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 grounded in hope — even as the week’s news gave plenty of reasons to feel otherwise. With Nebraska’s midterm primary results still fresh, the show leaned deliberately into community, creativity, and the long game of building something lasting right here in Omaha.
“We have to make a decision,” Paul B. told viewers early in the broadcast. “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.” It set the tone for everything that followed.
Buddy the God was equally direct about the stakes of civic life, tying the election conversation to a broader call for community self-sufficiency. “None of this matters if everybody voted,” he said. “It’s the missing piece. As far as people having to fend for themselves, the reality is until we do that, we’re going to have to keep building our own ecosystems — and we got to do both.” His message to anyone wondering where to start was simple: “All you have to do is get in where you fit in. The lanes are running. The lanes are wide open.”
The show also shone a light on a pair of quietly powerful community wins — Charell Shelton’s Core Science Bio Diagnostics lab and the Heart Ministry Center’s upcoming grocery store — as examples of exactly the kind of ecosystem-building the hosts champion week after week.
But the heart of Friday’s show belonged to a wide-ranging conversation with Dana Murray, executive director and founder of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA), located on the historic North 24th Street corridor. Murray, a musician and educator who spent eleven years in New York City before coming home to Omaha, has spent two decades teaching music in this city. What he’s built at NMA, however, is far bigger than a music school.
“The arts are the core of who we are as people — definitely as Black people — and the history of North Omaha and really Omaha,” Murray said. “There’s very little talked about the social, people development, and healing that has to happen to even take advantage of all the opportunities.” He spoke of wanting the community to see arts investment not as a feel-good extra, but as a concrete equation. “I just want us all to look at it as a 2 plus 2 equals 4. There are things we have to do to move ahead.”
Paul B. framed Murray’s work through what he called the “secondary matrix” — the idea that everything meaningful carries a deeper purpose beneath the surface. “In Dana Murray’s case, he teaches kids music,” Paul B. explained, “but the secondary matrix is to create critical thinkers who can go further in their fields because of the discipline and mind-expanding benefits of musical training.” Viewer Pops felt that personally, writing in: “I experienced my secondary matrix in junior high when I took algebra. I noticed that I was suddenly able to think outside the box on several different levels. Music the same.”
Murray was candid about his vision for NMA’s future. He described a planned capital campaign — with a first phase of $20 million — aimed at building a full NMA campus on the North 24th corridor. He pointed to Omaha Performing Arts as a model: an institution that generates $40 to $50 million in revenue annually while serving as a cultural anchor for its neighborhood. “We need a vehicle like that for North Omaha,” he said. He even envisions a hotel as part of the corridor’s future, one that could support larger music festivals and conferences and drive economic traffic up and down the strip.
“Really, the area that has the most history and the one that can truly claim it is a cultural and arts district is the North 24th Street corridor,” Murray said, though he acknowledged the community has drifted from that identity. “A lot of the community within can’t relate to the power of what was.” He’s been working to change that — and proving skeptics wrong in the process. “People told me it was going to be very hard, and people don’t have any problem coming from wherever they are in Omaha or Iowa to hear jazz music. That taboo about the area and its ability to be an attraction was false. We’ve proven that.”
Inside the academy, students don’t just learn instruments. They’re trained in live sound engineering, broadcast production, podcasting, and live streaming. They interview visiting artists. They learn the full story of local legends like Preston Love Sr., Buddy Miles, and Victor Lewis — not just their names on murals, but their meaning. “If you give kids context, they connect the dots for themselves,” Murray said. “Now you’ve got a critical thinking human.” The chat reflected genuine admiration. Viewer Senator KML wrote simply: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
Murray also made a pointed case for why Black communities should claim the arts as economic equity, not just cultural expression. “Our culture is equity,” he said. “Every music in America has been built off of our experience — from the hardest rock music to the jazziest jazz music to the poppiest pop music, you trace it all the way back to the music that was brought over here from Africa. The sooner we look at it as equity for us to build and monetize for our community, the better we’re going to be.”
The show closed the way it always does — with warmth, with community, and with a sense that Monday can’t come soon enough. Viewer Derek Higgins put it plainly: “Congrats, Dana, and what NMA is doing.” And viewer Arrows 402 (Mary Sanchez) brought the whole room joy with a personal note: “On a love note, my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” It was, in every sense, a Love Supreme Friday.
Music instructors interested in joining the NMA team can reach Dana Murray at dmurray@northomusicorg or assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomusicorg.
Catch Paul B., Buddy the God, and the whole First Sky family when 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning returns Monday — because this is one conversation you don’t want to miss.
