- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

The Ghostlight Arts Initiative is holding its inaugural gala on June 29th at Detroit's Garden Theater.

The nonprofit organization promotes the use of creative performing and media arts as a means for social progress.

Its flagship event is the annual Obsidian Theater Festival, which launched in 2020.

Ghostlight Gala will celebrate the festival's works, and honor two notable members of the local arts community.

Joining me now is John Sloan III.

He's the Executive Director of the Ghostlight Arts Initiative along with the two gala honorees, Njia Kai, a well-known Detroit cultural arts producer and curator, and Dr. George Shirley, a history-making tenor with a distinguished career in opera and music education.

Welcome all of you to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- So I'm not sure most people know about this effort of yours, John.

Tell us how you got started with it.

- Well, I mean, this really for me is the culmination of a lifelong struggle, right?

My love and passion for the arts and this burning desire that was implanted into me to make the world better when I leave it than when I found it.

And I've always believed the arts can be that, right?

We can use music, theater, dance, opera to show us who we have been, who we are, and who we can become.

And so the Ghostlight Arts Initiative is my way of trying to make that impact.

I moved back home from New York and on tour about seven years ago and launched this effort about five years ago now with the festival, the Obsidian Theater Festival as the kind of jewel of our programming.

- Yeah.

Ghostlight, tell me where that name comes from.

- So a ghostlight stands on a stage, right?

Whenever you walk into any theater, there are no windows because you wanna be able to control the light at all times.

And so the ghostlight sits right at the edge of the stage, and it's there when the theater is dark.

It's meant to shine a light, to provide a path.

Keep people from walking over the edge.

And artists can be a little superstitious.

And so the lore is that the ghostlight also keeps away all of the negative energy so you're walking into a space that is ready to create.

- Yeah, yeah.

So Obsidian has been around for five years now.

Talk about some of the, I guess, the highlights of that programming.

- Yeah, so we started in the middle of the pandemic.

- Yeah, right?

Perfect timing.

- Yeah, absolutely, to produce new work.

But we came out of a partnership between Ghostlight myself, Nnicely Theater Group, David Carroll, in trying to figure out a way to tackle 2020.

We all remember how difficult it was.

I think anything that I could say right now would just seem like a cliche.

I was stuck because I'm looking at protests, I'm actively protesting the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, wrestling with the fact that it felt like half of the world realized racism was still a thing.

And then also as an artist feeling restrained, not really being able to do what I knew how to do to push back against that.

And the cathartic release that comes as an artist when you can work through that was something that was also kind of rubbing against me.

And so the festival came out as a way for us to say, "All right, how do we create a platform for this project for Black artists in specific to see their work produced and to have stories told?"

What we know is that when you have more writers of color with their work produced, then more youth of color are reading that work.

And you're seeing an accurate representation of them.

I had a professor in school that said, "There's nothing wrong with an Irish guy writing a story about a Irish family in an Irish bar.

There is something wrong with the system that says that that story is more valid than somebody else's."

And so the festival is our way of trying to level playing fields a little bit and to promote as much work as possible.

We've produced 28 individual productions over the past four, now five years, it is.

It's all in one weekend too.

So it's a Thursday through a Sunday, and it's 12 opportunities, four plays, a musical, a cabaret, and we rotate everything through three venues downtown and repping this.

- So these two honorees this year.

Tell me what is what it is about them that you think aligns with Ghostlight.

They're the best of who you wanna be, as directors, as artists, but more importantly as people.

And what was really important to us is to not just do a gala event to celebrate who we are, but to do an event to celebrate where we want the city to go, and how we want that to move.

And you can't do that without honoring individuals that have contributed so foundationally to where we are.

I know distinctly that both of these individuals have made me a better artist, but have more importantly made me a better person.

And there is a joy, I think, in being able to honor both of those things together.

- Wow, Njia, are you gonna get a better testimony than that anytime soon?

- He's hired.

- I'm leaving.

- Right, Njia, talk about your work and how it aligns with what John is trying to do and talking about, but also about the journey, right?

The struggle of an artist over a long period of time.

An African-American artist, an artist who's a woman in a city like Detroit.

This is a singular story I feel like in America.

- Wow, I'm humbled, of course, by the selection and by the reasoning that has been shared here.

I've basically been doing what Njia wanted to do.

I've basically been doing what I like to do.

And I'm so grateful that what I like to do is actually a contribution and has provided service, example, opportunity for a lot of artists here locally as well as from other spaces.

