It was a Love Supreme Friday on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and host Paul B. made clear from the jump that intention matters. With Nebraska’s primary election results fresh on everyone’s mind and emotions running high, he made a deliberate choice to steer the show toward something constructive. “We have to make a decision,” he told viewers. “It’s going to be Love Supreme Friday today. And we’re going to change our mindsets over to something else — because it’s real easy to let your emotions take over when there’s so much to be emotional about.”
Co-host Buddy the God didn’t shy away from the civic moment entirely, though. Reflecting on the low turnout numbers that viewer Sean McCarthy shared in the chat — noting that Douglas County’s average primary voter turnout hovered around just 35% — Buddy cut straight to the point: “None of this really matters if everybody voted. That’s a pretty valid point — a lot of this doesn’t matter if everybody voted.” He went further, framing voting not as an either/or with community self-reliance, but as a complement to it. “The idea is we have to vote so we can support what it is that we’re doing for ourselves, rather than it being undermined by those who are in office. You still do for self and then you vote so it can be supported and uplifted.”
The show’s Chat Chimers brought their own energy to the morning. Viewer Aeros 402 (Mary Sanchez) lit up the chat with personal joy: “On a love note — my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” And viewer Judy Princ offered a quiet piece of wisdom that felt right at home on a Love Supreme Friday: “If you are sad or angry, go out and help others. Your attitude will change.”
Before long, the conversation settled into what became the heart of the episode — a wide-ranging, deeply community-rooted interview with Dana Murray, executive director and co-founder of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA), located on the historic North 24th Street corridor. A South Omaha native who spent eleven years in New York City before returning home, Murray has quietly been building something remarkable on the Deuce — and Friday’s conversation gave him room to lay out the full vision.
Murray didn’t mince words about what North 24th Street could and should be. “There are a lot of districts in Omaha redeveloping — Blackstone, Benson, Little Bohemia — but the area that has the most history and can truly claim to be a cultural and arts district is the North 24th Street corridor,” he said. The challenge, he explained, is both infrastructural and cultural. A thriving district needs the basics — housing, grocery stores, parking, laundromats — alongside destinations that draw foot traffic. But it also needs a shift in mindset. Murray pointed to the contrast between North Omaha’s Native Omaha Days and South Omaha’s Cinco de Mayo celebration as an example of missed opportunity. “One of the things I’ve tried to do is be a beacon for all of Omaha to come down to North 24th Street,” he said, “and people have no problem coming from anywhere in Omaha or Iowa to hear jazz or whatever we present. That taboo about the area was false. We’ve proven it.”
Viewer Pops connected Murray’s vision to living history, noting in the chat: “Artists like Fats Domino used to stay at your grandfather’s home when he came to town to perform. More infrastructure for artists around the Deuce corridor would be a godsend.”
NMA, Murray described, is more than a music school. It is a youth academy, a performance space, and — in his long-range thinking — a potential economic engine for North Omaha in the mold of Omaha Performing Arts downtown. “We’re not only raising musicians — we’re raising more critical-thinking human beings,” he said. “Not all of these young kids are going to become musicians, but whatever they choose to do, they’re going to be better because they were aligned with artistry.” The academy’s programming goes well beyond instrument instruction. Students learn live sound engineering, broadcast work, podcasting, and interviewing — skills they practice in real time. “It’s not just telling them they can do something,” Murray said. “They can do it right now.”
History is taught at NMA with what Murray calls context. Rather than simply naming notable Omahans like jazz drummer Victor Lewis — one of the most recorded in history — instructors help students understand what those figures represented. “When you give kids context, they connect the dots themselves,” he said.
Looking ahead, Murray shared that NMA is preparing to launch a capital campaign — with a first phase of $20 million — aimed at building a full campus. The vision is sweeping but grounded. “Money is not really our issue in North Omaha — it’s transformative ideas that are going to allow us to be not only sustainable but gainfully active,” he said. “What we have to sell is our culture, and the sooner we understand that our culture, our brilliance, our artistic genius is equity, the better off we’re going to be.”
For those interested in joining NMA’s team of music instructors, Murray noted that the academy is actively seeking educators — but with a specific quality in mind. “Anyone can have the X’s and O’s of teaching, but unless you’re able to inspire a young person, they don’t have the attention span for it,” he said. Interested instructors can reach Murray at dmurray@northomahamusic.org or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahamusic.org.
Paul B. closed out the conversation with the kind of enthusiasm he rarely holds back. “When I’m comparing festivals, I’m saying this one to me is the one,” he said of NMA Fest. “If I was going to put a festival together, it’d be this one — and it’s going to be huge.” And as the show wound down, he returned to the bigger idea threading through the entire morning — what he and Buddy call the “secondary matrix.” “Everything that we do has a secondary meaning, a deeper meaning,” Paul B. said. “On the surface we’re a couple of talking heads — but what we’re really trying to do is build community, build coalition, build a family of people that we can regularly talk to and come to some conclusions so we can get to some action.”
Viewer Pops said it simply as the credits rolled: “Thanks for another great week of shows. You and the Chat Chimers have made First Sky a true pillar in the community.”
Hard to argue with that. Tune in Monday morning — the conversation is just getting started.
