- Hi, I'm Satori Shakoor and here's what's coming up on "One Detroit, Arts and Culture."

Honoring a maple tapping tradition in Detroit.

An artist pays tribute to a legendary female voice.

A youth arts organization has a new young person in a leadership role.

It's all just ahead on "One Detroit, Arts and Culture."

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- [Announcer 1] Support for this program is provided by; The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

- [Announcer 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV, among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

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- [Announcer 1] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(bright upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "One Detroit, Arts and Culture."

I'm your host, Satori Shakoor, coming to you from the art gallery at The Boll, YMCA.

Coming up on the show, singer Joan Ellison, pays tribute to one of the most iconic female vocalists in history.

Then an indigenous tradition kicks off maple syrup season.

Following that, the Mint Artists Guild proves they are all about giving young artists a leg up with a genius move in leadership.

Plus a performance of the "Great Gate of Kiev".

Let's get into the show.

Late February and early March is an onus sugarbush season.

It's when the sap begins to run in maple trees.

The Detroit Sugarbush Project, highlights the indigenous tradition of making maple syrup.

One Detroit contributor, AJ Walker, has the story.

- Right around the last freeze, these trees are gonna suck all that water into the tree.

It's gonna go all the way to the top.

And then as soon as it gets above freezing all of that SAP is gonna come back down and that's when all the sap is gonna flow.

- [AJ] And when it does, that's when the Detroit Sugarbush Project will get their sweet reward.

But for those hard at work tapping these maple trees, the work itself is most rewarding.

Dr. Shakara Tyler says tapping maple trees is about much more than getting syrup.

- The sugarbush process is a very sacred ritual where we commune with our trees as ancestors, as the kin that they are, as they gift the sap to us so that we can consume it however that we see fit.

And I wanna emphasize the ritualistic part of it because we offer gifts to the trees in the process of them returning the sap, or giving the sap to us.

It's about sustaining the mind, body and spirit.

It's not just something that we consume because it tastes good.

This is a very spiritual process where we can honor our sacred histories and honor the ancestral energy that's present.

- You can live off the land.

Our ancestors did it, and so we're just trying to keep those traditions alive.

- [AJ] Antonio Cosme, who works for the National Wildlife Federation, is one of the Detroit Sugarbush Project's organizers.

He helps to bring the NWF together with native American communities to carry out this annual tradition.

Alexis Chingman-Tijerina, who is Anishinaabe, says hauling these buckets and doing this work is about paying homage to her culture and staying connected to her roots.

- The food sovereignty initiative with my tribe, you know, if we want to be living our culture, then we need to be doing what we would do in terms of like food harvesting and gathering and all the ceremony that goes into that.

That is our culture.

So if we're eating our foods, our heritage foods, then we are reconnecting and that's a really powerful way that we can do that - [AJ] For Cosme, bringing sugarbush tapping to Detroit is helping to heal deep wounds in communities of color, those who are native American and those who are not.

- We're really trying to build relationships between native communities and urban communities.

Between black communities and native communities.

Because we think a lot of things these communities are facing, they're parallels, you know?

And a lot of that comes from the sadness, the hurt, the pain, the disconnection from our ancestral roots and nature, and the land.

- [AJ] And Detroit's Rouge Park has proven to be the perfect place to do so.

- Rouge Park was the most natural destination for us.

We came out here, we walked a little bit out on the trails, and I mean, these are just huge maple groves.

It's just a perfect maple tapping spot.

And so we went to the city, and we said, hey this is a part of our heritage, our culture, our religious and spiritual rights to do this every season.

To honor the nature, the season, ourselves and our ancestors.

And so the city was like, "Wow, yeah, that's dope."

And so, we're out here doing it now.

- Yeah, I love that smell when I like come in the house and it's still on me.

- [Cosme] That's what humans are supposed to smell like.

- [Alexis] Yeah.

- [AJ] Today the fire is the beginning of a long process.

- The fire is kind of like the center of the community.

We wanted to get the fire going today to keep you guys warm and keep us warm while we're working.

- Next, is going tree to tree.

So this fire here is to keep us warm, and then in a little while you're gonna build a separate fire.

- Yeah.

- Then that's going to boil everything down.

- Yeah, we're gonna need a lot of heat to boil down the maple sap.

Like I said, it's gonna take a long time, like five to 10 hours.

Sometimes we have boils, depending on how much sap we're gonna have at any given point, it could take up to 24 hours.

- It looks like over here is where the real work begins, and you're gonna start actually tapping into those trees.

- Right.

We've got about 50 gallons already pulled from from the taps already.

It's gotten a little bit colder so the trees have slowed down.

But we're gonna go collect right now what we've got out here in Rouge Park.

We're gonna add that to the tote and then later this week we're gonna be building a large cooking pit over here for the maple syrup.

