Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Radio

On Jack Dappa Blues Radio & TV, Lamont Jack Pearley walks two trails at once: the Blues Trail and the Bloodline Trail.Beginning with the image and memory of his great-great-great grandmother Susan Nash, this broadcast explores how Black family history, Indigenous memory, oral tradition, land, and the Blues are deeply connected. Through the lens of Prison Planet, Blues Ecology, and the Blues Narrative, this episode asks: what di...

This January episode of The African American Folklorist opens the year with a powerful conversation with Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson, independent ethnomusicologist and cultural documentarian. This interview is about more than one project — it’s about sound, memory, cultural responsibility, and what ethical listening looks like when you’re documenting Black life and carrying stories that outlive you.We discuss Dr. Atkin...

On Jack Dappa Blues Radio, we discuss Black Music History Month through a cultural and traditional news lens. We are not simply celebrating Black music as entertainment. We are listening to Black music as testimony, archive, field report, ancestral memory, spiritual technology, resistance practice, environmental record, and survival map. This program connects Black Music History Month to the Blues People, Blues Ecology, Blues Narra...

Tonight’s episode is a reflexive conversation on the importance of the Blues Music is Black History series, now expanding into the fuller truth that Blues music is also Indigenous history. This conversation grows out of my second year presenting the Blues Music is Black History panel/conversation at the Pinetop Perkins Workshop Experience on Hopson Plantation, a place tied to the labor, memory, and cultural survival of Black ...

On Jack Dappa Blues, we gathered on July 5th, 2026 — the same date Frederick Douglass delivered his historic 1852 address at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, now remembered by the piercing question: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?”As America celebrates 250 years of birth, independence, and nationhood, we ask a deeper question:What to the Blues People is America’s 250th birthday?Thi...

Dr. Paulette Richards, our African American Folklorist of the Month for December 2025, brings a powerful blend of scholarship, artistry, and cultural memory to her work in African American puppetry and object performance. In this episode, we explore her trilogy of puppet films—Blacks and Bays, Men and Mules, and Worth Her Salt—and the accompanying EP Soul Songs: Remembrance, Resilience, Resistance, which reimagines ance...

What does it mean to become a folklorist? How do stories, rumors, family traditions, and everyday objects become archives of Black history? In this special episode of Jack Dappa Blues, host Lamont Jack Pearley sits down with one of the most influential voices in African American folklore, Dr. Patricia A. Turner, for an inspiring conversation about scholarship, mentorship, and the enduring power of Black cultural expression.

From her...

Jack Dappa Blues Radio honors Libby Rae Watson—an authentic Blues woman, guitarist, songwriter, cultural witness, and keeper of Mississippi Blues memory.Since the early 1970s, Libby Rae has built deep relationships with some of the most important figures in traditional Blues, including Big Joe Williams, Furry Lewis, Eugene Powell, Houston Stackhouse, Stonewall Mays, and her close friend and mentor, Sam Chatmon.In 1978, she he...

WHAT’S HAPPENING, BLUES PEOPLE?If you don’t know me from nothing, you know me from that statement. Every month we celebrate our African American Folklorist of the Month—lifting up culture-keepers whose work sits at the crossroads of tradition, scholarship, and community.This episode honors Brandi Waller-Pace (they/she)—Fort Worth–based musician, educator, scholar-activist, Founder/Executive Director of...

In this episode of Jack Dappa Blues Radio, we welcome Baba Súle Greg Wilson, an American Griot, musician, author, storyteller, educator, and cultural bearer whose work moves through rhythm, Spirit, memory, and Sankofa.Born and raised in Washington, DC, Súle grew up surrounded by street musicians, family stories, global visitors, neighborhood wisdom, and ancestral conversations around the kitchen table. From learning rhythm bones fr...

Presented as part of The African American Folklorist Black Advocacy Issue, the Black Advocacy Symposium brings together public testimony, cultural memory, and practical community guidance for families and communities navigating institutional harm.

This episode centers Black Americans first—because our communities have too often been forced to learn how to respond to tragedy, protect our loved ones’ stories, confront syst...

In this long-overdue episode of Jack Dappa Blues, we welcome The Undaunted Professor Harp for a deep and unflinching conversation about Blues, Black history, survival, and truth. Drawing from his memoir, Ain’t No Uncle Tom in My Blues: Life and Times of the Undaunted Professor Harp, Professor Harp reflects on a lifetime in the music—from discovering the harmonica through George “Harmonica” Smith, to sitting ...

Join us as we celebrate Michael L. Jones, August’s African American Folklorist for the Month of August 2025, on this special episode of Jack Dappa Blues Radio. Michael is a Louisville‑based journalist, author, and music historian whose award‑winning book Louisville Jug Music: From Earl McDonald to the National Jubilee traces the roots of jug band music and earned the 2015 Samuel Thomas Book Award. A musicologist, ethnomusicol...

In this Deep Blues episode, we sit down with Billy Branch, Emmy Award winner, 3-time Grammy nominee, 2020 Blues Hall of Fame inductee, and living legend of the Chicago Blues tradition.Discovered by Willie Dixon and mentored by the late Carey Bell, Billy Branch has spent over five decades shaping, performing, and preserving the Blues. From recording with icons like Koko Taylor and Taj Mahal to pioneering the globally recognized Blue...

On this episode of Jack Dappa Blues, I sit down with the legendary Chicago Beau (Lincoln T. Beauchamp Jr.)—musician, author, publisher, poet, cultural commentator, and one of the great living voices of Black music and Blues culture. For decades, Chicago Beau has created, documented, and protected Black artistic expression through music, literature, and fearless storytelling.Together, we explore a lifetime shaped by the Blues,...

What happens when a classically trained violinist reclaims the roots of Black folk, Blues, and community power? In this robust conversation, I sit down with Benjamin Hunter, Artistic Director of Northwest Folklife and co-founder of Black & Tan Hall, to explore the intersections of music, memory, and modern-day folklore.🖤 Ben Hunter isn’t just playing music—he’s cultivating spaces where memory, folk wisdom, an...

Tonight’s live broadcast, “You Have a Home, Part 2,” is a community update and a homecoming message for Blues People. We’re sharing what’s next as we prepare to live broadcast on WPBR, We The Blues People Radio Network, and the Reflexive Podcast on Patreon, expanding the ways our community can gather, learn, and stay connected.We’ll walk through the rhythm of our programming, our Thursday night s...

Tony Kail, Memphis Hoodoo, and the Spiritual Traditions of the Black SouthWhat is Black American Folk Belief? And what does it have to do with the Blues?In this episode, cultural anthropologist and author Tony Kail, whose work documenting Memphis Hoodoo and the Beale Street Hoodoo History and Folklife Museum helps preserve the stories of African American healers, rootworkers, and spiritual practitioners whose traditions supported B...

Presented by: Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation
In partnership with The African American Folklorist

This in-depth session brings together leaders grounded in Indigenous identity, tribal sovereignty, and reclamation work to guide participants through the process of connecting and reconnecting families to tribal ancestry.

💬 One powerful takeaway?
Blood quantum doesn’t equal identity. In this conversation, w...