On this episode of Jack Dappa Blues, enjoy the collaboration of Jack Dappa Blues Radio and Southern Ohio Folklife for a conversation w/ Lady D (West Virginia’s First Lady of Soul) to talk about her recent performance of The Lady and the Empress, a one-woman show about the life and music of Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues. Learn about Bessie Smith, her role in Blues music, her lasting impact, and why Lady D was drawn to her life story.

 

On the day of the interview, Lady D later performed at the Southern Ohio Museum of The Lady and the Empress!

 

This project is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts’ Central Appalachia Living Traditions program. Project collaborators include the 14th Street Community Center, Time Out for Me Inc., Portsmouth Unity Project, Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, The African American Folklorist, and Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation.

 

#wethebluespeople #appalachia #centralappalachia #ohio #appalachianohio #westvirginia #bessiesmith #blues #folklore #folklife #livingtraditions #southernohiofolklife #hiphoptraditions

 

Facebook: @MidAtlanticArts @CentralAppalachiaLivingTraditions @southern.ohio.museum @jackdappabluesradio @TheAfricanAmericanFolklorist @ladyandtheempress @fourteenthst @TimeOutForMeInc @dafields

 

Instagram: @fieldsdoris @MidAtlanticArts @centralapplivingtrad @jackdappabluesradio @africanamericanfolklorist @southern.ohio.musum

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For some reason, when it comes to Country Music, most people do not associate it with black folk or folk musical expression. The thing is, country music, in its many forms, comes directly from black expression. i.e., the blues, country blues, and more.

To give the context to the roots of commodified music presented and thought of as white music… We can use Leslie Riddle as an example… he was the teacher to the Carters for the music they would be credited for. Maybelle Carter always let that be known.

In this episode, I discuss Why it is Always about Race regarding Country music, Country Blues, and Blackness.

Coffle Gang and Domestic Slavery

African American Tribal Music

DONATION

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Today, I speak with Candice Ivory about her new project, When The Levee Breaks. As said on her website After releasing three acclaimed albums of jazz-driven original songs, vocalist Candice Ivory reveals a whole new sound on When the Levee Breaks: The Music of Memphis Minnie. Raised in Memphis and based in St. Louis, Ivory hails from an illustrious musical family that shaped Memphis’s secular and sacred sounds. Her great-uncle was the singer and guitarist Will Roy Sanders of the Fieldstones, one of the premier Memphis blues bands from the 1970s to the 1990s. Ivory grew up in the church, and by the age of eleven, she was singing in a choir that featured the soon-to-be-famous R&B artist D’Angelo. When the Levee Breaks brings together all of her formative musical experiences in a tribute to Memphis Minnie (1897-1973), whose powerhouse vocals and compositional creativity served as inspiration for Ivory’s own innovations as the Queen of Avant Soul. Produced by singular guitarist-bassist Charlie Hunter, a onetime D’Angelo collaborator, Ivory’s When the Levee Breaks is a midnight run to the crossroads, where jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B all converge.

https://candiceivory.com/

paypal.me/LamontJack 

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Many Black Academic Scholars are also active practitioners in our respective cultures and traditions. That doesn't negate their ability to teach, mentor, or share skills and tricks of the trade with the folk. It actually makes them even more qualified. Some feel Black Scholars who are educated or formally trained cannot teach or pass on the folk tradition. I see it differently, and here's why.

Charlotte Forten Grimke

NAMA HARLEM (New Amsterdam Musical Association)

Colored Musicians Club

John Wesley Work III

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On this episode, I'm encouraging all folks invested in the story of Black American tradition, folklore, folklife, material art, street art, religious belief, spiritual belief, Advocacy, Organization work, Public Programming, and everything that has to do with the "so-called" African American Narrative to submit work to the African American Folklorist Magazine and website. We no longer need to rely on any other platform to share, publish, or even interrogate our narratives. After a long-time supporter contacted me and shared how we are significant in disseminating and distributing the Blues People story, I felt it necessary to put the call out!

Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation is a focal point for researching, archiving, and raising awareness of African American Traditional Music, folklore, folklife, public programs, and the Black Experience!!

