Around this time two years ago, I joined the board of the Detroit Sound Conservancy - a community-based archive dedicated to preserving, activating, and celebrating Detroit’s musical heritage.

You may have heard about our recent efforts to restore the historic Blue Bird Inn, a birthplace of bebop jazz and a working-class hearth for the Black community in the Midwest Tireman neighborhood where jazz legends like John Coltrane and Miles Davis once performed, of our longtime advocacy efforts to preserve United Sound Systems recording studio, one of Detroit’s first independent recording studios, where acts like John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Parliament-Funkadelic once recorded, or of our restoration of the Club Heaven Sound System, once housed within Club Heaven, where a vibrant community of DJs, performers, dancers, engineers, club promoters, and especially Black LGBTQ youth came together to create a powerful space for connection and expression.

Beyond all this placekeeping, in the basements and attics and other corners of Detroit, there are countless and priceless artifacts and legacies in need of safekeeping. DSC will continue to safeguard artifacts, recordings, and oral histories, ensuring the continuity and connection between the past, present, and future of Detroit music.

DSC is the place where I get to bring together my 11+ years of experience in philanthropy and social justice work and my academic groundings in history and cultural anthropology, with my deep love and REVERENCE for Detroit music in all its multidimensional, multigenerational richness✨🌀✨

If you would like to get involved and/or support our efforts, there are many ways to do so. A modest donation is just one powerful way, so if this mission moves you, please give what you can!