Cultivating cross-racial conversations through music: The Black Legacy Project’s impact on Laguna Beach
By MARRIE STONE
A predominantly white crowd gathered at the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center (LBCAC) on Tuesday, Dec. 6, for a live concert and screening of the Black Legacy Project’s (Black LP) first documentary in what will become a docuseries chronicling the impact of the Project on various communities across the United States, including Laguna Beach.
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Courtesy of the Black Legacy Project
Black Legacy Project LA band and crew after the culminating performance at the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center. (Back row, L-R) Sarah Morton, David Parks, Jason Feddy and Felice. (Front row, L-R) Paige Williams, Todd Mack, Simone Alyse and Trey Carlisle.
The Black LP is a musical celebration of Black history. It aims to advance racial solidarity, equity and belonging – one town at a time. Music, they say, speaks a common language. It has the power to express complicated emotions and unite people across racial and cultural divides.
Produced by Music in Common, the Black LP travels the country, bringing together artists of all backgrounds to record contemporary interpretations of songs central to the Black American experience. (Think Strange Fruit, made famous by Billie Holiday, or My Country ‘Tis of Thee by W.E.B. Du Bois.) They also compose original scores that address current racial issues. Concurrent community discussions inform how these songs are interpreted and written.
Four musicians, including local legend Jason Feddy, took the stage that Tuesday night to perform three works including American Skin (41 Shots) (a reimagined version of Bruce Springsteen’s song written in 2000 in response to the police shooting death of Amadou Diallo), Sweeter (originally written by Leon Bridges) and Better (an original score written and performed by Paige Williams, David Parks, Felice and Jason Feddy).
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Courtesy of the Black Legacy Project
Black Legacy Project LA band performing at Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center. (L-R) Paige Williams, Felice, David Parks and Jason Feddy.
Feddy has been involved in the organization for several years. He met Music in Common’s Founder and Executive Director Todd Mack in Tel Aviv 12 years ago when the two were doing a concert to honor the life and legacy of journalist Daniel Pearl (Mack’s friend and bandmate). Pearl was executed by Al-Qaeda in 2002. “I was looking for a way to honor Danny’s life, but also address the hate and violence that took his life,” Mack told the LBCAC audience.
Mack’s answer was to create opportunities for people to communicate across racial and cultural divides. “It’s a very simple formula,” Mack said. “We bring together diverse communities and guide them through facilitated discussions and collaborative songwriting to produce a performance. That’s the throughline from program to program.”
The Black LP began last year in the Berkshires and recently came to Los Angeles. They’re planning events in Boise, Atlanta, Denver, the Mississippi Delta and the Arkansas Ozarks.
Meanwhile, our neighbor to the north provided an ideal setting for the project. While L.A. is known for being the entertainment capital of the world, it’s also one of our nation’s most diverse communities. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – Los Angeles has received national attention for acts of racial violence (including the Watts and Rodney King riots) and its racially biased redlining policies and restrictive covenants. As a result, L.A. has become an incubator for many artists who shed light on the Black American experience.
Black Legacy Project in the Berkshires wrote and produced “Rise Up” featured in this music video
Unlike Los Angeles, Laguna’s population isn’t nearly as racially and culturally diverse. But the issues we face are no less significant. Last January, when Allyson Allen’s Peace-ful Protest exhibition was removed from the Wells Fargo Bank CAP Gallery two days after its installation, an important community conversation ensued that highlighted the need for projects like this in our town.
“With the fresh attention that has been fostered towards issues of race relations and Black history (e.g. Ethnic Diversity and Black History Month, and Allyson Allen’s arts exhibit), this is a prime time to cultivate greater empathy, solidarity and collaboration between residents across racial divides about how to cultivate Laguna Beach as a community of belonging,” said Trey Carlisle, program coordinator for the Black LP and co-director of Music in Common.
