Image: A black-and-white photo of a Union Park Music Appreciation performance, June 21, 1940. Photo shows nine young people standing on chairs, five turned to the left, four to the right, all singing from sheet music. Chicago Public Library. Special Collections & Preservation Division. Photographer: Unknown.

Loss/Capture In Conversation: Chicago’s Music Legacies with Ireashia M. Bennett and Arlene Turner-Crawford

It’s hard to deny Chicago’s place as an epicenter of Black music. From House to blues, gospel, jazz, and hip hop, it has defined and defied genres and been home to some legendary venues where those sounds were born, nurtured, and came of age. In this edition of the Loss/Capture In Conversation, listen in as artists and music connoisseurs Ireashia M. Bennett and Arlene Turner-Crawford have a discussion about a love of Chicago music that transcends generations.

Ireashia M. Bennett (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and transmedia storyteller who explores the complexities of trauma, survival, and healing within Black communities. They produce multimedia essays, short documentaries, and experimental films to ensure complex issues are accessible to all. With multimedia collage, Ireashia weaves together archival materials with captured imagery to explore how trauma, and the process of healing through meaning-making, is embedded in Black people’s genealogy, ancestral memory, and history.

Arlene Turner-Crawford (she/her) works in the media of drawing, painting, printmaking and Graphic illustration. In recent years she has curated, led and participated in several public art murals and installation projects for the Burnham Wildlife Corridor for Chicago Park District, NEIU’s Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, and Phoebe Hurst Elementary, among others. Her published artworks are included in the books Roads, Where there are No Roads by Angela Jackson, Revise the Psalm – Works Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks; and Contemporary Plays by African American Women edited by Sandra Adell.