“Ways of Seeing” is an interactive photo exhibit and zine release that imagines Pittsburgh through the eyes of existing community members, architects, and photographers who reflect on the past while imagining a potential future of this in-town neighborhood.

Photography by Phil Winters, Ken West, and Michael Reese, Architectural renderings from NOMA and SHAPE, research from Dr. Richard C. Kelsey. In partnership with The Department of City Planning.

During “Ways of Seeing”, experience acclaimed DJ and Producer DJ Kemit as he mines his musical archives to take us on a journey of sound. From the 1930s to today, Kemit explores the impact Atlanta has had on Southern music. Enjoy the music while you take in the gallery exhibition and new murals by Charity Hamidullah

This event is free and open to the public. However, space is limited and admission will be given on a First Come, First Served basis.

1029 McDaniel St SW, Atlanta, GA 30310

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/elevate-public-art-festival-17862161972

https://www.elevateatlart.com/

ABOUT THE MMIXTAPE: curated by DJ Kemit

As a regional music center, Atlanta was as vital to the early years of recorded blues as was Memphis. Initially, it was just one location regular|y visited by mobile recording units but as the years passed it became increasingly important. Like Memphis, Atlanta was a staging post for musicians on their way to the north but it also supported a thriving musical community of its own.

1. Southern Blues                      Ma Rainey                               Ma Rainey, Vol. 1 (1923-1924)    

“Ma” Rainey (born Gertrude Pridgett September 1882 or April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest African-American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. Born in Columbus Georgia.

Ma Rainey is often called the “Mother of the Blues” by music historians. Living Blues magazine quotes her piano player, Thomas Dorsey, as saying she was a big star from “way back there about 1912                                                                

2. Diddle-Da-Diddle              Georgia Cotton Pickers         Slide Guitar: The Streamline Special    

Consisiting of Curley Weaver who teamed with Barbecue Bob and Buddy Moss on a string of collaborative releases. In one of the great prewar blues sessions, the trio recorded in Atlanta’s Campbell Hotel in December 1930 as the Georgia Cotton Pickers.                                                   

 3. Big John’s Special                    Fletcher Henderson          The Very Best of Fletcher Henderson 

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and, along with Duke Ellington, is considered one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history.  Henderson was a native of Cuthberth, Georgia.                                                       

4. Atlanta Strut                            Blind Willie McTell                 The Best of Blind Willie McTell

Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues. Unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voices of Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. McTell performed in various musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music and hokum. McTell was born in Thomson, Georgia.                                                               

5. Brownskin Woman             Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver            The Post-War Years 1949-1950

Music in the 1940s. What Happened? In November of 1941 Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered World War II. With it came a ban on most recordings, and many musicians including Georgia’s own Buddy Moss’ session work came to a halt. Buddy Moss attempted to resurrect his career, recording three OKeh 78’s in New York City in the 1960s. Buddy Moss was a key player in the fertile early Atlanta blues scene but who’s name often gets overlooked, over shadowed by contemporaries like Blind Willie McTell and Barbecue Bob.         

6. I Feel So Bad (Digitally Remastered)                    Chuck Willis                             I Feel So Bad

Harold “Chuck” Willis (January 31, 1926 – April 10, 1958) was an American blues, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll singer and songwriter. His biggest hits, “C. C. Rider” (1957) and “What Am I Living For” (1958), both reached No.1 on the Billboard R&B chart. He was known as The King of the Stroll for his performance of the 1950s dance the stroll. Willis was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1926. He was spotted at a talent contest by Atlanta radio disc jockey Zenas Sears, who became his manager and helped him to sign with Columbia Records in 1951.                           

7. I’ve Got a Woman (Single Version)                             Ray Charles                               The Genius!  

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), professionally known as simply Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called “Brother Ray”. He was often referred to as “The Genius”.[2][3] Charles started losing his vision at the age of 5, and by 7 he was blind. He pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and country styles into the music he recorded throughout his illustrious career. Born September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia,                                                                              

8. I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me), Pt. 1      James Brown      Live From The Apollo

James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. A progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music and dance, he is often referred to as the “Godfather of Soul”. In a career that lasted over 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres.

Brown began his career as a gospel singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined an R&B vocal group, the Gospel Starlighters (which later evolved into the Famous Flames) founded by Bobby Byrd, in which he was the lead singer. James Joseph Brown Jr. was born May 3, 1933 in Barnwell, South Carolina, but lived and worked from his headquarters in Augusta Georgia which housed his record labels Try Me (1963), Brownstone (1970) & People Records (1971).                                    

