Check out the video & photos from this summer's camp

You can hear the music even before you step inside the Mabee Performing Arts Center on the Drury University campus. The sound of Drury Jazz Camp is in the air along Benton Avenue.

Under the watchful eye of Drury’s Director of Jazz Studies, Tina Claussen, around 30 high school and middle school students spend a week at Drury every summer learning a genre of music that had its heyday long before they were born. The camp is not limited to younger students; college students and adults of all ages also participate in the master classes and concerts.

“We really want to pass down the art, pass down the tradition, the way that we were taught as we were coming up when people kind of took us under their wing and said, ‘this is how this is how you do it,” says Claussen.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Drury Jazz Camp is an intense week of performance, listening, and music theory with a faculty of musicians who come from music programs across the United States.

The campers love it, even if their friends don’t totally understand.

“They just sort of look at me and say, “Why are you going to jazz camp?” I say, “’I like jazz,’” says Kasey Ogle, who is a sophomore high school student from Webb City, Mo. “The way it swings, it feels like rhythm that is more natural to a person than something that’s so rigid, so I guess that’s why I’m so into it.”

And even if these teenagers don’t become the next Count Basie or Louis Armstrong, the Drury Jazz Camp helps feed their lifelong passion for this American form of music.

“I want to continue to play, maybe a professional level if I can, but I’m going to continue playing and learn as much as I can” says Alex Wilkerson, who is a senior from Little Rock, Ark.