It was a Love Supreme Friday on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God came ready to shift gears — away from the political noise that’s dominated recent weeks and toward something that feels just as urgent: the work of building community from the ground up, one young person at a time.
“We’ve been talking a lot of politics for a while,” Paul B. told viewers as the show opened, “and we got a little break after the primaries. It’s never going to go away completely, but it doesn’t have to dominate the show today.” Buddy the God agreed, though he offered an important reminder that the two conversations aren’t entirely separate. “We got to do both,” he said. “We got to build our own ecosystems and continue to do the things that we’re about to talk about. But in the long run, we do got to figure this out as a nation.”
And with that framing in place, the show welcomed its featured guest: Dana Murray, founder of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA), located on North 24th Street — a corridor Paul B. has long described with reverence. “I’ve always called it the most important Black corner in Nebraska,” he said. “We got to be of service to it.”
Before the conversation with Murray got fully underway, Paul B. paused to celebrate a piece of good news from the community. Charell Shelton and Core Science Bio Diagnostics — a North Omaha diagnostic lab — recently received a $52,000 prize to expand access for local residents, eliminating the need for people to travel across the city just for medical testing. It was a small but meaningful reminder of what community investment looks like in practice.
Viewer Pops seemed to capture the mood of the room, writing in: “Artists like Fats Domino used to stay at your grandfather’s home when he came to town to perform. So yes, more infrastructure for the artist around the Deuce corridor would be a godsend.” It’s exactly the kind of living history that Murray is working to honor — and build upon.
A South Omaha native who spent eleven years in New York City before returning home, Murray is not a man who speaks in small ambitions. His vision for the North 24th Street corridor is sweeping and unapologetic. “The area that has the most history and the one that can claim ‘we are a cultural and arts district’ for real is the North 24th Street corridor,” he said. He’s candid about the challenge, though. “I’m more talking to the people that are there who are so far removed from what that was — it is hard to build momentum from within when a lot of the community within can’t relate to the power of what was.”
His blueprint is practical as well as visionary. Sustainable districts need housing, eateries, laundromats, parking, and gas stations, he explained — the unglamorous infrastructure that makes daily life work. But they also need destinations. “Entertainment, restaurants, lounges — things that are going to be your bread-and-butter attractions to draw people into the community. It would be great to have a hotel — with a hotel, now you can throw larger attractions, music festivals, conferences right in the community.”
Murray addressed something that doesn’t get talked about enough: the internal friction that can hold a neighborhood back. “One of the things that holds us back is this false sense of security with pride as it pertains to North Omaha,” he said frankly. “None of that does anything for us at this point.” He pointed to the missed opportunity of events like Native Omaha Days — celebrations he loves in spirit but believes could do more to welcome the broader city in. His own work at NMA, he said, has already challenged the assumption that outsiders won’t come. “People don’t have any problem coming from wherever they are in Omaha or Iowa to come down North 24th Street to hear jazz music. That taboo about the area and its ability to be an attraction was false. We’ve proven that.”
Paul B. offered a lens for understanding why what Murray does runs deeper than music lessons. He called it the “secondary matrix” — the idea that everything has a deeper meaning beneath its surface purpose. “In Dana Murray’s case, he teaches kids music — but the secondary matrix is to create critical thinkers.” Murray himself couldn’t have said it better. “We’re not only raising musicians but, more importantly, we’re raising more critical-thinking human beings,” he explained. “Whatever they choose to do, they’re going to be better because they were aligned with artistry.”
Teaching in the age of YouTube and ChatGPT presents its own challenges, and Murray doesn’t pretend otherwise. “We are losing the ability to inspire young people,” he said. “We can act like that’s going away, but it’s not. So we have to figure out how to inspire them within the world that they live in.” His approach: meet students where they are, and help them discover what works for them — rather than forcing an outdated curriculum on a generation that has the world’s information in their pocket.
Viewer Senator KML wrote in with a simple but powerful note: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
As for where NMA is headed, Murray made clear this is far from its final form. The organization is preparing to launch a capital campaign — phase one is set at $20 million — with the goal of building a full NMA campus. He draws a direct comparison to Omaha Performing Arts, which generates $40 to $50 million in annual revenue for the downtown area. “We need a vehicle like that for North Omaha, and I see NMA taking up that space,” he said. At the heart of his argument is a conviction about value that he believes Black communities have long overlooked: “Our culture is equity. Our brilliance and our artistic genius is equity. The sooner we understand that, the better off we’re going to be.”
NMA is currently seeking qualified music instructors who bring more than technical skill to the table. “Anyone can have the X’s and O’s of teaching,” Murray said, “but unless you’re able to inspire a young person, they don’t really have the attention span for the X’s and O’s of music.” Interested educators can reach Murray at dmurray@northomahamusic.org or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahamusic.org.
The show closed on a high note — and viewer Aeros 402 perhaps best summed up the spirit of the day, sharing: “On a love note, my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” On a Love Supreme Friday, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Tune in Monday morning for another conversation worth having — right here on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning.