9. Do Your Thing                           Isaac Hayes                                  Greatest Hit Singles           

Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American singer, songwriter, actor, and producer. Hayes was one of the creative forces behind the Southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a session musician and record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. He was well known for his musical score for the film Shaft (1971). For the “Theme from Shaft”, he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1972. In 1992 Hayes was crowned honorary king of the Ada region of Ghana in recognition of his humanitarian work there. Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Issac Hayes called Atlanta home for over a decade and his family still makes their roots in metro-Atlanta.                                             

10. Thy Servant’s Prayer Amen                                           Thomas A. Dorsey                                       Precious Lord Recordings of the Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey      

Thomas Andrew Dorsey (July 1, 1899 – January 23, 1993) was an American musician. Dorsey was known as “the father of black gospel music” and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as “dorseys”. Dorsey’s best-known composition, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, was performed by Mahalia Jackson and was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1924, he put together a band for Ma Rainey called the Wild Cats Jazz Band. He started out playing at rent parties under the names Barrelhouse Tom and Texas Tommy, but was also best known as Georgia Tom. For a short time around 1926, he accompanied the Pace Jubilee Singers. Born July 1, 1899 in Villa Rica, Georgia.

11. I Cry                                                                Millie Jackson                                  It Hurts So Good   

Mildred Virginia Jackson (born July 15, 1944) is an American R&B and Soul singer-songwriter and former model. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, six of Jackson’s albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies. Jackson vocal performances are often distinguished by long, humorous, and explicit spoken sections in her music, which she started doing on stage to get the attention of the audience. Known as the “Mother of Hip Hop / rapping”. Born in Thomson, Georgia, Jackson is the daughter of a sharecropper. Her mother died when she was a child and subsequently, she and her father moved to Newark, New Jersey. By the time Jackson was in her mid-teens, she had moved to Brooklyn to live with an aunt. She occasionally worked as a model for magazines like JIVE and Sepia.                                                                        

12. Peachtree Street                       The Spirit Of Atlanta                  The Burning of Atlanta                                                                    

13. Bump & Hustle Music             Tommy Stewart                            Tommy Stewart      

In 1969 he moved to Atlanta, Ga, and taught in Fayetteville, Ga; he also worked for Morris Brown College creating band arrangements. He taught jazz and created more band arrangements at Morehouse College from 1974 to 1985. He also taught “A Survey of Popular Music” at Georgia State University in 1979. In Birmingham, Alabama Tommy also taught band classes at West End High School from 1991-2001.

In 1956 Tommy played with Roy Hamilton. In 1963 Stewart also performed with Willie Hightower, L.C. Cook and Junior Parker during summer vacations. He arranged music for Eula Cooper, The Mighty Hannibal, Sandy Gaye, and Langston-French Duo (Langston is an ex-Pip and Gladys Knight’s cousin). Most of these arranging assignments took place on Jessie Jones Tragar Records Label, which was located at 99-112 Hunter St. in Atlanta.

In the late 70’s Tommy teamed with Marlon McNichols, a producer from Detroit, MI, to record some classic Disco music with groups such as Final Approach, Cream De CoCo, Tamiko Jones, Moses Davis, and of course to collaborate on the Tommy Stewart album with the classic rare funky groove hit BUMP & HUSTLE MUSIC. Tommy and Marlin McNichols would fly into Detroit and use the same horn and string players that played on all those great sounding Motown Records on their Atlanta Recordings, bringing together southern funk blended with soft and lush strings and horns.

Tommy worked with the late Major Lance on two albums, toured with the Tams in 1983, and did arrangements for Serena Johnson’s Lack of Communication album. The album’s title song was written by Tommy’s wife, Francina Stewart. In 1990, he co-founded the African American philharmonic symphony orchestra in Atlanta under co-founder/conductor John Peek. He moved from Atlanta to Birmingham in 1992, where he lived with his wife Francina and daughter Franita.                                                

14. No One’s Gonna Love You                 The S.O.S. Band                   Just the Way You Like It    

The S.O.S. Band (sometimes written SOS Band; abbreviation for Sounds Of Success) is an American R&B and electro-funk group who gained fame in the 1980s. The Atlanta, Georgia, band was started in 1977, when keyboardist / vocalist Jason Bryant, saxophonists Billy Ellis and Willie “Sonny” Killebrew, guitarist Bruno Speight, bassist John Alexander Simpson, drummer James Earl Jones III, and lead vocalist Mary Davis formed a group called Sounds of Santa Monica that played at Atlanta nightclub the Regal Room.                                                           

15. Atlanta – That’s Where I Stay              MC Shy D                         Greatest Hits: MC Shy-D

Peter Jones, professionally known by his stage name MC Shy D, is an American rapper and producer from the Bronx, New York. It had been rumored he was the cousin of Afrika Bambaataa, which later was explained as a promotional ploy created by Bambaata himself to help Shy-D’s career. MC Shy-D carries the title of being the person who brought Atlanta to hip-hop—in the mid-eighties, he was the first rapper from the city to break out of it, to tour the country and make a name for himself. MC Shy-D went on to sign a contract with Luther Campbell’s Luke Skywalker Records and release two LP’s Got to Be Tough and Comin’ Correct in 88.                                                           