And my friends are going out to collect the sap right now.

- [AJ] Tapping maple trees for their sap is a tradition that goes back thousands of years, but doing it today is especially important, and it's a labor of love.

- Reviving these traditions are part of the reclamation process, culturally, politically, socially, even economically.

And so it's a huge aspect of what it means to decolonize the way we center indigeneity and center indigenous futures and histories in the present.

And so this is not something new that we're trying to figure out.

We're pulling from a very ancient lineage of practices, and stories and cultures, to learn in the present today.

- Now we turn to honoring one of the most iconic female vocalist in history.

Singer Joan Ellison's show "Get Happy" celebrates Judy Garland's Centennial.

With permission granted by the Judy Garland Heirs Trust, Ellison proudly takes on the persona of Garland.

90.9 FM WRCJ Cecilia Sharpe, talks to Ellison about this experience.

♪ Come on, get happy ♪ Chase your cares away ♪ Shout hallelujah, come on get happy ♪ ♪ Get ready for the judgment day ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome to this show, Ms. Joan Ellison.

- Hello, great to be here with you.

- Coming up in June, marks 100 years from when Judy- - June 10th.

- Yeah, when Judy Garland was born.

And you're performing across the nation, singing the work of Judy Garland.

Can you talk about the importance of keeping the breath of her career and her legacy alive?

- Well, I mean, I would consider her certainly right up in that pantheon of one in 500 year singers and entertainers.

And it's almost hard to find anyone to compare with her because she was so unique.

I think there has been a bit of a cottage industry in sort of labeling her as a drug addict, you know, less than she is.

But when you go back and you look at her artistry and when you look at just the breadth of her artistic output in so many areas, you know, albums, movies, live concerts and all the songs that were written for her and inspired by her that she originated, that have now become... You know, "Over The Rainbow" often voted the number one song of the 20th century.

You know, she's just a huge figure in our American cultural life.

- She also had a huge heart and loved to give- - Oh my goodness, yes.

- And support causes, the civil rights movement.

So many causes that she was behind to support equality for people despite the inequality that she was facing as a woman coming up during her time.

- Yes, she visited children's hospitals, she supported troops early on.

She was, I think in the so sort of the first group of people who did USO shows ♪ Stop, stop, stop ♪ Went my heart strings ♪ As he started to leave ♪ I took hold of his sleeve with my hand ♪ - Can you talk a bit about your trio?

How did that get started?

- I was looking for a way to distill these orchestrations, you know, Judy Garland's original orchestrations, down into something small enough that it would work for smaller venues during the pandemic or whatever.

I was teaching a lesson to a student who was a grad student at CIM in cello.

And I said, "We are doing "Blue Skies," and she said, "Oh, you know, I could play a walking bass on my cello for this."

And I thought, hmm, (Joan laughs) that would be interesting.

When I heard it happen, I thought, "Wow."

On a cello, you know, you have so much expressive potential and such a huge range and I thought, oh, could I kind of pick and choose little lines out of the orchestrations and, you know, put it together with the piano and have something that was kind of more than the sum of its parts.

So I arranged this whole show for cello and we premiered it last September at the Bob Stop and brought in Shane Schag, a pianist, actually originally from Ohio who's now in New York.

And we did the show.

And then we're reprising it in Illinois in May.

♪ There's just no letter (indistinct) - How do you go about restoring the orchestrations?

- Yeah, so basically Michael Feinstein, who was a trustee of the Judy Garland Heirs Trust brought me in on this project.

And, you know, he'll send me high quality scans of her original parts, 'cause, you know, her husband Sid Luft, sold her arrangements.

What I'm doing is copying them all into a finale, you know, every single note of every single part.

And then sometimes things are taped over or there's cuts or there's something that's illegible, or there's a completely missing part and I have to go back to an original recording and try to transcribe it.

It's painstaking, it's definitely a labor of love.

It's a ton of time.

But it's time travel too, I mean you get to see these original parts that so many people have played over the years.

And I love actually to look at musician graffiti on the parts.

Like there's one that just says "Good luck," with a little face peering up.

It was a trombone part on something, I can't remember which one, but it was one of the really illegible ones and all it said was a little face peering up over the staff and, "Good luck."

I'm just starting to think about looking for arrangements for a follow up orchestral show, which in its baby infant state is going to be featuring a lot of the great ladies of American popular song.

So Judy will be in there of course, and it would give me a chance to use a lot of her original arrangements that don't fit into my current orchestral show.

But I would like to include all kinds of other wonderful singers.

- Well, Joan I'd like to say thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Do you have any parting words?

- Well, it's been just a joy speaking with you and getting the word out about Judy.

And I'd just like to encourage any young women who are thinking of going into music.

If you feel that it's on your path, do it.

Don't let anyone tell you not to.

It can be a really rewarding life.

