It was a Love Supreme Friday on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God were determined to keep the energy high — even with plenty going on in the world to bring a person down. “We have to make a decision,” Paul B. told viewers early in the show. “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.” Consider it a mood, and consider it set.
The show opened with a conversation about the aftermath of Nebraska’s midterm primaries and the troubling reality of low voter turnout. But rather than spiraling into frustration, the hosts quickly reframed the discussion around something bigger: the idea of civic engagement as a daily practice, not just a once-every-few-years trip to the polls. Viewer Kimber Snipes weighed in from the chat with a perspective worth sitting with: “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 a reminder that civic life is about more than casting ballots — it’s about building the kind of informed, connected community where people feel their participation matters in the first place.
That thread wove naturally into what Paul B. calls the “secondary matrix” — the deeper purpose behind everything 1st Sky does. “On the surface, we’re a couple of talking heads that talk about some news with the community,” he said. “But what we’re really trying to do is build community, build some coalition, build a family of people that we can regularly talk to and come to some conclusions about some things so we can get to some action.” Buddy the God echoed the sentiment with characteristic directness: “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, but in the long run, we do got to figure this out as far as a nation.”
The centerpiece of the morning was a rich, wide-ranging conversation with Dana Murray, founder and director of the North Omaha Music Academy — formerly known as Love’s Jazz — located right on the corner of 24th and Lake. Murray, a musician and educator who spent eleven years in New York City before returning home to Omaha, spoke with the kind of calm, visionary clarity that makes you want to pull up a chair and stay a while.
Murray’s perspective on North 24th Street is both historical and urgently forward-looking. “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. “As a district, you have to have enough housing, enough people from within to fuel it — places of service, parking, laundromats, eateries, gas stations, all the things that any area needs to be self-sustained. And then you have to have destinations — entertainment, restaurants, lounges, things that are going to be your bread-and-butter attractions.” He even floated the idea of a hotel, noting that larger accommodations open the door to music festivals and conferences held right in the heart of the community. Paul B., who has long called 24th Street “the most important black corner in Nebraska,” couldn’t have agreed more.
On the question of his place in North Omaha’s story — Murray grew up in South Omaha — he was both candid and generous. “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 was equally honest about what he sees as missed opportunities, pointing to events like Native Omaha Days as gatherings that celebrate community but don’t always invite the broader city in. “One of the things I’ve tried to do was reach out and be a beacon for all of Omaha to come down to North 24th Street,” he said. “People told me that was going to be very hard. And people don’t have any problem coming from wherever they are in Omaha or Iowa to come down to North 24th Street to hear jazz music.”
The North Omaha Music Academy, Murray explained, is about far more than producing musicians. It’s a performance space, a broadcast lab, a live sound training facility — and at its heart, a place that meets young people where they actually live. “We are in crisis with education — not just young black kids, young kids — because we are losing the ability to inspire them,” he said. “We have to figure out how to inspire them within the world that they live in.” Students at NMA don’t just learn to play instruments; they learn live sound production, podcasting, and how to interview working artists. As Murray put it simply: “It’s not just telling them, ‘Oh, you can be this.’ No, you can be this right now.”
Viewer Pops connected the dots beautifully from the chat: “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.” And viewer Senator KML kept it short and sweet: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
Looking ahead, Murray described plans for a $20 million capital campaign — just the first phase of a vision for a full NMA campus that he hopes will become for North Omaha what Omaha Performing Arts is for downtown. “What we have to sell in most black communities is our culture,” he said. “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.”
The morning also made room for joy. Viewer Aeros 402 shared a beautiful personal note from the chat: “On a love note, my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” Paul B. closed the week the way his grandmother always prescribed — with a reminder that “dance is the shortcut to happiness.”
It was, in every sense, a Love Supreme Friday. Join Paul B., Buddy the God, and the whole 1st Sky family Monday morning — they’ll be right here, building something together.
