PITTSFIELD — As February draws to a close — following a month-long celebration of African Americans’ achievements and ongoing contributions to American history — Music in Common (MIC) is gearing up for the world premiere performance of The Black Legacy Project (BLP). This musical celebration of Black history, aimed at advancing racial solidarity, equity, and belonging, will take to the stage at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield for a free performance this Sunday, March 6 at 7 p.m.
The BLP, a national project produced in partnership with community stakeholders at the local level, endeavors to bring artists of all backgrounds together — 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 — as it travels the country.
“The Black Legacy Project in the Berkshires has been in the works for a year and a half, and it is great to see it coming together,” said Mia Shepherd, local co-director of the project. In September 2021, MIC launched its newest initiative. Two dozen Berkshire County residents took part in a pair of community roundtable discussions hinging on how poems and songs from a particular region — in this case the Berkshires, including works by Abel Meeropol and W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson and Pete Seeger — are written and interpreted.
“[Each of these artists] dedicated their lives and their vocations to building a world of belonging and fostering solidarity between Black and white Americans to advance racial equity,” said Trey Carlisle, co-producer of the BLP. Recording commenced in November 2021, at a handful of studios across the Berkshires, when more than three dozen local musicians came together to record six songs addressing the theme “Hope in a Hateful World” (all of which will be performed at the Colonial).
“The March 6 event is not the culmination, but rather just the beginning of an ongoing effort to build solidarity, equity, and belonging in the Berkshires and beyond through the power of civic engagement and the universal language of music,” said Shepherd, pointing to a hefty grant — to the tune of $400,000 — that will now catapult this ground-breaking project into six additional regions across the country.
“This is actually the same grant, repackaged and rebranded, [resulting in] a much better fit for Music in Common and The Black Legacy Project in particular,” Todd Mack, founder and executive director of Music in Common said of a 2016 grant, awarded by the Obama administration, and subsequently stripped away by the Trump administration.
“Not only did we get [the grant again], we got it for two and a half times the amount of money!” said Mack, of the karma purportedly at play. As to the proverbial strings attached? The award commits and obligates MIC to bring the project to six communities across the country — not including the Berkshires, as MIC’s work here began prior to the parameters of the current grant. Over the course of 2022–2023, the BLP will travel to Atlanta, Los Angeles, the Mississippi Delta, Denver, Boise, and the Arkansas Ozarks. Mack calls this overwhelming evidence of our country’s current reality, namely that there are “plenty of examples of racial injustice and hate-based [racial] violence in every corner of the country.”
The grant, awarded through the Department of Homeland Security, is part of a new program launched last year called Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP). “They are looking at targeted violence, hate-based violence and domestic terrorism as a public health issue,” Mack explained, “and they’re taking a whole-society approach to how to tackle it.” In other words, the BLP has gained national recognition as an innovative way to prevent violence, not to mention “a very different approach on how to build solidarity to advance racial justice and equity, and that is by doing what we’ve been doing from the beginning, approaching it as a conflict.”
Since its inception in 2005, MIC has been attempting to repair the fractures dividing communities worldwide through collaborative songwriting, multimedia, and performance. In that time, the nonprofit — founded by singer-songwriter and producer 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 — has directly served thousands of people in more than 300 communities across the globe and across religious, ethnic, cultural, and racial axes.
“There will be a chosen theme that is relevant to the history of key figures, key events that happen in these communities that are centered around the history of race relations in this country,” explained Carlisle of plans going forward. In Atlanta, a logical theme might be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement; in Los Angeles, perhaps the relationship between law enforcement and Black Americans will be explored in the context of race-related riots in that region. “The songs we choose would have ties to those communities, cities and states … [offering opportunities to] explore and discuss, through roundtable discussions [with residents], while providing inspiration for Black and White musicians to create interpretations of these songs [as well as] originals.”
NOTE: Tickets for this free community event — including a concert, preview screening of a documentary short about BLP, and a community conversation — are available from the Colonial box office. Performers include Wanda Houston, Billy Keane, Gina Coleman, Matt Cusson, Rufus Jones, Annie Guthrie, Diego Mongue, and Eric Reinhardt. The Black LP Berkshires is supported by local partners including OUTPOST, Lee Bank Foundation, Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative’s Community Film Fund, the Feigenbaum Foundation, Berkshire Bank, Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, Greylock Federal Credit Union, The Guthrie Center, Housatonic Heritage and the Oral History Center, Deep Red Studios, Berkshire Theatre Group, Trattoria Rustica, Lenox Cultural Council, Darrow Music Collective. Sponsorship opportunities are still available.
