Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Radio

Latest Episodes:

Blues Music is Black History: The Hard Conversation at Hopson Plantation Jun 30, 2025

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What does it mean to speak the truth of the Blues on the very soil where our ancestors were enslaved?

In this live broadcast, Lamont Jack Pearley—traditional Bluesman, folklorist, and founder of the Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation—reflects on being invited to present his original scholarship on Blues Ecology at Hopson Plantation, once home to Blues legend Pinetop Perkins.

As we close out Black Music History Month, this episode holds space for a necessary conversation about land, memory, and music. We'll explore how different landscapes—Mississippi’s cotton fields and Louisiana’s red-light districts—shaped different kinds of Blues, and why where we honor the Blues matters just as much as how we do it.

Through personal reflection, fieldwork excerpts, and live performance, we ask:
Can you celebrate the Blues without honoring the history that created it?

Join us tonight for truth-telling, music, and memory from the Delta to the mic.

Mojo Workin’: Dr. Katrina Hazzard-Donald on Hoodoo, Blues, and the Black Belt Tradition Jun 18, 2025

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Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Radio presents:Mojo Workin’: Dr. Katrina Hazzard-Donald on Hoodoo, Blues, and the Black Belt TraditionIn this culturally rich and significant episode of Jack Dappa Blues Radio, we welcome renowned folklorist, sociologist, and dance scholar Dr. Katrina Hazzard-Donald for an in-depth discussion on Black Belt Hoodoo, Blues culture, and African American sacred traditions.In this episode, we explore:The African origins and survival of Hoodoo as a metaphysical systemThe jook joint as a sacred space of spirit, resistance, and joyHow Blues music operates as ritual, cosmology, and cultural memoryThe overlap between Dr. Hazzard-Donald’s work and the Blues Ecology frameworkDr. Hazzard-Donald is the author of Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System and Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African American Culture. She is a professor emerita at Rutgers University, a Yoruba/Lukumi initiate, and a lifelong cultural worker dedicated to preserving and interpreting Black Southern lifeways.🪕 Hosted by Lamont Jack Pearley, traditional Blues artist, applied folklorist, and founder of Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation.Become a Patreon🔗 Visit us at: https://www.patreon.com/jackdappablues💬 Share your thoughts in the comments and help amplify Black traditional knowledge.🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that center Black folklore, cultural heritage, and Blues history.

Creole Roots, Sinners, and Gravediggers: The Blues According to Chris Thomas King Jun 07, 2025

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Creole Roots, Sinners, and Gravediggers

Bluesman, actor, and cultural preservationist Chris Thomas King joins Jack Dappa Blues Radio to uncover the real story of the Blues — from the juke joints of Louisiana to the haunting depths of Gravedigger Gonna Cut You Down.

We talk Creole identity, his film Sinners, the founding of the Blues Origin Institute, and why the Blues didn’t start in the Delta — it started in Louisiana.

This is the Blues you weren’t taught. The Blues that remembers.

▶️ Available now on all streaming platforms.
#ChrisThomasKing #CreoleBlues #JackDappaBlues #BluesPeople #BluesOriginInstitute #BlackMusicMonth

The African American Folklorist for the Month of June: Dr. Elisha Oliver Jun 05, 2025

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Each month, The African American Folklorist honors a Black scholar whose life’s work is immersed in the deep study and preservation of African American folkways, knowledge systems, and community truth-telling. For June, we recognize Dr. Elisha Oliver, a biocultural anthropologist, visual ethnographer, and Executive Director of Texas Folklife, as our African American Folklorist of the Month.Dr. Oliver’s scholarship is rooted in lived experience, land memory, and embodied care. Her work crosses the fields of anthropology, folklore, health equity, and the arts, tracing the relationships between space, place, food environments, and Black wellness traditions. Through rigorous fieldwork and visual storytelling, she brings to light the narratives often overlooked in mainstream academia and institutional folklore.In this episode, we’ll explore how Dr. Oliver uses film, photography, and the spoken word to document the intersections of storytelling, traditional healing, and environmental sustainability. We’ll discuss her contributions to the American Folklore Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and her role as a Zora Neale Hurston Award winner and Wenner-Gren Public Scholar Fellow. And we'll go deep, into land as medicine, Black maternal health, and the importance of centering community in every research question asked.https://texasfolklife.org/eoliver@texasfolklife.org

The Blues as Black Sonic Folklore Pt. 2 – Hard Ground & High Water Jun 02, 2025

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The Blues as Black Sonic Folklore: Part 2:"Hard Ground and High Water: The Blues of Survival and Struggle"We continue our Black Music Month series by diving into the Blues as a witness to environmental crisis and class struggle.Featuring music by Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Lead Belly, we explore how songs about flood, drought, and urban segregation serve as time capsules, preserving Black ecological, economic, and emotional history through sound. These are more than Blues, they are survival songs, testimonies of people shaped by both nature and the systems that fail them.

