Friday mornings have a certain energy on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and this past “Love Supreme Friday” was no exception. Hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God brought warmth, wit, and genuine community fire to the broadcast — and when they welcomed their guest, Dana Murray, executive director of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA), the conversation elevated to something that felt less like a talk show and more like a town hall for the soul.
Paul B. set the tone early, framing the show’s larger purpose with the kind of plainspoken clarity that keeps viewers coming back. “The secondary matrix of what we’re trying to do,” he said, “is build community, build some coalition, be able to speak to — 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 about some things.” That spirit of purposeful community-building ran like a current through the entire episode.
Much of that current ran straight down North 24th Street — “the Deuce,” as locals know it — a corridor Paul B. has long held in reverence. “I’ve always called it the most important black corner in Nebraska,” he said, a sentiment that found rich, practical expression in Dana Murray’s visit.
Murray, a South Omaha native who spent eleven years making music in New York City before returning home, now leads NMA, a youth music academy and live performance venue rooted right on North 24th Street. His vision for the corridor is both pragmatic and poetic. “Really, 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 told the hosts. But he was candid about the challenge: “It is hard to build momentum from within when a lot of the community can’t relate to the power of what was.”
Murray laid out what sustainable revitalization actually requires — housing, groceries, parking, laundromats — the unglamorous infrastructure that makes a neighborhood livable. But he didn’t stop there. “Then 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 even floated the idea of a hotel on the corridor, arguing that with lodging comes the ability to host music festivals and conferences that could put North Omaha on the regional map.
When the hosts gently raised the question of Murray’s outsider status — he wasn’t born in North Omaha — he answered without defensiveness. “If you’re black and you’re in Omaha, especially in the 70s and early 80s, everyone had a shared relationship with North Omaha. That was the Mecca for us.” He went further, offering a challenge to the community itself: “At every opportunity, we fail at taking advantage of showcasing our culture and highlighting the excellence of who we are.” He pointed to Native Omaha Days as a beloved but underleveraged moment. “It’s a failed opportunity to showcase our culture because none of that is trying to invite the rest of Omaha down to partake in what we have to offer.” His approach has been different — and by his account, it has worked. People, he said, have no trouble making the trip from anywhere in Omaha or across the river in Iowa to hear jazz on North 24th Street.
Viewer Pops added a layer of living history to the conversation, sharing that “artists like Fats Domino used to stay at your grandfather’s home when he came to town to perform,” calling more infrastructure for artists around the Deuce corridor “a godsend.” And viewer Senator KML offered perhaps the most personal endorsement of the morning: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
Murray’s ambitions for NMA are anything but small. He envisions the academy as North Omaha’s answer to what the Omaha Performing Arts complex means for downtown — an institution that generates not only culture but tens of millions of dollars in economic activity. A capital campaign is in the works, with a first phase goal of $20 million and an eventual NMA campus on the horizon. “Money is not our issue in North Omaha,” he said plainly. “It’s transformative ideas that are going to allow us to be not only sustainable but gainfully active.” And at the heart of NMA’s mission is something that goes beyond music. “We’re not only raising musicians but, more importantly, raising more critical-thinking human beings,” Murray said. “Whatever they choose to do, they’re going to be better because they were aligned with artistry.”
For those interested in joining that work, Murray is actively seeking music instructors. He emphasized that technical skill alone isn’t enough — inspiration is the job. “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 why you’re doing it is everything.” Interested candidates can reach Murray at dmurray@northomusicacademy.org or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomusicacademy.org.
The episode also touched on the results of Nebraska’s midterm primary, and the civic engagement conversation that followed was pointed. Only 339,000 of Nebraska’s 1.2 million registered voters cast ballots — a fact that prompted viewer Raquel Henderson to ask directly: “Where is that same energy when it’s time to organize, educate, mobilize, register, and actually vote?” Buddy the God echoed the urgency. “None of this really matters if everybody voted,” he said. “It’s the missing piece. People have to fend for themselves, and the reality is until we do that, we’re going to have to keep building our own ecosystems — and we got to do both.”
Amid it all, there was joy, too. Viewer Aeros 402 shared a beautiful moment: “My only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.” Paul B. closed the week with a line from his grandmother that seemed to capture everything the show is reaching for: “Dance is the shortcut to happiness.”
It was, in every sense, a Love Supreme Friday. If you missed it, set a reminder — because next week, the lanes are wide open, and you’ll want to be in them.
