[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ [ Tape deck whirring ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Growing up in the hood, I mean, you love hip-hop.

I mean, you love R&B music, but I was -- I was a little different because I would have to leave my friends at school and go to piano lessons.

♪♪ My grandmother would come pick me up from school, and I remember I used to try to hide it actually.

I didn't want my boys to know I was going to piano lessons.

♪♪ [ Applause ] [ Up-tempo music plays ] I think I could easily say, uh, the Pacific Northwest isn't really known for a whole lot of Black American culture.

Yeah, we had, uh, Jimi Hendrix.

But how long ago was that, you know?

But even in that experience, a lot of white kids in the audience.

♪♪ Most of the country, they associate this area with Starbucks, Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon.

♪♪ -I've always been... ...frustrated at the cultural productions for Black people in the Pacific Northwest compared to what you see in Atlanta, D.C., Chicago, New York, in the large urban centers where there's just a larger Black population.

In addition to Black churches, you have HBCUs, all those generators of Black talent.

So I always wanted to bring that grandiose type of production featuring African-American talent to this part of the nation because no one's doing that.

So I decided to approach the mayor of Seattle and say, "What are we going to do in Washington state?

We brag so much about equity, racial equity and all that," to celebrate the first time the nation celebrates Juneteenth, Freedom Day, as some call it.

No one had an answer, but we got to do something.

♪♪ -...Father, who is the king of kings and the lord of... [ Piano playing up-tempo music, rhythmic clapping ] [ Choir singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ Being in church where the Black churches is filled with music, the music is as important as the preached word in the Black church.

♪♪ Music is just so primary, so core.

Black folk in general, it is just so much a part of African culture.

[ Cheers and applause ] -[ Vocalizing ] -And really, our music is the soundtrack of our existence.

If you lost every book written about African-American history and culture, but you just captured the lyrics of our music, you could reconstruct our history from that.

-♪ Sweet home ♪ ♪ My lord ♪ -Ramón -- He's my nephew, 15 years younger than me.

He's my brother's son.

-My parents were pretty young when they had me.

They were both, uh, 17.

-And I was 15.

So I've known him all his life.

So he was at my mother's house all the time, and he always would crawl and then toddle and walk his way over to that piano.

Yeah.

He was fascinated with sound.

Ramón's father spent so many of his adult years incarcerated.

So Ramón was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Miss Bryant.

-Alene Bryant -- She's not too far from here in a long-term-care facility.

She wouldn't let me play football.

I wanted to play football.

So when I expressed interest in music, she completely just made every kind of arrangement.

My grandmother was a choir director.

-♪ You and me ♪ -One of the greatest singers in this region.

So I grew up in choir rehearsals, really, with a room full of older people.

[ Laughs ] Right here in Tacoma, Washington.

-At the time that I grew up in Tacoma in the early '60s, Black folks were confined to the Hilltop district.

All our churches were along I Street, J Street, usually a block or two apart.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -How you doing, young man?

Hey, how you doing?

They said if you wanted to get rid of Black folks in Tacoma, just drop a bomb on I Street Sunday morning at 11:00 because 80% of them were there in one of those churches.

Everybody knew everybody.

During that time, to survive in Hilltop, you got to have any combination of the three F's -- You got to be able to fight, you got to be fast, or you got to be funny.

And that was life.

We fought, busted each other's noses.

And today we're friends for life.

And it was a time where everybody had each other's back.

We walked to schools until busing started in the mid '70s, and they bused most of us out of Hilltop into the University district and Narrows district.

And we went from having classrooms that were racially diverse to being two or three of us in the classroom.

People thought it was a great social experiment, that Black folks were always better off if they could just be closer to white folks.

And that wasn't necessarily the case.

♪♪ [ Siren wails ] -We're on our way to a shooting right now.

A white female was shot.

Some black guy shot her.

[ Siren wails, police radio chatter ] [ Tires screech ] [ Police radio chatter ] -I grew up in the Hilltop community.

I'm an '80s baby.

At that time, a lot of gang violence.

[ Helicopter blades whirring ] I actually lived on a block that had two crack houses and a Crips OG house.

But at the same time, my grandparents lived on that block on the corner, and they kept immaculate yards while we heard shooting and everything else at night, you know, on the same block.

Even though there was chaos, my grandparents provided a very safe environment for me and they kept me shielded.

I saw my grandparents work manual-labor jobs during the week.