Afro Indigenous Country Blues: The Sonic Sovereignty of Cactus Rose NYC May 31, 2025

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In this episode of Jack Dappa Blues Radio, we welcome Kandia Crazy Horse, Afro-Indigenous musician, rock critic, author, and frontwoman of the genre-defying band Cactus Rose NYC. From the newsroom to the stage, Kandia has blazed a singular trail across rock, country, and Americana—reclaiming sound as a site of cultural sovereignty, survival, and storytelling.We dive into her legacy as editor of Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock ’n’ Roll, her academic work at Princeton University, and her bold mission to center Afro-Indigenous identity in American roots music. Her concept of “sonic sovereignty” challenges colonial gatekeeping in music, and her voice—both literal and literary—carries the spirit of revolution.🎶 Listen to Kandia Crazy Horse’s music:👉 Spotify – “Gravedigger Gonna Cut You Down” Spotify - "Cactus Rose NYC" 🔗 Featured Topics:Afro-Indigenous identity in musicReclaiming Americana and country bluesThe politics of sound and representationCactus Rose NYC and creative freedomRip It Up and the Black Rock archiveCultural revolt in music journalism and academia

The Blues as Black Sonic Folklore: Part 1: The Folklore in the Blues May 26, 2025

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In this kickoff episode for Black Music Month, Jack Dappa Blues Radio explores the Blues as Black folklore, not just as music, but as cultural testimony, survival strategy, and sonic memory. Through the voices of Tommy Johnson, Mance Lipscomb, Rube Lacy, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, we treat Blues lyrics as living archives, capturing addiction, emotional depth, environmental trauma, and coded cultural critique.We examine the Blues as testimony, as ecological witness, and as class commentary, diving into how metaphor, moan, and memory serve as vital tools for storytelling and resistance.This episode honors the spirit of Black Music Month by placing tradition bearers front and center, revealing how the Blues doesn't just recall history—it makes it.🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://streamyard.com/pal/d/6735755289559040

The Blues Narrative: The Children of the Great Migration May 21, 2025

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🎙️ REPLAY: The Blues Narrative — The Next Chapter of the Slave Narratives

Originally aired: Late March Broadcast | 9 PM CST
Presented by: Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation
In partnership with The African American Folklorist and We The Blues People

We are proud to share the full replay of our special broadcast that launched a new chapter in our cultural memory work — The Blues Narrative.

This powerful episode explores the lived experiences of the Children of The Great Migration — the Blues People whose lives carry the rhythms of survival, resistance, and Black cultural power in the face of systemic oppression.

In this broadcast, you’ll experience:

🎤 First-hand accounts and oral histories from tradition-bearers
🎶 Blues soundscapes that score our shared historical memory
📚 Critical theory grounded in Black ecological, cultural, and musical traditions
🗣️ Reflections on how the Blues functions as both archive and resistance

This series is the continuation of the Slave Narratives — a living archive voiced by those who inherited the legacy and forged new paths through song, story, and sound.

📡 Available now to members.

Your support helps us preserve, publish, and share the Black oral tradition — rooted in the real lives of our elders, our communities, and our future.

👉🏾 Join us, support the work, and be part of the Blues Narrative.

Sinners, Blues People, Storytelling, and Cultural Reckoning May 21, 2025

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In this episode, we dive back into the film Sinners, not just as a movie, but as a cultural reckoning. We’re breaking down how the film tells a deeper story about Black American folklife, Blues culture, and the enduring legacy of Blues People. This time, we’re not just exploring themes; we’re getting into the characters, the plot, and the ways they reveal the real-life struggle between tradition and transformation.Rather than just reviewing the film, we’re asking why Sinners matters. It’s not just entertainment, it’s a bold statement about what it means to be a Blues person in a world where survival, spirituality, and cultural memory are constantly tested. We’ll explore how the film reflects critical ideas like Blues Ecology, Clyde Woods’ Development Arrested, and the legacy of the Plantation Complex. We’ll also look at how the film’s portrayal of Black womanhood, feminism, and colorism challenges or reinforces cultural narratives.Big Bill Broonzy’s legacy will be front and center as we examine how his words and music resonate with the film’s themes. As Broonzy once said, “They don’t like the idea of hearing the old original way it went because it’s said to carry them back to the horse and buggy days, and slavery time, and they don’t want to think about that.” Just like his music, Sinners forces us to confront the past and ask hard questions about what’s been lost and what survives, and how Ryan Cooger brings to life this visual story of Blues People, Blues Folk Belief, and Blues Culture of the time!We’ll also dig into the cultural intersections of the Mississippi Delta, how Irish, Chinese, Black, and Afro-Indigenous communities shaped the Blues tradition. And we’ll make connections to other cultural works like August Wilson’s plays, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Crossroads, exploring how each handles the intersection of performance, truth, and storytelling.To break it all down, I’m joined by Dr. Langston Collin Wilkins and Dr. Elisha Oliver, whose insights into Black folklore and cultural memory will help us unpack the film’s deeper layers.This episode isn’t just a conversation; it’s a call to think critically about how Black life and Blues culture are represented and remembered. Tune in for a cultural reckoning where the Blues itself gets to testify.

The African American Folklorist of the Monthof May - Dr. Ebony Bailey May 02, 2025

Show notes

In this episode of The African American Folklorist, we honor Dr. Ebony Bailey as Folklorist of the month of May. Dr. Bailey is a dynamic scholar, writer, and cultural worker whose groundbreaking research intersects Black Literature and Folklore. Dr. Bailey explores how African Americans have historically been both represented as “the folk” and how they have powerfully redefined that term through literature, activism, and cultural intervention.

We dive into her acclaimed article, (Re)Making the Folk: Black Representation and the Folk in Early American Folklore Studies (Journal of American Folklore, 2021), and discuss her public talk, Re(Making) the Folk: The Folk in Early African American Folklore Studies and Postbellum, Pre-Harlem Literature. Through this dialogue, Dr. Bailey highlights how early Black writers and intellectuals used folklore as a site of resistance, cultural affirmation, and narrative control.

She also shares insights from her work as a museum researcher with Kera Collective and her leadership in equity-centered initiatives within the American Folklore Society. As a contributor to The African American Folklorist platform, Dr. Bailey helps shape the future of folklore by amplifying Black voices, reclaiming tradition, and challenging dominant narratives.Join us for a rich and necessary conversation on race, representation, and the reclaiming of folk knowledge.

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