Peacebuilders

THE QUEST TO CREATE A COMMUNITY FOR ALL

By Trey Carlisle and Todd Mack

From the pages of our August 2022 Issue.

Music in Common founder and director Todd Mack, and Music in Common program coordinator Trey Carlisle, have been selected as 2022 CNN Champions for Change for their work with the Black Legacy Project. They are among 12 community champions being showcased on the special. The story, hosted by CNN anchor Victor Blackwell, will air twice on CNN this week: Tuesday, 9/20 at 3 p.m. ET; Thursday, 9/22 at 11 a.m.; and Saturday, September 24, at 8 p.m. with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

BLACK LEGACY PROJECT

THE BLACK LEGACY PROJECT is a musical celebration of Black history to advance racial solidarity, equity, and belonging. It is a national project produced by Music in Common—a nonprofit that strengthens, empowers, and connects communities through the universal language—in partnership with community stakeholders at the local level. As it travels the country, the Black Legacy Project 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.

Those familiar with Music in Common see us as peacebuilders. As such, our work often comes from a place of transforming conflict into something positive and constructive. We are not activists per se, but rather envisioners and facilitators of spaces in which that transformation can happen. This is the approach the Black Legacy Project takes to advance racial solidarity, equity, and belonging. It is, we believe, what sets the project apart from many other racial equity initiatives.

Black history is American history and Black history exists in every corner of the country, even where you least expect it. In choosing the seven locations to embed the project, we wanted to create a snapshot of the U.S. that could illustrate this. So, we looked at big cities, small rural towns, predominantly Black communities, predominantly white communities, and immensely diverse communities to land on—Atlanta, the Berkshires, Denver, the Arkansas Ozarks, Boise, Los Angeles, and the Mississippi Delta. By this time next year, we will have taken the project to all seven.

We are proud to have launched the Black Legacy Project here in the Berkshires, the community where Music in Common was born. There is rich Black history here with direct ties to some of the most important and influential Black leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who grew up here, and James Weldon Johnson, who had a writing cabin and home in Great Barrington. We selected works by each to strengthen that connection and featured Du Bois’s poem, “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” set to music by local musicians and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” referred to as the Black National Anthem, written by Johnson and his brother. In total, the Black Legacy Project in the Berkshires had nearly three-dozen local musicians— including Wanda Houston, Billy Keane, Gina Coleman, Annie Guthrie, and many others—interpret, compose, and record six songs. On March 6 at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, 15 of those local musicians came together to perform the songs in concert for the first time.

Along the way, a docuseries of the project was developed in partnership with Outpost in West Stockbridge. Over the Juneteenth weekend, the pilot episode of the series, filmed in the Berkshires, premiered with free screenings at the Colonial Theatre, Studio 9 in North Adams, and the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. Included in the events was a community conversation about race relations in the Berkshires, an informative exhibit about Juneteenth, and powerful personal testimony from local project coordinator, Mia Shepherd, about her family’s direct link to the holiday. Each event opened with a moving a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to honor the holiday.

The March concert, June events, and a week-long Black Legacy Project class taught at Berkshire School in March, serve as good examples of the type of programming we’ll be offering moving forward to keep the project growing locally and to keep the important conversations it inspires flowing. As early as this fall, we hope to bring the project into classrooms countywide, host additional roundtable discussions, and produce another film screening and concert. We believe the Black Legacy Project is an opportunity to create a community of belonging for all and to serve as living proof not only to the greater Berkshire region but to the world as a whole that such a community can exist. We hope you will join us on this journey by getting involved.

Visit theblacklegacyproject.org and musicincommon.org to learn how.

—Trey Carlisle and Todd Mack are co-directors of the Black Legacy Project.