On the weekend, I saw them dress up, go to church and lead music ministries.

They had this huge record player that looked like a piece of furniture, and when family would come to town, it was always the time they gathered around the piano and sang.

The music.

That became my oasis in the midst of all the anxieties and fears that we have.

[ Applause ] ♪♪ -Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jesus.

-He had just graduated high school with no plans for what he was going to do in the future.

"Ramón," I said, "well, what are you doing?"

"Eh, eh, eh, eh."

He had no plan.

His dad, my brother, was in prison again at that time.

I said, "Spend the summer with me."

So he came back, stayed at the house.

So we had to bring structure to him.

We said, no, young people need to work and go to school during the day and sleep at night.

Teach him to manage his time and so forth.

Put him in the lives of other trained musicians like we had at our church.

So Ramón got a chance to work with these very highly trained, very gifted musicians.

That poured into him.

So this was another layer of his development.

I've often said that my relationship to Ramón is like Abraham and Lot in the Bible.

Lot was Abraham's nephew that he took in and raised as his son.

-I say Fresh Prince and Uncle Phil.

-Hey, Kool-Aid!

-[ Laughs ] -I could go with that analogy, but you get to be Fresh, I get to be fat.

I don't like that.

[ Laughs ] As they say, the rest is history.

-With a stroke of his pen today, President Biden signed into law a federal holiday for an event that many Americans had never even heard of until a few years ago.

-Making Juneteenth a new federal holiday marking the day the last African-American slaves were freed in Texas following the Civil War.

-Americans gathering on the nation's newest federal holiday.

-Juneteenth.

We've been celebrating among ourselves the last 165 years.

So what is the city of Seattle going to do with its having its second Black mayor, city of Tacoma with a Black mayor, all of that?

No one had an answer.

So I said, "How about a fine arts program with a 50-piece orchestra, a rhythm section, a choral group about the African music tradition that jumped the Atlantic via the slave ships, settled into lives of an enslaved people and evolved into all these different music forms, all of which functioned as a tool of political resistance and a source of hope?"

But I needed somebody who could write a run of show, who could translate this vision.

There's only a couple of people in this entire country who can pull that all together.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] -So, after I finished Morehouse College, I was living in New York at the time, working as a music director, and I received a call from my uncle, and they were trying to plan something to commemorate the first Juneteenth.

So I was like, "Yeah, I think I could put together a little something."

-There's some people who can only do a choir or only do an orchestra or only write music.

Ramón can do them all.

And as he's gotten older, he's no longer the nephew kind of following my lead but he's a professional in his own right.

He's introduced me to people that I didn't know.

So I said this is a providence of God for me to have the vision.

That vision wasn't going anywhere until I could find a person to fit the plan.

He just happened to have my last name.

And so that's how Songs of Black Folk was was born.

[ Plane engine droning ] -One of the values that they instilled in us at Morehouse College is to take what we've learned and return to our home communities.

So I left my life in New York City and moved back home to Seattle, hoping that Songs of Black Folk would breathe new life culturally into the Pacific Northwest.

But when I got there, my grandmother started to decline rapidly.

My grandmother has been in the same room since I got here in November.

There's a window right next to her bed she's never been able to turn her head to see out of.

And he goes and sits with her every day around his rehearsals, his practice schedule, his writing music.

And he said she used to sing to him.

Now he goes and he sings to her.

My grandma was one of the greatest singers in this region at one point.

Huge voice.

Now she's reduced to just a whisper.

♪♪ Even in that whisper, there's still a lot of, uh... There's a lot of music in there.

She was having, uh, a little anxiety attack, I think.

And her heart rate got really elevated.

And I just started singing ♪ I need thee ♪ ♪ Oh, I need thee ♪ ♪ Oh, bless me now, my savior ♪ I watched her heart rate go down.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and I go home and I sit down and I start writing because Juneteenth is still coming.

-Juneteenth concert, Songs of Black Folk.

-Songs of Black Folk.

-Make sure folks know how to show up for this amazing event.

-Songsofblackfolk.org -- You can purchase your tickets.

-We had basically five weeks before Juneteenth.

I didn't have a choir.

I didn't have an orchestra, singer.

I didn't have a program, music or anything.

I just had a concept in my mind.

I told my uncle, "Give me two days and I'll -- I'll have something for you on paper."

We were trying to assemble some of the finest people we could from the area.

-First thing you got to do is lock down your venue.

