We last heard from Denver hip hop up-and-comer Jelie in May when the rapper / producer released the pandemic-inspired “Cope” to coincide with mental health awareness month. Today, she’s back, premiering the music video for “Just Like You” via BandWagon – and it cuts just as deep.
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Devin Tremell insisted to the crowd of hundreds looking up at him from the Lincoln Park gazebo in Greeley that he was just a regular Black dude. “The message had to reach all the nooks and crannies of the country,” Tremell, a UNC student, rapper and activist said. “Greeley is kind of out of the way, and it needs to reach there too,” he says of the Black Lives matter movement. “This is a problem across the board. But I was surprised at the amount of people who felt the same way I did. I see more of that coming out.”
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Diane Bolden-Taylor grew up in the Baptist church, where anyone with a voice would have an audience, and anyone who hit the high notes would be praised as a hero – regardless of their skin color.
She received multiple degrees, sang Opera professionally in Switzerland for 18 years, became fluent in German and taught voice at the University Of Northern Colorado.
Notably, she returned to her native St. Louis to expose classical vocal music to the young black community there. “And you know what?” Taylor said, “they absolutely love it!”
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Until recently, the pandemic, and our directive to stay put, wasn’t all that hard for Hayden Farr, baritone sax player for The Burroughs and Trash Cat. Farr is an introvert, so when was invited to protest for Black Lives Matter in Denver, he declined.
“But I’m wondering,” Farr asked, “why do we need to have this conversation every two years? I wonder if it’s because people are stuck at home and forced to see what’s going on, or is it because people want to see a change?”
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Even though it was the music that got Greg Carroll into his jazz career, he became a champion of the art form, teaching, preserving and protecting the history of it, because it is the music of his fellow black Americans. “It excites me to see everyone play it, but jazz was created by African Americans, born out of the experiences of people forced on this land as a way to honor their culture – the only thing that couldn’t be ripped away from them. It’s a gift to the world, and it’s welcome to everyone. But it’s historically black, and the more I got into it and learned the history of it, the more I appreciated that. It made me proud.”
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