The William Grant Still Arts Center Presents 

“I Got My Pride” – The Blues Tales of Leadbelly

March 1-June 7, 2014

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12Noon-5pm

Part of the 6th Annual African-American Composers Exhibition & Music Education Series

“I GOT MY PRIDE” – THE BLUES TALES OF LEADBELLY will exhibit recordings, magazine articles, concert posters, original photographs, writings by Pete Seeger and others from influential publications Living Blues andDownbeat, interviews, and archival material to develop the story of Leadbelly’s powerful life as a musician. A creator, a triumphant songster, and a music historian, Folk and Blues pioneer Leadbelly made songs from the stories and challenges of his own life, and the lives of others he had known.

The exhibit will include the complexity of his relationship with documentation and performance in his years of work with the Lomax family, and how his playing was influential in carrying the stories of past generations traumatized by prison, field work, and slavery to influence the trajectory of blues musicians of his own generation such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Brownie McGee, and Josh White.  Leadbelly’s influence also bridged to subsequent generations of musicians of broad social and cultural influence including artists as varied as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Harry Belafonte,  the Weavers, the Beatles, Bernice Reagon and Sweet Honey in the Rock, the low-fi sounds of X and Kurt Cobain, and beyond. Of note is that during Leadbelly’s short residence in Los Angeles in the 1940s is that he lived near Exposition and Western, in West Adams.

The music of Leadbelly is also being presented in conjunction with DCA’s African-American Heritage Music Education Program. Through this series, the William Grant Still Arts Center focuses on teaching music and cultural history to beginning and intermediate students of all ages through practice and playing experience via the works of groundbreaking musical innovators in the tradition of the Arts Center’s namesake, Dr. William Grant Still.

A culminating youth and community concert, featuring student performances of compositions influenced by learning Folk and Blues traditions through the work of Leadbelly, will take place on April 26, 2014.

Original artwork drawn from a photograph of Leadbelly by Aise Bourne.