Jecorey Arthur was born on May 19, 1992. He lived with his mother, aunt, and grandmother in the West End of Louisville, Kentucky’s Parkland Neighborhood, the birthplace of Muhammad Ali. As a pre-teen he discovered a passion for music to help cope with the struggles of racism, poverty, and violence.
Jecorey participated in different music programs including concert band, percussion ensemble, orchestra, drumline, and marching band, where he learned leadership skills as a drum major. Outside of school, he started producing hip hop and writing songs. He applied what he learned from school to his community, teaching music to family and friends, using it as a lifeline for self expression and discovery.
After graduating high school in 2010, Jecorey enrolled in a collegiate music education program. While in college, he taught part-time at schools and after-school programs around the region. In 2014 he earned a Bachelor’s of Music Education and in 2015 earned a Master’s of Arts in Teaching from the University of Louisville. After graduating he was hired to teach full-time in Jefferson County Public Schools.
Jecorey taught during the day, but continued to perform on week nights and weekends as a classically trained percussionist and hip hop artist. In 2016 he founded a community arts organization to help other artists get paid gigs and teach young people life skills through event production. They helped organize a wide range of community initiatives including the inaugural I AM ALI Festival following Muhammad Ali’s passing, the grand reopening of the Speed Art Museum, Better Block Parkland, Forecastle Festival’s West Louisville Showcase, and the award-winning ReSurfaced project, where underutilized surface lots were repurposed as music and art plazas.
In 2017 Jecorey became a professor at the first college for Black Kentuckians and Louisville’s only HBCU, Simmons College of Kentucky. This same year he was introduced to the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), a community organization that fosters health, wellness and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center. While on artist retreats with IMAN he further developed his artistry with the principles of being spiritually rooted, spatially relevant, and socially conscious. IMAN also inspired him to do more community organizing.
In 2018 and 2019, Jecorey worked on campaigns to address education access, fair wages, and community safety. In 2020, he used his organzing skills in the Justice for Breonna Taylor Movement. That same year he ran for Louisville Metro Council, and upon winning, became the city’s youngest legislator in history. During his term, he sponsored and passed over 150 pieces of legislation to address homelessness, poverty, discrimination, violence, and more.
BIOGRAPHY
Jecorey Arthur is an educator, creator, and agitator from the West End of Louisville, KY.
A professor at the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Simmons College of Kentucky, Arthur has dedicated his life to education, serving students of all ages in schools, libraries, parks, community centers, detention centers, prisons, and Boys & Girls Clubs. He has also trained other educators, presenting at conferences and colleges across the U.S. and overseas at England’s De Montfort University. He holds certifications in Human Subject Research and Quality Matters (QM) Teaching Online, along with a Bachelor's in Music Education and a Master's in Teaching from the University of Louisville. Arthur is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Education from Antioch University with specialization in social justice. At Simmons College, he has taught music, sociology, and activism while leading community-based participatory action research on projects such as the Kerner Commission 2.0’s Black Asset Mapping and Universal Basic Neighborhoods (UBN).
Arthur is also a multidimensional musician, performing as a percussionist and vocalist around the world—from Switzerland’s Jungfrau Erzähl festival to Tennessee's Big Ears Festival, Louisville's Forecastle Festival, New York's 92nd Street Y, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. He is an endorsed artist with Salyers Percussion, an instructor at the Louisville Academy of Music, and an artist roster member of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). His recording and composition work spans theatre, film, television, radio, podcasts, and studio albums, while his live performances include soloist appearances with professional symphony orchestras in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Dayton, Indianapolis, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Petersburg, and Calgary (Canada). Notably, Arthur was the first hip-hop artist to perform with the Louisville Orchestra, premiering the folk opera The Way Forth and starring as Muhammad Ali in the rap opera The Greatest: Muhammad Ali.
Like Ali, Arthur’s personal adversity inspired his political advocacy. As an activist, he worked on issue-based campaigns for education access, fair wages, police accountability, and tenant rights. In 2019, he became a Black Male Engagement (BMe) Genius Fellow, using his cash award to help open Parkland Plaza—a green space, community venue, and natural playground in his childhood neighborhood. His community work led him to run for Louisville Metro Council in 2020, and upon winning, he made history as the city's youngest legislator. During his four-year term, he sponsored and passed more than 150 pieces of legislation to fight poverty, discrimination, violence, and homelessness, including the Anti-Displacement Law, which created America's first tool to measure the displacement impact of proposed developments. Arthur is a proud union member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) KY120 United, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 11-637, and United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW). He is also a member of the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) Foundation, where he organizes campaigns, writes policy, and trains activists.
@jecoreyarthur