Then make sure we get all the performers in.

Then it's marketing and mobilizing and getting people to turn out.

I want a full house.

I want the people there because it will be the single greatest concentration of elite African-American musical talent on one stage anywhere in the Pacific Northwest.

The Songs of Black Folks is a depiction of the best of Black folks.

Yes, you affirm my whole life -- my grandmother, my grandfather.

Yes, there's a picture there of who we are at our best.

Not some stereotype or caricature.

Yes, Songs of Black Folk will literally generate generations of musicians and artists because they see it.

♪♪ -Lean on those.

Dot, dot, dot, dot.

Get to 41.

-I want it to be superb.

Perfection always escapes us.

But excellence being extraordinary is within our grasp.

But my concern is for my nephew.

I know he's carrying a lot.

I know he's been at the hospital all night long.

So after rehearsals, he was called to her bedside.

They peeled him away from it at about 4:00 a.m.

He's on about an hour and a half of sleep.

♪♪ -I did what I had to do in spite of my body.

You know, you got to push through.

Even as adults, we still get stage fright.

Sometimes I walk out on stage, I can be nervous.

My legs are shaking.

My hands are still clammy and sweaty.

♪♪ But my grandmother, she told me something that I never forgot.

She said to me, "Stay in the music.

It's safe there."

[ Applause ] [ Applause fades ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ God of our weary years ♪ ♪ God of our silent tears ♪ ♪ Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way ♪ ♪ Thou who hast led me ♪ ♪ Shadowed beneath Thy hand ♪ ♪ May we forever stand ♪ ♪ True to our God ♪ ♪ True to our native land ♪ ♪ Lift every voice ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -My grandmother gave me that intangible, unteachable burning in your inner being, the part that you can't get from any institution or out of a book.

As a conductor, you have two jobs really -- keep time and evoke the music.

Whoo!

-♪ Just praise through your struggle and through your pain ♪ -I want to inspire people to be free.

-♪ Just praise through the storm, yes, through the rain ♪ -It's the music of resistance and hope.

The torture that our ancestors endured here, we got a gift out of it.

We got an art form out of it.

-[ Vocalizing ] ♪♪ ♪ Just praise, just praise, just praise ♪ ♪ Just praise, just praise, just praise ♪ ♪ Just praise, praise ♪ [ Applause ] -Is that alright?

[ Laughter ] So, right up the hill from here, literally behind this theater is Kindred First Hill Hospital.

And that's where my grandmother is.

We got a call last night from the doctor saying that she probably wouldn't make it through the night, but she's still here.

[ Cheers and applause ] She's still here.

And I think it's divine providence that we just happen to be as close as I physically could possibly get this many musicians to her.

And my grandmother, if you don't know the name Alene Bryant, but my grandmother used to be one of the greatest singers in this region.

She sang in every church in Washington, in western Washington, I believe.

And she's the reason I'm standing here today because she didn't want me to play football, but she let me get any musical instrument I wanted.

[ Cheers and applause ] I pray that God sends a few of these overtones to her, to her bedroom, as she stands on the banks of Jordan.

♪♪ ♪ Deep in my heart ♪ ♪ I do believe that ♪ ♪ We shall overcome ♪ ♪ Someday ♪ ♪ Some ♪ ♪ Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] [ Applause continues ] [ Somber music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -God of our weary years and God of our silent tears, I am so very grateful for a nephew who you are using so mightily.

And I thank you for being the kind of god who breaks an alabaster box to release the perfume hidden inside.

And so, again and again, it is out of our brokenness that our genius flows.

If I had never had a problem, I wouldn't know that God could solve them.

And if I had never been hurt, I wouldn't know about your great healing.

And if I had never been lost, I wouldn't know that you care enough to come and find us.

And if I had never sinned, I would've never experienced your forgiveness.

Continue to transform our deficits into opportunities to dramatize that with God all things are possible and that hope always endures.

♪♪ -I'm blessed to be able to offer something to contribute.

[ Indistinct conversations ] I want to inspire people, to be creative.

To be imaginative.

Free people's mind.

[ Laughter ] It's not easy, but when is it ever easy?

Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy.

Stay in the music.

It's safe there.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Sweet home ♪ ♪ Sweet home ♪ ♪ Sweet home ♪ ♪ My lord ♪ ♪ Lord, I wonder ♪ ♪ If I'll ever ♪ ♪ Get home ♪ ♪ Mm-mmmm ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