every cat is a song.
the picture is the song.
nobody was graded.
the Department of Jazz Fellowship.
notice
The Department of Jazz Fellowship is a pipeline for Jazz Ascensionists: artists, technologists, philosophers, builders.
Live seminars and salons. Multi-month fellowships and residencies. Small prototype grants. A labs arm.
That is where it is going.
The Department already has members and musicians. Universities, bankers and musicians know it.
It is best suited to people who are on chain.
JazzCats is the Fellowship's first public build. The people who mint are the ensemble it is assembling.
Nothing here promises a holder a grant, a residency or a return.
the Department of Jazz.
decentralised in its art.
decentralised from its creator too.
it can own records.
it is open to musicians, at a curated level.
the idea under it: a musician is the maker of the culture and the owner of what surrounds it. the Department supplies the tools, the openings and the stake, for more musicians than one.
the roadmap. plans, not promises.
- if the collection mints out, the Department releases or records a record. decentralised.
- $JAZZ. The plan is published in America's National Treasure.
- on-chain infrastructure for working jazz musicians, to earn, teach, perform and keep going, with no gatekeeper at the door.
- JazzCats could release their own records, shows and projects to an audience, with no label deciding who is best. As an NFT or otherwise.
- a different economic relationship between musicians, audiences, knowledge and institutions.
- every record the Department releases has a one-of-one artwork, to be auctioned or listed. The proceeds are split among the band, and each musician keeps the master of their own recording.
The app: departmentofjazz.pages.dev Department of Jazz, on Substack
Plans, not promises. Nothing here is an offer, or says what a cat, a coin or a work will be worth.
where it started. November 2021.
Three notes on a phone, before any of this had a name. The coin has not launched.
agents, 2024.
Courtesy of the Department of Jazz. Images from America's National Treasure, July 2025.
Thelonious Punk: the world's first AI jazz musician. A live video-avatar chat agent, built on the Department of Jazz's own framework. It went public on X. It mints its own jazz performances too. It was one of the first AI agents active in the $ZENTRY economy on Ronin. It kept running and became Mark Jazzerberg.
an agent is an instrument.
an instrument has a body.
it plays from a score.
someone holds it.
the agent coins of 2024 had a ticker.
- 2021 to 2025
- $JAZZ starts as a phone note in 2021, is shelved, and is written up in a public plan in 2025. It has not launched.
- 3 Nov 2024
- Thelonious Punk, a jazz agent on the Department's own framework, goes public on X.
- 7 Feb 2025
- Virtuals, a launchpad for agent coins, has launched more than 17,000. Fewer than 100 are worth over $1 million.
- 9 Apr 2025
- Virtuals' daily revenue: over $500,000 on 2 January. Under $500 on 7 April.
- 13 Aug 2025
- A draft standard, ERC-8004, proposes that an agent's identity be an NFT. It is still a draft in October 2026.
- 6 Aug 2026
- The ai16z coin peaked at $2.5 billion in January 2025. In August 2026 it was worth $2.1 million. Its founder: "The token is dead. Completely." In October 2026 the Eliza code is still being updated.
Sources: Cointelegraph, 7 Feb 2025, 9 Apr 2025, 6 Aug 2026. ERC-8004. Eliza on GitHub. Thelonious Punk: the dated post above.
the coins sold the price.
what is still standing does something at no price.
code that runs. a public record of who is who.
the coin crowd could leave, and did. they were leaving a price.
a bandstand crowd leaves a performance. Paper 041.
Our reading of the record, not a finding.
the cat is the instrument.
- body
- the portrait. on-chain, fixed at launch.
- score
- the song it is born from.
- owner
- whoever holds it.
it does not act on its own.
it plays what it was born to play.
nothing here promises that changes.
the Department is extremely bullish on NFTs.
three predictions, about agents and the standards. dated. each can be wrong.
- By 31 October 2027, ERC-8004, the draft standard for trustless agents (identity, reputation and validation, with the agent as an NFT), is final. Wrong if it is still a draft or withdrawn.
- By 31 October 2027, ERC-8048, the draft standard for a token to carry its own metadata onchain (the idea behind 721T), is final. Wrong if it is still a draft or withdrawn.
- Within eight months of the reveal, an agent we did not build reads a cat from the chain and plays it. Wrong if none has.
These are predictions, not promises. Nothing here says what a cat will be worth.
JazzGPT. 2025.
it began as BassGPT, which is still live.
it wrote bass lines.
a great many people had notes.
more than 2.4 million views.
all of it about a bass line generator.
Instagram insights for the Department's account, three posts.
the replies were memes.
Soon after, Kyle Benford's Instagram and Facebook accounts were all banned.
Post Semantics puts meaning in the irreversible act. A post cannot be unposted. Jazz Ascensionism calls the machine a microscope, not a substitute. The internet called it other things. Courtesy of the Department of Jazz.
about
Kyle Benford is a jazz drummer. He studied at Juilliard and was mentored by Wynton Marsalis.
- Has played New York bandstands since 2016, including Smalls and Mezzrow.
- Recorded on Micah Thomas's Tide and on Giveton Gelin's True Design (with Immanuel Wilkins) and Island Dreamer (featuring Jon Batiste).
- Played dozens of shows, perhaps a hundred or more, across New York and the United States with the Giveton Gelin Quintet, and with the Micah Thomas Trio.
- Al Foster, the drummer of Miles Davis, would sit and watch him play, smiling.
- Has played with Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Immanuel Wilkins, Micah Thomas, Giveton Gelin, Sullivan Fortner, Tivon Pennicott, Donald Harrison, Cyrus Chestnut, Johnny O'Neal, Seamus Blake, Eric Lewis, Joel Ross, Josh Evans, Theo Hill, Frank Lacy, Ed Cherry, Bill Saxton, Curtis Lundy, Russell Hall, Stacy Dillard, George Braith, Corey Wilcox, Buster Williams and Jon Batiste.
- Built BassGPT, now JazzGPT.
- Founded #InTheShed.Live, which brought in Gary Bartz (Miles Davis, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner), Eddie Henderson (Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon), Jeffery Miller (John Legend, Wynton Marsalis, Jon Batiste), Dayna Stephens (Kenny Barron, Ambrose Akinmusire, Julian Lage), Hiromi (Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke), Elijah Fox (Yussef Dayes), Chet Faker and Theo Croker. Collaborations with Juilliard, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Bahamas Ministry of Education. UNESCO support, collaboration, positive responses and serious recognition.
- In The Shed ran a program called the Modern Jazz Institute. Then the Department of Jazz was built.
- Louis Hayes, an NEA Jazz Master who played with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, called him "absolutely wonderful and swinging" and said that Kyle "can really play."
- His mentors have more than a dozen Grammys between them.
- After his performances, Harold Mabern (Lee Morgan, Wes Montgomery, George Coleman), Tyler Mitchell (Art Blakey, Shirley Horn, Sun Ra, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson), Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove have thanked him for keeping this great American music alive.
- Founder of Helius Partners, a capital strategy and advisory firm.
- His great-uncle Tommy Benford was a jazz drummer who played with Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and Coleman Hawkins, and in Paris with Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Tommy's brother Bill Benford, a bassist and tuba player, played with Bubber Miley, Ethel Waters, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Jelly Roll Morton. Both came up in the Jenkins Orphanage band. Tommy's drum set and papers are kept at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers: Tommy Benford drum set and papers, 1937 to 1992.