Category Archives: Cultural Heritage

Advocacy, Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Heritage, John Coltrane, John Coltrane House

John Coltrane at 100

John William Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina, the only child of John and Alice Blair Coltrane. Two months after his birth, his maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was promoted to presiding elder in the A.M.E. Zion Church. Rev. Blair moved his extended family, including his infant grandson, to High Point, North Carolina where Coltrane grew up.

After the death of his maternal grandfather, father and grandmother, Coltrane’s mother moved to Philadelphia in search of better employment opportunities around 1942. She was part of the Great Migration.

Coltrane stayed in High Point to finish his education at William Penn High School where he was voted “Best Dressed Boy” as a junior, and the “Most Musical” in his class. Coltrane moved to Philadelphia in June 1943 to join his mother. And the rest is history.

City Council designated September 23, 2026 as John Coltrane Day in Philadelphia in recognition of the city’s “central role in shaping his artistic and cultural legacy.”

Trane honed his sound in the clubs on the “Golden Strip” and on Ridge Avenue. He lived in North Philadelphia from 1943 to 1958, first in an apartment building and later in a rowhouse. The John Coltrane House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999.

I used AI to bring Coltrane back to the Golden Strip.

Café Society Musical Bar was a popular spot on the Golden Strip. It was located three blocks from Coltrane’s apartment. Café Society is the first stop on my upcoming bus tour, Tracing Trane: A Tour of John Coltrane’s North Philadelphia, on Sunday, September 27, 2026. The tour is presented by Scribe Video Center’s North Philadelphia History Festival: The John Coltrane Edition.

The bus tour is free but reservations are required. You can RSVP here.

Trane’s final performance in Philadelphia was on November 11, 1966 at the last tour stop, Mitten Hall .

John Coltrane joined the ancestors on July 17, 1967.

Advocacy, Cultural Heritage

Is That Jazz?

Gil Scott-Heron’s 1981 release “Is That Jazz?” challenges conventional definitions of jazz and asks who gets to decide what qualifies as jazz music. Scott-Heron posits that jazz is a living tradition rooted in the Black experience, resistance and improvisation.

Jazz bassist and composer Christian McBride is a Philly native and 11-time GRAMMY® winner.

In a recent op-ed published in the New York Amsterdam News, McBride asked: Is this jazz?:

Jazz has always evolved in cycles. In every generation, there are many who believe jazz is either dying or losing its identity, yet it continually absorbs new influences while its central rhythmic language — swing — remains its defining thread.

You might be curious to know what I see in jazz right now, from my vantage point of the jazz world from many angles, as a bassist, an administrator, a broadcaster, a festival curator, and most of all, a fan.

[…]

The ’70s were all about the powerhouse bands. Where did this leave the jazz icons of the older generation? Did Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Betty Carter, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Abbey Lincoln, and the Modern Jazz Quartet just become obsolete and irrelevant overnight?

It depends on whom you ask.

[…]

I’ve found George Wein’s lineups for the Newport Jazz Festival between 1969 and 1973 pretty fascinating from a historical standpoint: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, James Brown, Maxine Sullivan, Sly & the Family Stone, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Tate, Sun Ra, Roberta Flack, Freddie Hubbard, Dionne Warwick, B.B. King, Ike & Tina Turner, Sonny Stitt, Donny Hathaway, Dorothy Donegan, Dizzy Gillespie, Curtis Mayfield, Jimmy Witherspoon, Mahalia Jackson, Ornette Coleman, and so many more were featured. As the decade progressed, more of the aforementioned young funk bands were also booked.

From a historical/musical standpoint, I find the musical diversity to be awe-inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to see Sly & the Family Stone and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers on the same stage?

There was one serious question that was being asked by a broad number of people, though: Is this jazz?

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Advocacy, Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage Preservation, Historic Preservation

Black Music Month 2026

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Established in 1979, Black Music Month celebrates the profound impact and global influence of African American musicians, songwriters, and producers on the cultural fabric of the world. It is also a celebration of the places that hold their stories.

Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater was one of the premier music venues in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. It was a stop on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” the network of performance spaces that provided opportunities for African American entertainers during the Jim Crow era. Opened on February 16, 1929, the 2,040-seat Art Deco theater began life as a movie palace.

During its heyday, the Uptown rivaled Harlem’s Apollo Theater as the place to hear good music on the East Coast. Jazz legends who graced the Uptown stage included Miles Davis, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Gloria Lynne, Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson, Ramsey Lewis, Oscar Brown Jr., Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and Jimmy Smith.

The Uptown was where jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, and soul music met.

In 1958, legendary disc jockey and civil rights activist Georgie Woods, “The Man with the Goods,” began producing shows at the Uptown with future legends, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett, Smokey Robinson, Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight.

