For the February 2026 feature on The African American Folklorist (AAF), we’re in conversation with Mahoganee—the Gullah/Geechee Lowcountry “Sea Island Songbird”—and her husband/producer André “Mr. Bounce Back” Amigér. Together, they create what they call Indigenous Soul Music: a trans-Atlantic, heritage-rooted sound that blends jazz (Black classical), funk, blues, hip-hop, and West African/Caribbean influence into living storytelling.In this episode, Mahoganee and Mr. Bounce Back speak on what it means to be Sound Griots and Sound Healers—using creativity and imagination as tools of liberation, wellness, and cultural preservation. We discuss Gullah/Geechee cultural memory, voice as archive, the ethics of carrying tradition forward, and how their work connects art to land and water stewardship. They also share how their nonprofit Responsible ARTistry, Inc. mentors youth through arts education, leadership, self-awareness, and community responsibility.🎙️ Episode Title: Indigenous Soul Music: Mahoganee & Mr. Bounce Back, Sound Griots of the Lowcountry📌 Topics include: Gullah/Geechee heritage • sound healing • roots music • arts education • stewardship • Afro-futurism, “portals,” and time travel • cultural preservation through performanceIf this conversation moves you, please like, subscribe, and share—and drop a comment: What does “heritage as responsibility” mean to you?Follow / Learn MoreMahogonee: The Mahoganee Xperience https://themahoganeexperience.com/homeResponsible ARTistry, Inc.: Arts education + mentorship initiativeshttps://www.responsibleartistry.org/Become a Member of the African American Folklorist Ecosystemhttps://theafricanamericanfolklorist....#AfricanAmericanFolklorist #AAF #GullahGeechee #Lowcountry #IndigenousSoulMusic #RootsMusic #SoundHealing #CulturalPreservation #FolkMusic #BlackFolklife #ArtsEducation #EnvironmentalJustice #LandStewardship #Afrofuturism

On Jack Dappa Blues Radio & TV, Lamont Jack Pearley walks two trails at once: the Blues Trail and the Bloodline Trail.Beginning with the image and memory of his great-great-great grandmother Susan Nash, this broadcast explores how Black family history, Indigenous memory, oral tradition, land, and the Blues are deeply connected. Through the lens of Prison Planet, Blues Ecology, and the Blues Narrative, this episode asks: what did our people know about themselves before the records named us wrong?We’ll discuss Blues legends and roots artists whose stories open conversations around Indigenous ancestry, Native land memory, Black Southern history, and American roots music — including Charley Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, Lowell Fulson, Scrapper Blackwell, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Pura Fé, Martha Redbone, Aaron Neville, and more.We’ll also carefully examine artists such as Muddy Waters, Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and R.L. Burnside, not to claim what cannot yet be proven, but to explore the Indigenous land, Black labor, plantation memory, migration, and survival ecology that shaped the music.This episode is also an introduction to tracing your own family’s Indigenous memory through what Lamont calls The Three Trails Method: the Paper Trail, the People’s Trail, and the Sound Trail.This is genealogy.This is cultural preservation.This is family legacy.This is the Blues Narrative returning our attention to our own story.Follow the records. Listen to the elders. Preserve the story.

This January episode of The African American Folklorist opens the year with a powerful conversation with Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson, independent ethnomusicologist and cultural documentarian. This interview is about more than one project — it’s about sound, memory, cultural responsibility, and what ethical listening looks like when you’re documenting Black life and carrying stories that outlive you.We discuss Dr. Atkinson’s long-term research in Louisiana, including his work at Angola State Penitentiary, a former slave plantation turned into the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, and what it reveals about Black vernacular expression inside the plantation–prison continuum. But we also go beyond Angola into his broader documentation of Louisiana tradition bearers: woodcarvers, painters, foodway practitioners, and community elders, people whose knowledge is held in the hands as much as the mouth.We also dig into his landmark book:The Rediscovery of George “Nash” Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America (SUNY Press) — a recovery of Black theater history, cultural strategy, and the fight for narrative control in an America built to erase our brilliance.This conversation sets the tone for the year: community-led, community-fed. We talk self-preservation in the field, Black access vs. white access, institutional gatekeeping, and what it means to do this work with integrity, outside the academy and inside the lived reality of Blackness.👇🏾 Drop a comment: What does cultural responsibility mean to you?📌 Subscribe for more AAF conversations + Blues Narrative / Blues Ecology content.🔗 Find Dr. Atkinson: LinkedIn (Daniel E. Atkinson, PhD)📚 Book: SUNY Press + major retailers