30 Black Music City grant winners are announced

Thirty Philadelphia-area artists are being awarded grants totaling $125,000 by Black Music City to create works that honor the city’s Black music heritage.

In the third year of the project, the program has grown in terms of dollars since its first year in 2021, when $48,000 was distributed to 23 winners, and 2022, when $90,000 went to 46 winners.

This year’s honorees, who will receive grants between $2,000 and $5,000 each, include musicians, filmmakers, and artists working in various media.

Sheena Howard’s grant is for a graphic novel about Marian Anderson. Jazz bassist Warren Oree will pay tribute to sax players Benny Golson, Bootsie Barnes, and Hank Mobley.

Kimberly Camp will receive a $5,000 grant to create porcelain dolls of artists like Billie Holiday. Shonte Young and Michael Ta’bon are visual artists who will pay tribute to rappers Tierra Whack and PnB Rock, respectively.

Seraiah Nicole, a Philly jazz singer who is the Black Music City program host and one of six members of the project’s selection committee, said winners were chosen from a pool of 390 applicants.

Along with Nicole, applicants were judged by musician and radio host Greg Bryant, singer Laurin Talese, singer and local Recording Academy president Donn Thompson-Morelli, journalist John Morrison, and attorney and academic Timothy Welbeck.

Winners were selected based on written proposals as well as “their recent works and also what they wanted to convey in the message they put out,” Nicole said.

As standouts, Nicole pointed to proposals by Nashira Felder, who performs as DJ Na$h, for a Juneteenth festival; and Kayla Childs, a.k.a Black Buttafly, a singer and pianist who will pay tribute to pioneering Philly jazz organists Shirley Scott and Trudi Pitts.

Black Music City grant winners will present their work, and several will perform, at World Cafe Live during Black Music Month on June 11.

The Black Music City project is a collaborative effort by radio stations WXPN-FM (88.5) and WRTI-FM (90.1), and music and arts incubator and co-working space REC Philly. Grant winners also receive a one-year membership with REC Philly, a $599 value. Black Music City is funded primarily by the William Penn Foundation with support from Fulton Bank and Aqua.

WXPN station manager Roger LaMay said the decision to pay out larger amounts to a smaller number of artists this year was arrived at after last year’s winners offered feedback at a retreat.

“It became clear that artists weren’t really paying themselves,” LaMay said. “We were paying their material costs, really. So by raising the grant amount to up to $5,000, we were able to attract a robust number of artists who could then afford to pay themselves.”

In the last two years, the BMC presentation ceremony was held on Juneteenth.

“Last year, it was in competition with Juneteenth and Father’s Day,” REC Philly’s Ramel Coleman said. “But it still drew over 500 people. So this year. we’re moving it to June 11 and hopefully will draw an even bigger crowd.”

LaMay said that Black Music City was conceived in 2021 as a one-off project, “because of our awareness during the pandemic that it was really hard for artists, and particular Black artists in Philadelphia, to access funding.” As it’s grown, he said, it’s become part of WXPN’s strategy to aid artists in more ways than just playing them on the radio.

Black Music City is part of an effort that includes the station’s Black Opry Residency this month, in which a group of five Americana artists will take part in a weeklong career-building workshop capped by a show at World Cafe Live on March 24.

“The record labels aren’t in the artist development business anymore,” said LaMay. “And what is true of new artists and young artists in general is even more true for artists of color and from marginalized communities. We want to be there for artists of all types, but it’s particularly essential that we reach out to the people who most benefit from this kind of support.”

A complete list of the 2023 Black Music City grant winners can be found at blackmusiccity.com.