The final curtain was in 1978. The Uptown Entertainment & Development Corporation (UEDC) is breathing life into the historic landmark. In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, UEDC will take us on a trip down memory lane.

Join UEDC for a journey through music, culture, and North Philadelphia history. Explore a pop-up museum featuring artifacts and stories from those who experienced the Uptown firsthand. Highlights include a drone virtual theater tour, film screenings, songwriting and recording workshops, and a mini-concert.

The event is open to the public but reservations are required. To RSVP, go here.

Advocacy, Cultural Heritage

The Forgotten Black Origin of Memorial Day

Originally called Decoration Day, Congress established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in 1968. The undertold history of Memorial Day dates back to the Civil War.

First observed on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina , thousands of African Americans, including formerly enslaved, 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, were led by children as they gathered to honor 257 Union soldiers who were buried in a mass grave on Washington Race Course which was used as a Confederate prison camp.

The ancestors exhumed the mass grave, reburied the bodies and decorated their graves with fresh flowers; hence, Decoration Day.

Cultural Heritage, John Coltrane

Music Legends Born in 1926

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, launched the first Negro History Week to celebrate African American contributions that were “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” The celebration of Black history was timed to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

This year marks the centennial birthday of jazz legends, including John Coltrane, Ray Brown, Miles Davis, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Heath, Melba Liston and Randy Weston.

Blues legend Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was born on December 11, 1926 in Alabama. She was the first to record “Hound Dog” which was written for her.

Thornton wrote and recorded “Ball and Chain” in the 1960s.

Thornton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024 in the “Musical Influence” category. She was inducted nearly 40 years after Elvis Presley and nearly 30 years after Janis Joplin.

As The Guardian reports, Thornton’s contributions have been overlooked and ignored:

Thornton should be ranked alongside the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but instead she is little more than a footnote in the histories of Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin as the original voice behind songs they would make famous. A new documentary, “Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me,” aims to right this wrong.

“Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me” will be screened at the Doc‘n Roll Film Festival New York City on May 3, 2026.

Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage Preservation

Women’s History Month: Melba Liston

I will close out Women’s History Month with jazz pioneer Melba Liston (1926-1999). Liston holds the distinction of being the first woman to be regularly featured as a player, composer, and arranger with a major jazz band.

From the National Endowment for the Arts:

Although a formidable trombone player, Melba Liston was primarily known for her arrangements, especially working with Randy Weston, and compositions. Growing up mostly in Los Angeles, some of her first work came during the 1940s with two West Coast masters: bandleader Gerald Wilson and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. In Gordon’s small combos, she began to blossom as a trombone soloist, and Gordon wrote a song as a tribute to her, “Mischievous Lady.” Despite her obvious talent as a soloist, Liston became an in-demand big band section player, which likely fueled her later work as an arranger. During the 1940s, Liston also worked with the Count Basie band and with Billie Holiday.

Following a brief hiatus from music, she joined Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop big band in 1950, and again for two of Gillespie’s State Department tours in 1956 and 1957, which included her arrangements of “Annie’s Dance” and “Stella by Starlight” in performances. She started her own all-woman quintet in 1958, working in New York and Bermuda, before joining Quincy Jones’ band in 1959 to play the musical Free and Easy. She stayed in Jones’ touring band as one of two-woman members until 1961.

In 1959, Liston arranged and conducted Gloria Lynne’s album, Lonely and Sentimental.

During the late 1960s and ‘70s, Liston worked as a staff arranger at Motown Records. In this role, she was responsible for arranging and conducting for several artists, including Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Billy Eckstine.

In the 1980s, Liston taught at the University of the West Indies and was director of Popular Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. A stroke in 1985 ended her playing career. She was able to resume work as a composer and arranger in the 1990s through the aid of computer technology.

Liston was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1987.

Melba Liston was recently celebrated at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.

Advocacy, Cultural Heritage

Muhammad Ali Honored with Forever Stamps

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) was the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. Known for his courage inside and outside the ring, Ali was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and religious freedom.

Ali didn’t just star in the boxing ring. He also starred in the Broadway musical “Buck White.”

Game recognizes game.

The three-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion was a cultural icon and global humanitarian. Ali’s honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005); Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Century (1999); BBC Sports Personality of the Century (1999); and United Nations Messenger of Peace (1998).

Visibly affected by Parkinson’s disease, Ali lit the Olympic flame at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.

Ali once said, “I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.”

The U.S. Postal Service will honor Ali with two stamps. The first-day-of-issue ceremony for the Muhammad Ali Forever stamps will be held on January 15, 2026 in Ali’s hometown, Louisville, Kentucky.

Ali will forever be remembered as “The Greatest.”