♪ If happy little bluebirds fly ♪ ♪ Beyond the rainbow ♪ Why, oh, why can't I (audience applauds) - Next up, the Mint Artists Guild focuses on building entrepreneurial skills and introduces practical applications of the arts to Detroit's young artists.

Not only are they nurturing creativity they're making sure artists can have a lucrative career in their field.

They doubled down on that idea when Alexis Bagley was elected as their board vice president.

Alexis is only in her early 20s.

One Detroit's Marcus Green has the story.

- I've been an artist, I would say all my life.

Like even when I was little I used to draw, like you can find my paintings and my little scribbles on my grandma's fridge and everything.

So as long as I can remember.

For whatever reason art just stuck to me, like I always was creating something, always having fun drawing something.

And my grandfather, he was an artist, and so I used to hear stories, my grandma used to tell me all these stories about him drawing.

She said, one time he drew her head on the body of a spider.

(Alexis laughs) So just stuff like that.

And so I would like draw up my grandpa sometimes, and yeah.

I remember working more so in like colored pencil, and like regular pencil.

And then as I got older, just watercolor here and there, but never acrylic or anything until I got in high school.

Now in my art, I focus on realism.

So like my art, I'm drawing like a picture basically.

I'm like looking at another picture and then I'm drawing a picture but I incorporate it with like abstract elements.

So I make it my own and everything.

I got involved with Mint senior year of high school, so 2016.

There was a girl in my class named Aisha Ramen and she came to art class one day and told us that she knew this organization and we could be in an art fair, like free of charge.

And you know, being in art class I was like, okay, that sounded great, you know, being able to sell my work.

'Cause I had finally figured out my medium back then, and so work started actually being like, okay this is kind of good.

So yeah, that's how I found out about Mint.

- I realized there were no youth arts programs in Detroit.

There were plenty in performance or poetry, there was singing, there was theater but there was nothing for visual arts.

- My first impression, I think that I was really happy.

I kind of had like a bad experience with art in high school due to some circumstances.

But being around art and artists and everything, it was really cool, you know?

'Cause I was learning things that I never like learned before.

You know, they always say, oh starving artist and just all this negativity and they don't really fund like the art classes and everything, like they fund other areas of school.

So it was like seeing that, like there was this world of art where people actually were passionate about what they did.

Like these are real artists, not just like in their craft, but they make a living off of what they do and everything.

I think that was like the first thing that stood out to me.

I volunteered to be the interim board president like twice in a row.

And I was, you know, talking with Vicky and we would have like our powwow sessions and we would go over everything.

And I was like leaving the board meeting, and in the past year I got really really involved with Mint, like really involved.

So after the last time that I held a board meeting I was talking to Vicky and she was like, "Do you wanna be the vice president?

And I think that would be good for you."

And I was like, "Me?"

'Cause I've always doubted myself, so I'm like, "Me?"

Like, what?

And so yeah, she asked me if that's what I wanted to do.

And I was like, "Yeah, I'll try it.

And hopefully I can make you proud, but I'll give it my best."

- And everyone thought this makes perfect sense.

We want youth voices, we want youth leadership.

We want the organization that serves youth to have youth at the helm.

- My goal for Mint is to really help young people feel the way that I did when I first got started with Mint, and to have these opportunities that are kind of like life changing.

Because without Mint I don't think I would be making art anymore.

- It's been a beautiful thing to see Alexis grow, to see her step up to say yes to things.

And she brings others along with her too.

So there are some other youth leaders who I think, you know, are taking more active roles.

Some of them as young as 16 and 17.

- Mint supports me so much.

Like I said earlier, I probably would not be an artist right now if it wasn't for Mint.

So, you know, Vicky she's always sending me different opportunities, like different gallery openings, different calls for art and everything.

And then even the people that I know now, that I have done different art shows with, I met them through Vicki.

I met them through Mint Artists Guild, being able to network, being able to get my myself out there, it has been through Mint.

So, you know, it's just... And I know if I ever need anything art wise, even just life-wise, if I need anything they got me, like they got my back.

Mint has my back, you know?

And I want artists to experience what I'm experiencing.

You know, like being able to be a part of this community and being able to have the community grow because of Mint, and it's like, I just want everybody to be able to understand and live their life.

- For more arts and culture stories go to onedetroitpbs.org.

That's gonna do it for me.

I'd like to thank The Boll YMCA for having me at their gallery in the lobby.

And I'll leave you with a beautiful performance of the "Great Gate of Kiev," to honor the Ukrainians still entrenched in war.

Take a moment to reflect while you're listening.

See you next week.

("Great Gate of Kiev") - [Announcer] You can find more @onedetroitpbs.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

- [Advertiser] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Announcer 1] Support for this program is provided by; The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

- [Announcer 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV, among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer 1] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

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