Music in Common announces the Mississippi Delta launch of The Black Legacy Project, a musical celebration of Black history to advance racial solidarity, equity, and belonging. The Black LP is a national project produced in partnership with community stakeholders at the local level. As it travels the country, the Black LP brings together Black and White artists and artists of ALL backgrounds to record present day interpretations of songs central to the Black American experience and compose originals relevant to the pressing calls for change of our time. Community roundtable discussions help inform how these songs are interpreted and written.
After more than a year of development in the wake of the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, The Black Legacy Project kicked off in September 2021 in The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Since then the Project has traveled to Los Angeles, the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas, and Denver. In 2023, it will launch in Atlanta; the Mississippi Delta, and Boise, hitting the Delta February 22–28 with events and programs for musicians and non-musicians alike.
In each community the Black LP travels to, songs addressing a theme connected to the local community are reimagined and composed. The selected theme for the Delta is “I Am the Blues,” which explores the origins of Blues music and its roots in the Black American experience, especially of those living in the Mississippi Delta. The project will unpack the enormous contributions of Black musicians to the American musical landscape via the blues, often overlooked and at times appropriated. Analysis of the songs, “I Am the Blues ” by Muddy Waters and “Poor Man’s Blues” by Bessie Smith, will foster a greater understanding of these contributions and the crediting of them to Black artists. Community members will analyze the lyrics of these songs in round table discussions to help inform how they are musically reinterpreted by local musicians. The roundtable will take place on Wednesday February 22nd at 7 pm. Registration is required. Location will be disclosed at that time.
Following the roundtable discussion, local artists will spend several days working up new arrangements of these songs as well as composing an original. The songs will be recorded and the project will culminate with two free performances on February 27 at the Grammy Museum in Cleveland and on February 28 at the BB King Museum in Indianola. Both events, which also include a documentary screening of the pilot episode of the Black LP docuseries and a community conversation, start at 7 pm and are free and open to all. Tickets can be reserved at https://www.theblacklegacyproject.org/events.
“I’m incredibly excited to come on as a musical co-director of this project”, states Alice Hasen, one of four local artists who will serve as musical co-directors for the project in the Delta. Other musical co-directors include Edna Nicole, Keith Johnson, and Tricia Walker. Musicians interested in performing or recording on the project can audition online.
The Black LP Mississippi Delta is supported by a long list of local partners. Sponsorship opportunities are still available. For more information please contact, Simone Alyse.
The Black Legacy Project is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (opportunity number DHS-22-TTP-132-00-01) and a long list of national and local partners. The Black LP is produced by Music in Common, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that strengthens, empowers, and connects communities through the universal language of music. Since 2005, Music In Common has directly served thousands of people in more than 300 communities across the globe and across religious, ethnic, cultural, and racial axes. The organization was founded by singer-songwriter and producer Todd Mack in response to the murder of his friend and bandmate, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter abducted by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.
