It was Love Supreme Friday on 1st Sky Omaha in the Morning, and hosts Paul B. and Buddy the God set the tone early. With post-primary election tensions running hot in the Friends of First Sky Omaha community group, Paul B. made the call to dial things back and lead with love. “There’s a lot of chatter going on on Friends of First Sky Omaha,” he said. “There’s a lot of back and forth, friends breaking up, all kinds of stuff happening over politics — and that just is like, okay, well, we have to make a decision. It’s going to be Love Supreme Friday today.”
That decision turned out to be exactly right. What unfolded was one of the most grounded, forward-looking episodes the show has delivered in some time — part civic conversation, part community celebration, and part master class in what it looks like to build something real from the ground up.
The hosts didn’t shy away from the week’s political moment entirely. Buddy the God offered a both/and perspective on the tension between building community institutions and engaging in electoral politics. “We got to do both,” he said. “We got 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 a nation.” Paul B. added his own take on the relationship between self-reliance and civic duty: “Even if we do for self, you still vote so it can be supported and uplifted and not undermined by those who are in office. That’s the dichotomy — you still do for self and then you vote so it can be supported.” Viewer Kimber Snipes weighed in thoughtfully from the chat: “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.”
Community wins got their well-deserved spotlight too. The hosts highlighted a $52,000 award for a North Omaha diagnostic lab, national recognition for Omaha North’s engineering program, and an upcoming grocery store initiative spearheaded by Heart Ministry Center. Good news, all around.
But the heart of the morning belonged to special guest Dana Murray, executive director of the North Omaha Music Academy (NMA) — formerly known as Love’s Jazz — located right on the 24th Street corridor. A South Omaha native who spent eleven years in New York City before returning home, Murray carries the kind of quiet confidence that comes from someone who has thought deeply about a problem and decided to become part of the solution.
Murray’s vision for the 24th Street corridor — “the Deuce,” as the hosts affectionately call it — is sweeping and specific at the same time. “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 said. He laid out the metrics of a self-sustaining district with the fluency of someone who has done the homework: housing, laundromats, eateries, gas stations, parking, transportation, entertainment destinations. And then the big one — a hotel. “With a hotel, now you can throw larger attractions, music festivals, conferences right in the community.” Paul B. echoed the significance of the corridor with characteristic directness: “I’ve always called it the most important black corner in Nebraska — and we got to serve it. We have to be of service to it.” Viewer Pops added a personal note from the chat that brought the history alive: “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 addressed head-on the question of what it means to be a South Omaha native building something in North Omaha. His answer reframed the geography entirely. “People that are from North Omaha — really, 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, challenging the community to reckon with missed opportunities: “At every opportunity, we fail at taking advantage of showcasing our culture.” His work at NMA, he said, has already begun to dismantle the false narrative that the corridor can’t attract outsiders. “People don’t have any problem coming from wherever they are in Omaha or Iowa to come down North 24th Street to hear jazz music. That taboo about the area and its ability to be an attraction was false. We’ve proven that.”
NMA is far more than a music school. Murray described a living ecosystem where young people learn live sound engineering, broadcast production, podcasting, and how to conduct professional artist interviews — right now, not someday. “It’s not just teaching them ‘oh, you can be this’ — no, you can be this right now,” he said. “Once you remove those barriers, the sky’s the limit.” Paul B. saw the deeper architecture in Murray’s approach. “Everything that we do has a secondary meaning, a deeper meaning,” he reflected. “In Dana Murray’s case, he teaches kids music — but on the deeper level, creating critical thinkers, which goes a long, long way.”
Murray is also clear-eyed about meeting young people where they actually are. “Most of their learning comes from Google, ChatGPT, YouTube, Instagram, things going viral — that’s their world,” he said. “The why they’re doing it is everything, because they don’t need us for the what — they can go to YouTube and see anything we’re trying to teach them.” The instructors NMA recruits, he emphasized, must bring more than technical skill. “The instructors we bring in have to have in their arsenal the ability to inspire another human being.”
Looking ahead, Murray outlined an ambitious capital campaign — phase one at $20 million — aimed at building a full NMA campus. His north star is nothing less than what Omaha Performing Arts means to downtown: a cultural and economic engine. “That’s what we’re trying to be for North Omaha,” he said plainly. And then he offered a line that stopped the room: “What we have to sell in most black communities is our culture. 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.” Viewer Senator KML said it simply from the chat: “Thank you, Uncle Dana. You’re changing lives in big ways. We are the students.”
Music instructors interested in teaching at NMA can reach Dana Murray at dmurray@northomahamusic.org or assistant Andrew Bailey at abailey@northomahamusic.org. And in the spirit of Love Supreme Friday, viewer Arrows 402 (Mary Sanchez) closed the morning on the sweetest note of all: “On a love note, my only daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter. They are both new and good. I feel blessed.”
That’s the kind of morning First Sky delivers at its best — politics and purpose, community and culture, a brand-new granddaughter and a $20 million dream. Join us again Monday when Paul B. and Buddy the God bring another fresh conversation straight to your screen. You won’t want to miss it.