I do believe that arts are critical to development, to human development.

And so not having that is not an option.

And I don't see where human beings allow that to happen.

Even just looking at hip hop and techno and how these young people said, "Oh, okay, there's no arts in the schools, we're not getting opportunity to put our hands on musical instruments, the opportunities have been taken from us, so we're just gonna figure out how to scratch and bang and make it happen."

- [Stephen] We're gonna make noise on our own.

- We're gonna make it happen because there's something in all of us that wants a avenue of expression.

And for a lot of us who consider ourselves artists or who grow up to find out that we are artists, it's compelling, you gotta do it.

And so, yeah.

So I actually credit my mother for the most part, but my dad also, who my dad used to sing.

I just was so happy to remind Dr. Shirley that he and my dad were friends back in their Wayne State University days.

And my dad used to act and sing a bit.

Dr. Shirley went forward, my father became a minister.

So maybe there's still some of that talent, some of that talent's still being expressed.

But my mother especially, she used to arrange all of the teas and programs.

She would write the plays, she would direct, she would decorate.

And I was her minion, and I really enjoyed it.

And it got me into production.

I love almost any type of production.

I'm really there for it.

I love the process of having an idea and seeing it fulfilled.

- And execute it.

- And I love the community of it.

And so all of that feeds me., and I'm grateful.

Really, it's very humbling because I was doing this not selfishly, but very much self-satisfyingly.

And to know that it's a service that is appreciated is really, really, really great.

- Dr. Shirley, you are also, I mean, just an icon.

I mean, the both of you really stand out on the local landscape in terms of arts, and in your case also, arts education.

Talk about Ghostlight and receiving this honor.

- One of the great things about, one of the blessings being a teacher that you never know who's going to walk through your door as a student.

And a few years back, this young man came in who was a student at Michigan in the music theater, musical theater curriculum, and opened his mouth and out came this roaring lion bass voice.

And I thought, "okay, okay, okay, well."

And to see him go from Michigan and do the part of the lion on Broadway, and to have this wonderful career and then form Ghostlight, going beyond just being on stage, but giving back to the community, to young artists, what he was gifted with, what he was born to do.

That for me is just as exciting, maybe even moreso standing on stage doing something myself.

- Yeah, I mean, because you do both, you know, I always wonder which is more fulfilling, but it seems clear to you, - I started teaching music, choral music in the Detroit public schools in 1955 when I graduated from Wayne.

Started teaching at Miller High School.

And I've often said I had my job.

I mean, I didn't ask for it.

And my supervisor, a little feisty Irish woman named Marvel O'Hara, went to the Board of Education when she found out there was an opening at Miller High School for an emergency substitute.

I hadn't graduated yet, I didn't ask her to do this.

I didn't know.

But she went to the Board of Education and they gave me the job.

Where did that come from?

And so I had my job, my future wife and I were planning on getting married in August of 1956.

And Uncle Sam sent me a letter in May of 1956 saying, "You're going to be married to me in June."

Now Korea had ended, the draft is still alive.

And I said, "What is this about?

The Army's the last place I want to go."

But I had to go.

I believe in a higher intelligence, he's created everything.

Life works in mysterious ways.

For me to go into the Army was a curse, but it turned out to be a blessing.

- But it eventually brought you back, - Because it was a place that I was convinced to consider becoming a professional singer.

Opera, you gotta be joking.

We didn't have an opera program at Wayne.

Choral music.

And I love to sing it ever since Northern High School where we did "Messiah" every spring, every Christmas.

And people like Smokey, I mean Smokey was a few years behind me, but people like Morris Broadnax, who became an arranger at motown, and a composer, we sang together.

So the system of music education in Detroit was one of the best in the country.

- And it created all of these things that we now think of as.

- Barry Gordy knew what he had to grow.

- To pull from, right?

- So I have been blessed to be a teacher and a performer, again, in an art form that I, we didn't listen to the opera in my house.

We listened to Grand Ole Opry because my parents are from the South.

But it was a plan that was written for me that I had nothing to do with any more than I had something to do with being born.

I had nothing to do with that.

Or in any of the implants that I received through conception that have governed how I respond to stimuli from the outer world.

I'm just a blessed individual and I'm further blessed to have this happen.

- And this community I think is blessed by the fact that both of you are here.

I mean, I am someone who never fails the chance to try to just acknowledge that.

We are very special here in Detroit because of people like you.

All right, congratulations on the honor.

Congratulations on the project.

And thanks to all of you for being here.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you very much indeed.