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