounds the same
"That was the thing about jazz that always fascinated me — nobody sounded the same. Nobody sounds like Thelonious Monk. Even if he plays somebody else's composition, he still sounds like Thelonious Monk. That's the essence of this music: to discover your own voice. And at the same time, in order for the music to really work, you have to cooperate with each other. So I always say it's like the ultimate democracy."
On the uncertain future of the NEA Jazz Masters program
"It has been a challenge for all of us to deal with this uncertainty. But the people who are currently involved in making sure the ceremony does take place for the 2026 honorees are working very hard... I just can't imagine this being let go altogether. If the National Endowment for the Arts, for some reason, does not continue honoring jazz artists, I'm hoping some other organization, or a group of us, can come together and make sure that people are still acknowledged."
On dinner with Dizzy Gillespie
"He told jokes all the time. It was all we did was laugh — I can't remember any of the jokes, but I just remember he was constantly telling jokes, and it was an evening filled with laughter. And he would eat his — I think we had little muffins — and he would push the crumbs over to where I was sitting, which was funny."