16. That’s Right                         D.J. Taz ft. Raheem the Dream                  

Tino McIntosh (pka) DJ TAZ started producing music at the age of 10 and he began Djing at the age of 14. DJ TAZ became a nationally known producer, artist and rapper at the age of 23, when produced a top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles Chart. DJ TAZ has been signed by EMI Records, Priority Records and the Universal Music Group.                                      

17. Let It Shine                       Dorothy Norwood                The Best of Dorothy Norwood

Dorothy Norwood (born May 29, 1935) is an American gospel singer and songwriter. She began touring with her family at the age of eight, and in 1956, began singing with Mahalia Jackson. In the early 1960s she was a member of The Caravans, and in 1964, she embarked on a solo career, recording her first album, Johnny and Jesus. Her 1991 album Live with the Northern California GMWA Mass Choir reached the Number 1 position on Billboard′s Top Forty. Born in Atlanta, Georgia May 29, 1935.                                                        

18. Like This and Like That (feat. Mr. Malik)           Monica                               Miss Thang    

Monica Denise Arnold (born October 24, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur. Born and raised in College Park, Georgia, she began performing as a child and became part of a traveling gospel choir at the age of ten. Monica rose to prominence after she signed with Rowdy Records in 1993 and released her debut album Miss Thang two years later. Monica has sold 5.3 million albums in the United States and she is recognized as one of the most successful urban R&B female vocalists to emerge in the mid to late 1990s. According to Billboard, she is the youngest recording act to ever have two consecutive chart-topping hits on the Billboard Top R&B Singles chart, as well as the first artist to top the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart over the span of three consecutive decades (1990s, 2000s, and 2010s).                                                                         

19. How Long Do I Have To Wait For You?           Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings       Naturally   

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings were an American funk and soul band signed to Daptone Records. They were part of a revivalist movement recreating mid-1960s to mid-1970s style funk and soul music. In December 2014, the band was nominated for a Grammy, in the category Best R&B Album of the Year for Give the People What They Want. Sharon Lafaye Jones (May 4, 1956 – November 18, 2016) born in Augusta, Georgia.

Sharon Jones died in 2016, with the band releasing the posthumous final album Soul of a Woman in 2017. Her backing band have since performed together live and worked with other artists.                                                                                  

20. Blessin’ Me                                       Avery Sunshine                                           Avery Sunshine

Denise Nicole White (born May 22, 1975), known professionally as Avery Sunshine, is an American singer, songwriter and pianist. White was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, to Ruth Eleanor White and Irving Cyril White. She began playing piano at 8, after she saw a classmate perform, and learned to read hymns before beginning to study classical music at 11. At 13, she expanded her repertoire to include jazz and had her first recital. Avery Sunshine resides and records in Atlanta, Georgia.                                                         

21. 4Evermore                        Anthony David (Prod. DJ Kemit)                 As above So Below

Anthony David Harrington (born December 4, 1971), better known as Anthony David, is an American R&B singer-songwriter. He is best known for his 2008 song “Words”, a duet with contemporary R&B singer India.Arie. Anthony David was born in Savannah, Georgia, but got involved in the music business in Atlanta. There he met India.Arie. Anthony’s fourth album, released on February 22, 2011, was entitled As Above So Below and finds him teaming up with a new production partner – Nashville, Tennessee’s Shannon Sanders – in addition to such guest vocalists as upcoming Atlanta songstress Algebra; rapper Phonte from Little Brother; plus cousin Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men. The first single from the album, “4Evermore” (produced & co written by DJ Kemit) featuring Algebra and Phonte, became David’s first top 20 R&B hit in the US charts where it has peaked at #18.                                                                        

22. This Is America (Intro – Clean)                                     Childish Gambino       

Donald McKinley Glover Jr. (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, director, musician, and DJ. He performs music under the stage name Childish Gambino and as a DJ under the name mcDJ.

After coming to public attention for his work with Derrick Comedy, while a student at New York University, he was hired at age 23 by Tina Fey as a writer for the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. He later portrayed community college student Troy Barnes on the NBC sitcom Community. He stars in the FX series Atlanta, which he created and occasionally directs. Donald McKinley Glover Jr. was born on September 25, 1983 at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He was raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Glover attended Lakeside High School and DeKalb School of the Arts, and was voted “Most Likely to Write for The Simpsons” in his high school yearbook. In 2006, he graduated from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Dramatic Writing.            

END