Sounds of Experience

On Tuesday, February 17, 2004, The HistoryMakers hosted a free public event entitled Sounds of Experience at the Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center. Composer Regina Baiocchi, blues musician Lonnie Brooks, doo-wop singer Don Porter and jazz bassist Eldee Young took part in this lively panel discussion, speaking on topics ranging from their first musical experiences to their careers to their opinions on contemporary music.

The even was hosted in collaboration with the Chicago Cultural Center, the Illinois Humanities Council and the Columbia College Center for Black Music Research. Dr. Rosita Sands, executive director of the Center for Black Music Research was on hand to speak about the history of the respective genres of the panelists in Chicago, and Marion Brooks of WMAQ-TV, NBC-5, moderated the discussion.

This program was developed by The HistoryMakers, a Chicago-based organization founded in 1999 that is committed to preserving, developing and providing easy access to an internationally recognized, archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories. The goal of The HistoryMakers is to develop a digital video archive that is entirely searchable by image and text of 5,000 well-known and unsung African American HistoryMakers.