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 230 pieces of legislation to address homelessness, poverty, discrimination, violence, and more.

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Jecorey Arthur is an educator, musician, and community organizer from the West End of Louisville, Kentucky, dedicated to creating people power and possibility.

Arthur is a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), where he teaches music, sociology, and leads community research rooted in lived experience. His work in education extends far beyond the classroom, reaching learners of all ages in schools, libraries, parks, community centers, detention centers, and prisons. He has trained educators and organizers through workshops and conferences across the United States and internationally, including at De Montfort University in England. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education and a Master’s degree in Teaching from the University of Louisville and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Education at Antioch University. His doctoral research focuses on social justice leadership, specifically modernizing grassroots political education models inherited from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

As a musician, Arthur is a multidisciplinary percussionist, vocalist, and composer who pioneered the integration of hip hop into the American orchestral canon. At a time when such collaborations were rare, he brought classical music to atypical community venues and integrated hip hop into symphony halls, performing with dozens of orchestras across North America, including Steve Hackman’s orchestral fusion The Resurrection Mixtape (Mahler x Notorious B.I.G. x Tupac Shakur). He made history as the first hip-hop artist to perform with the Louisville Orchestra, premiering original compositions and starring as his hometown hero in Teddy Abrams’ rap opera The Greatest: Muhammad Ali. He also performed in Joel Thompson’s orchestral work inspired by James Baldwin, To Awaken The Sleeper, and Rachel Grimes’ folk opera The Way Forth. Arthur performs seamlessly across concert halls, festivals, and community spaces, with appearances at Switzerland’s Jungfrau Erzähl Festival, Big Ears Festival, Forecastle Festival, the 92nd Street Y, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Arthur is an endorsed artist with Salyers Percussion and an artist roster member of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN).

Arthur’s artistic and educational work is inseparable from his organizing. He has dedicated his career to working alongside neighbors, tenants, students, and fellow artists on campaigns for education access, housing justice, fair wages, and community safety. In 2019, he was named a Black Male Engagement (BMe) Genius Fellow and used his fellowship to help open Parkland Plaza—a green space, community venue, and natural playground in his childhood neighborhood. In 2020, following the killing of Breonna Taylor by the Louisville Metro Police Department, Arthur helped lead protests and healing events for justice. Working alongside a coalition of organizers and supporters, he helped pass "Breonna’s Law," which banned no-knock search warrants across the city. Later that year, he was elected as the youngest member of the Louisville Metro Council in city history.

From 2021 to 2024, Arthur served on the Louisville Metro Council, where he brought organizing values into government to shift power and resources toward working-class communities. During his tenure, he sponsored and passed over 230 pieces of legislation addressing poverty, violence, and homelessness. He sponsored the city’s landmark anti-displacement policy—the nation's first tool to measure and mitigate the displacement impact of proposed developments to ensure legacy residents can remain in their homes. He also co-sponsored the Right to Counsel ordinance to guarantee legal defense for low-income tenants facing eviction and was instrumental in sponsoring American Rescue Plan (ARP) ordinances that directed more funding into affordable housing than any year in Louisville’s history. Under these federal spending ordinances, he also secured millions of dollars to fund violence prevention programs and renovate public libraries, community centers, and parks. A dedicated advocate for human rights, he championed the 911 Deflection Pilot to send healthcare professionals to mental health crises, started the movement to review and reform shelter regulations to open more beds for those in need, and passed a new "Ban the Box" ordinance to stop employment and housing discrimination against people without a permanent address. Building on this legislative legacy, he now focuses his efforts on movement-building through political education and policy strategy.

Arthur organizes with People United for Social Housing (PUSH) Louisville and the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) Foundation. He 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).

Arthur is married to psychologist Dr. Lisa Arthur, and has two children, Apollo and Alia.

@jecoreyarthur