The African American Folklorist Magazine gives a voice to those writing and working in and on Black American Folklore through the lens of Black Folk. From the nonprofit to the Magazine, this is the space for the story of everything African Americans.

https://jackdappabluesradio.tv/

https://theafricanamericanfolklorist.com/

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On this episode, I speak with Shirley Moody-Turner, an associate professor of English and African American Studies and founding co-director with Gabrielle Foreman of the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk. She is an Author and award-winning educator that says, “As a young girl growing up in Buffalo, NY, I felt a deep longing to learn more about my family history.

Shirley has worked to unearth those stories and many others.  She has authored, edited, and written many books, essays, and journals depicting the African American story through a folkloric and ethnographic lens. She is highlighting and honoring the Black men and women scholars like her who have significantly contributed to the Blues and Black narrative of the Americas. 

Her website also states, “Honoring the legacy of the intellectuals and activists I study, I also work in partnerships to carry these histories out into communities beyond the university. Through the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk and the Black Women’s Organizing Archive, I work with extraordinary individuals to help public and scholarly audiences forge meaningful collaborations with the shared mission of bringing the buried and scattered histories of early Black organizing to digital life. “ 

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On this episode, I speak with singer, songwriter, and music educator Hannah Mayree about her journey in music, culture, tradition, and the Black Banjo Reclamation Project.

Hannah Mayree (she/her/they/them) is a creative facilitator and musician whose work and art lend itself as a tool for redesigning and reconnecting to our roots as humans on this planet. A banjoist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist, Hannah shares original and traditional banjo compositions and harmonies through acoustic live vocal looping. She reminds us of the power found in our relationship to the earth, music, and community.

They co-founded and creatively direct the Black Banjo Reclamation Project, which is currently creating musical, cultural, and land-based opportunities for Black, Afro-Diasporic communities around the world to work with the banjo as a tool for reclaiming ancestral wisdom & creating Afro-futures. 

http://hannahmayree.com

http://blackbanjoreclamationproject.org

https://www.patreon.com/Hannahmayree?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator (embedded link for Patreon)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj5p_TWzYH9AhUUHzQIHdd6A2QQFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fhannah_mayree%2F%3Fhl%3Den&usg=AOvVaw3x0r2TmDf43NArkHU-9iAF

(Embedded link for Instagram)

Videos: https://youtu.be/EANT04mAd44

https://youtu.be/og3r1stPR9w

https://youtu.be/X7JjQZJRtbs

https://youtu.be/z1BAVugqVGE

Lessons/Teaching:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19LCljx1e4cvDVKvV0JMYedtJnd4aZvfhge8o-Wsl0A0/edit 

Articles:

https://afropop.org/articles/black-banjo-reclamation-projects-hannah-mayree

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In this episode, I will speak with Kristina R. Gaddy about her journey and New York Times best-selling book, Well of Souls - Uncovering The Banjo's Hidden History. Kristina R. Gaddy is an award-winning writer who believes in the power of narrative nonfiction to bring stories from the past to life in order to inform the world we live in today. Her debut nonfiction book Flowers in the Gutter (Dutton 2020), tells the true story of the teenage Edelweiss Pirates who fought the Nazis. Through narratives based on memoirs, oral history interviews, and Nazi documents, she immerses the reader in the world of these teenagers as they resist the Third Reich. Her book Wells of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History (W.W. Norton 2022) is an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, where she uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. For More: https://www.kristinagaddy.com/about.html

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In this episode, Todd Lawrence, Maria Lewis, and Lamont Pearley will host a live stream event offered by the AFS African American Folklore Section, the African American Folklorist and Jack Dappa Blues featuring Notable Folklorists of Color creators and curators, Phyllis May-Machunda, Sojin Kim, and Olivia Cadaval. The conversation will detail the inspiration, vision, purpose, and work of creating such a monumental installment. We will also discuss the follow-up project called, "Notable Folklorists of Color: Expanding the Frames ."