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“As an alumni of Soka University of America – which is right down the road – I am also convinced that Laguna Beach is a powerfully ripe environment to embed the Black LP, and thus, foster conversations and collaborations for change,” Carlisle said. “Laguna Beach is a home and neighbor to the organizations and institutions that helped me form my passion for advancing solidarity, equity and belonging. From the time I was 17, Laguna Beach served as a site for my involvement with the MY HERO Project, Soka University of America, and of course, Music In Common, all which instilled within me the importance of using dialogue and the arts to build bridges across the divides.”
Feddy, too, thought the Black LP would be a good fit for Laguna. He originally brought Music in Common here in 2015. “Laguna has a progressive bent, at least socially,” said Feddy. “We have a history of that – embracing our gay population and hippie culture. Race might not be as big an issue for Laguna in the way it might for other places around the country.” And yet, he agreed, we have some work to do.
When the Black LP arrives in a community, they select a relevant theme that reflects the issues that locality faces, as well as two songs centered around race relations that have direct ties to that community. They begin their week-long process with a roundtable discussion that brings together Black and White Americans to explore the songs and discuss how they have direct ties to the current state of race relations today.
The chosen theme for Los Angeles was “American Skin,” reflecting how the color of a person’s skin impacts their lived experience. The Springsteen song became a natural facilitator for these oft-difficult conversations.
Using an affinity group model usually associated with conflict resolution, community members with shared backgrounds meet among themselves to discuss their contributions to the conflict, how the conflict has affected them and what can they do to move their community forward. Then they meet with the other party engaged in the conflict and share what they’ve learned. Together, they co-create a better path forward.
“Although you see this work done in various peace-building contexts, you don’t often see it done in the context of race relations, especially in the United States,” said Carlisle. “We were inspired in 2020 [after the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd] to explore how we might bring our work in peace building and conflict transformation to help advance greater equity, solidarity and belonging in the United States around race relations.”
Feddy met with L.A.-based musicians Paige Williams, David Parks and Felice to collaborate on writing, rewriting and recording the songs. They also engaged in some challenging conversations that took them all outside their comfort zones. “There’s something very powerful about creativity and about creating projects together that proves we’re capable of communicating on all levels,” said Feddy. “There are so many commonalities between us. When you start focusing on something other than yourself, and you start writing music together and creating something together, you realize there is only one race – the human race. Everything else is just culturally determined.”
Courtesy of the Black Legacy Project
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Black Legacy Project LA working on song writing and arrangements at Harmony Studios in Anaheim. (L-R) Jason Feddy, Trey Carlisle, Felice, Paige Williams, David Parks and Todd Mack.
“The story that stood out to me the most about the impact the Black LP has had on Orange County was a testimonial that our Musical Co-Director Paige Williams shared at our culminating showcase,” said Carlisle. “She was the only Black person (let alone the only Black teacher) that would walk in the doors of the music studio that she taught at. But, after we hosted and highlighted the Black LP song interpretation and writing sessions at the studio, a Black family reached out and sought to register their daughter for classes, relieved that the studio could be a space of belonging for Black folks.”
Like a lot of communities these days, Laguna Beach might be something of a shapeshifter, revealing itself in different ways at different times to different groups. No matter the common ground and mutual affinity, there will always be a chasm between lived cultural experiences. That’s what makes projects like these so important.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to only go to places where there’s [active] conflict,” said Feddy. “It’s worth going to places where there isn’t any conflict and where people have the space to think critically about this stuff. Laguna is one of those places.”
“We look forward to returning to Laguna Beach and Southern California as a whole, to host follow-up roundtables, film screenings, school workshops and performances to continue the momentum inspired from the December launch,” said Carlisle. “See you again soon, Laguna!”
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Photo by Marrie Stone
Black Legacy Project LA band and crew show off their playful sides after a heady performance
For more information about the Black Legacy Project, visit their website by clicking here or follow them on Facebook at the Black Legacy Project, Instagram @theblacklegacyproject, or Tiktok at www.tiktok.com/tag/theblacklegacyproject.