It was a Love Supreme Friday on the set of 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God were ready to shift the energy. After weeks of heavy political conversation surrounding the Nebraska primary elections, Paul B. made the call to exhale. “We’ve been talking a lot of politics for a while and it’s time for a little break,” he told the audience. “We going to change our mindsets over to something else — Love Supreme Friday is going down today for sure.”
But before the pivot, the election results were still very much on the community’s mind. Viewer Raquel Henderson set the tone with a pointed observation in the chat: “Only 339,032 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?” Buddy the God echoed that frustration directly: “None of this really matters if everybody voted. That’s a pretty valid point — a lot of this doesn’t matter if everybody voted.”
Viewer Kimber Snipes offered a gentler take, noting that many younger people she’d spoken with — those between 20 and 35 — simply don’t know enough about the candidates or the process. “I don’t think we should be slamming people for not voting when the system is really what has caused this,” she wrote. “I think we need to have more education and deep dive discussions.” It was the kind of nuanced, community-level conversation that 1st Sky Omaha has made its signature.
Paul B. used the moment to articulate something larger — a philosophy that runs through everything the show does. He calls it the secondary matrix. “Everything that we do has a secondary meaning, a deeper meaning,” he explained. “On the surface, First Sky Omaha is a couple of talking heads talking about news with the community — but what we’re really trying to do is build community, build coalition, be able to speak to and build a family of people that we can regularly talk to and come to some conclusions and get to some action.” Buddy reinforced that with the season’s guiding theme: “The ecosystem that we have been relying on is crumbling before our very eyes — whether it’s electoral politics, the economy, or education. We have to build our own ecosystems and continue doing the things that fight back in a real way.”
That spirit of ecosystem-building led perfectly into the morning’s featured guest: Dana Murray, executive director and founder of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA). A South Omaha native who spent eleven years in New York City before returning home, Murray transformed the former Love’s Jazz space into a youth music academy, performance venue, and community anchor right on the North 24th Street corridor — what Paul B. calls “the most important Black corner in Nebraska.”
Murray’s vision for that stretch of North 24th — affectionately known as “the Deuce” — is ambitious and concrete. He laid out what any thriving cultural district needs: housing, services, parking, eateries, and destination attractions like restaurants, lounges, and entertainment venues. “It would be great to have a hotel,” he said, “because then you can throw larger attractions, music festivals, and conferences right in the community.” Viewer Pops connected the dots beautifully, recalling that “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.”
Though Murray grew up in South Omaha, he spoke with authority and ownership about North 24th Street’s cultural legacy — and its missed opportunities. “If you were Black and 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.” But he pushed back on a tendency he sees in the community to hold pride without leveraging it. “At every opportunity, we fail at taking advantage of showcasing our culture,” he said. “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. People told me that was going to be very hard. But people don’t have any problem coming from wherever they are in Omaha or Iowa to come down to hear jazz music. That taboo about the area and its ability to be an attraction was false.”
At its core, NMA is a youth music academy — but Murray is quick to clarify that raising musicians is only part of the mission. “We’re not only raising musicians, but more importantly, we’re raising more critical thinking human beings,” he said. “All these young kids are not going to become musicians by choice — some will become doctors, lawyers, business owners — whatever they choose, they’re going to be better because they were aligned with artistry.” The academy teaches live sound production, broadcasting, podcasting, and live streaming alongside traditional instrument instruction — skills that are immediately applicable, not just aspirational. “It’s not just teaching them, ‘oh you can be this’ — no, you can be this right now,” Murray said.
He also addressed the urgent challenge of brain drain, calling it “a killer for Omaha, period” — and far more devastating for North Omaha, which represents a small fraction of the city’s overall population. The long-term answer, in his view, is a full NMA campus, anchored by a $20 million capital campaign, designed to function the way Omaha Performing Arts functions for downtown. “If you can bring larger entertainment and bigger attractions, people will come,” he said. And he offered a challenge to the broader community: “What we have to sell in most Black communities is our culture — because if we don’t monetize it, which 99 percent of the time we don’t, the rest of the country monetizes our culture for us. The sooner we understand that our culture is equity, that our brilliance and artistic genius is equity, the better off we’re going to be.”
The morning closed on a high note — literally and figuratively. Viewer Aeros 402 (Mary Sanchez) shared a beautiful piece of personal news in the chat: “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 felt like exactly the right note to end on.
If you’d like to connect with the North Omaha Music Academy or explore teaching opportunities, Dana Murray can be reached at dmurray@northomahamusic.org, or his assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahamusic.org.
Next week, 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning returns with more honest conversation, community connection, and the kind of guests who are quietly changing this city for the better. Don’t miss it — your neighborhood is talking, and there’s always room at the table.
