Face the Music

Using roots music to confront racism

SELECT FRIDAYS | 5 - 8 PM | IN PERSON OR VIRTUAL

Learn the origins of erasure & tools to counteract it.

Face the Music: Combat Erasure

Explore stories of American musical lessons for combatting oppression and erasure that exist in the communities and traditions of the African and Jewish diasporas. Featuring both popular and obscure stories and figures in these cultures, The Rhapsody Project’s leaders and special guests will introduce you to stories and music that contain essential knowledge drawn from cultures where people have been compelled to combat erasure for generations.

Face the Music

Program Details


Ages:	16 and up
Enrollment	Register for one standalone session at a time.
Format	Hybrid: Zoom or in-person at The Rhapsody Workshop at King Street Station
Session 1	Friday, May 2 – 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Session 1	With special guest Junious Brickhouse
Session 2	Friday, May 16 – 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Session 2	With special guest Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson
Ongoing Sessions	Select Fridays, including May 23. Future sessions to be scheduled.
Price	$20/session
Meals	Dinner provided to in-person participants.

This is for people who are passionate about educating themselves and equipping themselves with the knowledge of history necessary to meet the times we are living in.

Face The Music: Combat Erasure is offered in a hybrid format: on Zoom and at The Rhapsody Workshop at King Street Station.

We also have a digital workbook available for purchase! The DIY version includes 8 chapters of content, each with a collection of resources to explore, as well as reflection questions and action items.

Session 1

with Junious Brickhouse

Friday, May 2 - 5:00 - 8:00 pm

Erased, Not Forgotten: Tracing the Roots and Resistance to Cultural Erasure
A historical inquiry into pre-transatlantic cultural memory and the systems that sought to silence it
Junious Lee Brickhouse—dancer, folklorist, and cultural researcher—offers a deep and necessary exploration into the historical context preceding the transatlantic slave trade. This program examines the deliberate erasure of cultural knowledge as a tool of colonial dominance and asks: how successful were these efforts, and what has truly been lost?
Participants will engage with the historical sources and causes of cultural erasure, tracing the patterns established through early colonial projects and their continued impact today. The session builds a foundational understanding of how systems of power have worked to suppress cultural memory.
At a time of increasing division and institutional instability, this offering challenges participants to consider how truth can be re-centered and how the revitalization of marginalized cultures contributes to healing and wholeness in fractured communities.

Session 2

with Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson

Friday, May 16th - 5:00 - 8:00 pm

Lessons from the Ancestors: The Vanguard Generation of AfroAmerican Artists (1880-1918)

Ethnomusicologist Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson offers a fresh take on the lives and accomplishments of the “Vanguard Generation” of Afro-Americans who leveraged Black cultural products for profit and prestige between the close of the Civil War and the start of World War I. Gathered from recently digitized newsprint, recordings, film and other media from the beginning of the modern era for the forthcoming book, The Rediscovery of George “Nash” Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America, the contextual depth of this data enriches the historical record with previously lacking nuance that exemplifies the Black experience, the artistic hamster wheel of ubiquitous Black cultural influence, and perpetual secondary status of Black people in the United States.