Friday mornings on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning have a different kind of energy — and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God made sure to set the tone early. “It is Love Supreme Friday today,” Buddy announced. “We’re going to change our mindsets over to something else. It’s an effort, because it’s real easy to let your emotions take over when there’s so much to be emotional about.” With that spirit guiding the hour, the show dove into local election results, community business news, and a conversation that had the chat section lighting up from the first minute.
The main event was a sit-down with Dana Murray, founder and director of the North Omaha Music Academy — known to many longtime Omahans by its former name, Love’s Jazz — located right on the corner of 24th and Lake. A South Omaha native who spent eleven years honing his craft in New York City before coming home, Murray has quietly built something remarkable on one of the city’s most storied blocks. The conversation that unfolded was equal parts vision, history lesson, and call to action.
Paul B. framed the setting plainly: “I’ve always called it the most important black corner in Nebraska.” Murray didn’t disagree. He argued that North 24th Street is the one corridor in the city that can legitimately claim the title of a cultural and arts district — but that owning that identity requires more than nostalgia. “We’ve been so far removed from what that was,” he said, “not even what the rest of Omaha views North 24th Street as. I’m more talking to the people that are there who are so far removed from what that was, that it is hard to build momentum from within.”
Murray was direct about what it takes to turn a corridor into a destination. He laid out the basics — housing, parking, laundromats, eateries, gas stations — and then raised the bar higher. “You have to have destinations: entertainment, restaurants, lounges, things that are going to be your bread-and-butter attractions to draw people into the community,” he said. “It would be great to have a hotel — with a hotel, now you can throw larger attractions, music festivals, conferences right in the community.” Viewer Pops knew exactly what Murray meant, sharing in the chat: “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.”
When the hosts asked Murray — a South Omaha kid — how he found his place in the North Omaha ecosystem, he answered with characteristic candor. “If you’re black and you’re in Omaha, especially in the 70s and early 80s, everyone had a shared relationship with North Omaha,” he said. “That was the Mecca for us.” He pushed back on what he called a “false sense of security with pride” that he believes has cost the community real opportunities. Native Omaha Days, he said, is something he loves at its core — but he sees it as a missed chance to invite all of Omaha in. His own experiment in openness, he noted, proved the skeptics wrong. “People told me that was going to be very, very hard. And 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.”
What Murray is building at NMA goes well beyond instrument lessons. Students learn live sound engineering, broadcasting, podcasting, and how to interview professional artists — skills they practice in real time, not just in theory. “So it’s not just telling them, ‘Oh, you can be this,'” Murray said. “No — you can be this right now. Once you remove those barriers, the sky’s the limit.” Viewer Senator KML summed it up simply: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
And Murray’s ambitions don’t stop at the current space. He’s planning a capital campaign — the first phase at $20 million — with the goal of building a full NMA campus. He pointed to Omaha Performing Arts as a model: a cultural institution that generates $40 to $50 million in annual economic activity for its surrounding area. “That’s what we’re trying to build for North Omaha,” he said. His closing thought landed like a thesis statement: “What we have to sell in most black communities is our culture. The sooner we understand that our culture is equity, that our brilliance and our artistic genius is equity, the better off we’re going to be.”
Paul B. echoed that spirit when reflecting on music education more broadly: “You give it to them, you put it in front of them, you get teachers out there in front of them, and they eat it up — because they are starving for culture and they are starving for real, authentic life.” NMA is currently seeking music instructors who do more than know their scales. As Murray put it, “The instructors we bring in have to embody the ability to inspire another human being.” Interested candidates can reach Murray at dmurray@northomahahusic.org or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahahusic.org.
The show also touched on the concept Paul B. calls the “secondary matrix” — the idea that every community effort carries a deeper layer of meaning. “On the surface, we’re a couple of talking heads that talk about some news with the community,” he said of First Sky. “What we’re really trying to do is build community, build some coalition.” That thread ran through the entire morning, from election results to the planned Heart Ministry Center grocery store to a buzz-worthy mention of an upcoming performance by Mono Neon. Viewer Mark Manor didn’t want anyone to sleep on that one: “Mono Neon is bringing one of the last and relevant connections to Prince. I saw Mono Neon a few years ago — he’s awesome. Do not miss that.”
The morning closed the way the best Friday shows do — with warmth and gratitude. Viewer Aeros 402 shared the kind of news that stops a room: “On a love note, my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” That’s the heartbeat of this show — big ideas and new babies, community dreams and Friday mornings spent together.
Tune in Monday for another week of 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning — because there’s always more Omaha worth talking about.