Notable Folklorists of Color is a website that features profiles of BIPOC ancestor scholars of color and their contributions to folklore studies. The 2019 exhibition, Notable Folklorists of Color: Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies, marked the 25th anniversary of AFS’s Cultural Diversity Committee by honoring 25 BIPOC ancestors, and the 2022 Notable Folklorists of Color: Expanding the Frames exhibition highlights the scholarship of approximately another 135 African American, Indigenous, Latino and Hispano, Asian American and Native Hawaiian ancestor scholars. Combined, the two exhibitions feature more than 160 BIPOC folklore ancestors.

The Notable Folklorists of Color: Expanding the Frames exhibition extends the examination of the contributions of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) ancestor scholars to folklore studies that was begun in the AFS Notable Folklorists of Color: Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies exhibition in 2019. Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies marked the 25th anniversary of AFS’s Cultural Diversity Committee by honoring 25 BIPOC ancestor scholars of color and their contributions to folklore studies. Our 2022 exhibition, Expanding the Frames, highlights the scholarship of approximately another 135 African American, Indigenous, Latino and Hispano, Asian American and Native Hawaiian ancestors scholars whose work, in what is now the United States and its territories, spans the 19th century through 2021, bringing the combined total number of BIPOC ancestors featured in these two exhibitions to more than160.

Expanding the Frames recognizes the scholarly contributions of approximately 135 African American, Indigenous, Latino and Hispano, Asian American and Native Hawaiian ancestors scholars whose work in what is now the United States and its territories spans the 19th century through 2021. In contrast to Remembering our Ancestral Legacies (2019), this exhibition, Expanding the Frames, centers BIPOC ancestors—who often have worked within their own communities—as significant producers of scholarly knowledge about the communities and traditions they studied. Although some of these ancestor scholars applied mainstream academic approaches and perspectives in their folklore research, regarding the “folk” as remnants of the past, others alternatively anchored their research in the cultural knowledge frameworks and traditions of their own communities and worked intentionally for the benefit and futures of their living communities.  Some of these ancestors’ theories and approaches are resonant with contemporary praxis, while several others are representative of the historical periods and circumstances within which they were conceived.  

Be sure to become a member of the American Folklorist Society

https://americanfolkloresociety.org/

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On this episode, I speak with Brei Carter, Country Singer-Songwriter, about her journey in Music and her signing with Brown Lee Entertainment For Exclusive Global Music Distribution & Digital Marketing.

Emerging crossover country and southern pop recording artist Brei Carter proves that faith, patience, and time sometimes pay off. Growing up in Monroe, Louisiana, with a solid, southern upbringing, Brei’s family raised her on several authentic southern staples: the Bible, Lone Star Missionary Baptist Church’s choir, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, Aretha Franklin, and no shortage of familial love and devotion. However, before she became the dynamic and vivacious country singer she is today, Brei was busy earning a Bachelor's in Business from the University of Louisiana in Monroe, a Master's in International Relations from Webster University, and a Doctorate in Theology from New Foundation Theological Seminary. She is also a proud Veteran of the U.S. Army, where she served as an enlisted soldier and officer. Having moved to Nashville soon after, Brei has quickly established herself in the songwriter's community as a smooth and sometimes edgy songstress who melds country, soul, and southern pop into one fused style. Her first single at country radio, “Gave Him A Girl,” was immediately recognized as “cute and catchy” by country music journalist and historian Robert K. Oermann in his weekly DISClaimer review column for Music Row Magazine. Brei made her CMA Fest debut in 2022, along with a performance on WoodSongs Old Time Radio Hour. Her growing catalog of new music includes her debut album Brand New Country, released in Fall 2022, and new music on the way in 2023 slated for April & June. Carter is quickly proving herself to be a welcomed addition to the emerging new styles of country music in today’s diverse musical landscape.

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There is excellent Black Folklife, Indian Folklore, Black Music, AND educational oral history in Kentucky and nationally that Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation archives and builds a repository for.

In this episode, I discuss Storyville, Oklahoma, Freedmen, Blues, and the People of the Blues To Raise Cultural and Ethnic awareness of Black American Traditional Music, Traditional Art, Folklore, Oral Histories, and the Black Experience in America.

I'm asking for donations to Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation because their mission means a lot to me, and I hope you'll consider celebrating with me. Your contribution will make an impact. Every little bit helps. Thank you for your support.

https://www.facebook.com/donate/6035802536450984/

paypal.me/LamontJack

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