It was another Love Supreme Friday on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God brought the kind of energy that makes you want to pull up a chair, pour a cup of coffee, and lean in. From primary election results to a vision for North 24th Street that just might change everything, Episode 53 of Season 4 was a full one — equal parts civic fire and community love.
The show opened with a deliberate exhale. After weeks of heavy political conversation, Paul B. signaled it was time to shift gears. “We’ve been talking a lot of politics for a while and it’s time to change our mindsets over to something else,” he said. “It’s an effort because it’s real easy to let your emotions take over when there’s so much to be emotional about.” That said, the hosts didn’t sidestep the sobering reality of Nebraska’s primary turnout. Paul B. read aloud from a post by community voice Raquel Henderson that stopped the room cold: “Only 339,000 out of more than 1.2 million registered voters in Nebraska showed up yesterday. Think about that for a second. And yet everybody has something to say. Everybody’s angry. Everybody’s debating policies and leadership decisions online. Where is that same energy when it’s time to organize, educate, mobilize, register, and actually vote?”
The chat lit up in response. Viewer Kimber Snipes offered a nuanced take: “I’ve been having conversations with people between the ages of 20 and 35. What I hear the most is most of them don’t really know what to do and know nothing about the candidates. I don’t think we should be slamming people for not voting when the system is really what has caused this. I think we need to have more education and deep dive discussions.” It was the kind of comment that reframes frustration into something more constructive — and it set the tone for everything that followed.
The hosts also celebrated North Omaha entrepreneur Charell Shelton, who recently won a $52,000 prize, and gave a shout-out to the upcoming NMA Fest and the film I Love Boosters from director Boots Riley. But the heart of the morning belonged to their featured guest.
Dana Murray, founder and executive director of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA) — formerly known as Love’s Jazz — joined the show for a conversation that was part urban planning, part philosophy, and entirely inspiring. Murray, who grew up in South Omaha, spent 11 years honing his craft in New York City before returning home to plant roots on North 24th Street. What he’s building there is something the community has needed for a long time.
When asked about his vision for the North 24th Street corridor — what locals lovingly call “the Deuce” — Murray didn’t hold back. “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. He painted a picture of what the street once was: people dressed in their Sunday best on a Saturday morning, shopping, eating, moving together with “a unity, a love, and a togetherness.” His vision for what it could become is equally vivid — a self-sustained community with housing, services, entertainment destinations, and yes, even a hotel to anchor larger festivals and conferences. “A lot of stuff has been put on North 24th Street that wasn’t sustainable,” he noted. “The X’s and O’s have to make sense.”
Paul B. has long shared that reverence for the corridor. “I’ve always called it the most important Black corner in Nebraska,” he said. “We have some history there and some legacy there — we have to be of service to it.” Viewer Pops echoed that sentiment from personal memory: “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.”
Murray spoke candidly about his place in the North Omaha ecosystem as someone who didn’t grow up there. His answer was disarming and honest. “If you were Black and in Omaha in the 70s and early 80s, everyone had a shared relationship with North Omaha — that was the Mecca for us,” he said. He also issued a gentle challenge to the community, using Cinco de Mayo in South Omaha as a model: “Look at South Omaha’s Cinco de Mayo and how they champion their culture — it brings them together but they invite everybody.” Murray said he’s tried to be that kind of beacon, and the response has proven the old assumptions wrong. “That taboo about the area being an attraction was false. We’ve proven that.”
At its core, NMA is a youth music academy, a performance space, and, in Murray’s words, a vehicle for producing “more critical thinking human beings.” The parallel to what Omaha Performing Arts means to downtown — an institution that generates $40 to $50 million in economic activity annually — is one Murray invokes with intention. He sees NMA on that same trajectory, beginning with a planned $20 million first phase of a capital campaign for a full NMA campus.
But the mission runs deeper than music lessons. Kids at NMA learn live sound engineering and broadcast production. They run a podcast lab. They interview visiting artists. “It’s not just telling them ‘oh, you can be this someday,'” Murray said with conviction. “No — you can be this right now.” Paul B. described the concept as a “secondary matrix” — the idea that teaching music is the surface, while the deeper work is building discipline, curiosity, and the capacity to excel in any field a young person chooses. Viewer Pops connected personally: “I experienced my secondary matrix in junior high when I took algebra. I was gaining proficiency and noticed I was suddenly able to think outside the box on several different levels. Music the same.”
NMA is currently seeking music instructors, and Murray was clear about what they’re looking for. Technical skill matters, but it isn’t enough. “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,” he said. “The instructors we bring in have to embody the ability to inspire another human being.” Interested applicants can reach Murray at dmurray@northomahahusic.org or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahahusic.org.
Buddy the God brought the morning’s larger theme into focus with characteristic clarity: “We got to do both. We have to build our own ecosystems and continue to do the things that we’re about to talk about.” That spirit — of building something lasting, something real, something rooted — ran through every segment of the show. And Murray, who has staked his return to Omaha on exactly that belief, left the audience with perhaps the most important takeaway of all: “The sooner we understand that our culture is equity — that our brilliance, our artistic genius is equity — the better off we’re going to be.”
The morning closed on a high note — including a joyful announcement from viewer Aeros 402: “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 was the perfect exclamation point.
If you missed this one, do yourself a favor and catch the replay. And make sure you’re tuned in Monday morning when Paul B., Buddy the God, and the whole 1st Sky family do it all over again — right here in Omaha, for Omaha.
