- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

Detroit's queen of the blues, Thornetta Davis on her collaboration with actor Jeff Daniels that went viral plus remembering two great artists in Detroit, Mary Wilson and Charles McGee.

Then Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit, Rochelle Riley on the year-long undefeated project that lifts up local artists and discovering Islam through the eyes of students exploring different religions across our area.

It's all just a head on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

- [Announcer 1] 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 2] Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Announcer 3] 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 4] Business Leaders for Michigan.

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AAA, Nissan Foundation, Ally.

The Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - Hi there, and welcome to One Detroit Arts and Culture.

I'm Christy McDonald.

Thanks so much for being with me.

Well, COVID is keeping us closer to home these days, the creative community is finding a way for artists and groups to survive during this time.

And that's why we created One Detroit Arts and Culture to keep you in touch with performances, music and cultural events that we love to engage with and that really fill our soul.

Coming up on the show, we will remember two Detroit artists who made an impact Motown icon and Supremes member, Mary Wilson and artist Charles McGee.

Plus Rochelle Riley, Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit on a new project to support local artists called Undefeated.

Then the Interfaith Leadership Councils program helping kids learn about different religions.

This week, we learn more about Islam and we'll finish off with a performance from Detroit zone queen of the blues, Thornetta Davis.

♪ I believe I believe everything gonna be all right ♪ ♪ Everything gonna be all right now ♪ Thornetta has been making music here in Detroit for over 30 years.

And like a lot of artists COVID brought her live performances and promotions to a halt.

But her recent collaboration with actor Jeff Daniels went viral and she tells me how the song I Am America stretched her creatively in new ways.

What has this last year been like for you as a musician?

- Wow, well, it's definitely been a crazy experience because I haven't been able to get out and perform.

There was so many things we were gonna do this past year.

Me and my band were gonna do a lot of traveling.

I think the week of the cancellation of everything all over the country we were going to Austin, Texas and we were going to perform down there a number of gigs for the South by Southwest convention and they canceled that immediately.

- You've worked with everyone from Etta James to Gladys Knight to Bob Seger that you always feel like you have been in that arena in terms of working with artists but still pushing your name out there.

- Yeah, I was always behind the scenes, sing in the background and always wanting to go forward and do my own thing.

So I've managed to do both.

I never did go on tour with those famous people but I managed to sit on their records which help lift my career up to do what I needed to do this past four years, I released an album called Honest Woman and Honest Woman was something that I had in place or had been working on for 20 years.

Finally, got it out, started winning all these great awards for it.

And then pandemic hits.

And I was looking forward to touring all over the world.

When those things happen, you get scared you start wondering what's gonna happen.

And I thank God for the internet, because that did start to help me when people ask me to do certain of performances recorded.

- About a month ago, we heard a recording of you and Jeff Daniels singing this song called I Am America.

Tell me about how that song came into being and your collaboration with Jeff Daniels that everyone knows as an actor but likes to sing a bit and perform as well.

- Well, I got a call and from Jeffs people and they asked me would I be willing to perform with them on a song that he's putting on his album?

And I was excited.

I didn't know to what capacity.

I just thought I'm singing with Jeff Daniels.

And so when he sent me the music and I noticed that it only had the hook and one of the verses in, I had to write the rest of it.

And I said, okay, this is good.

This is a stretch for me, but I'm gonna enjoy this.

And I wanted to speak on what I'd been feeling as far as what's been going on in the world, what's been going on in this country, what we've experienced all of us, but what I've experienced in my life as far as being black person in this country.

And so I wrote the words, give me my freedom, all I wanna do is breathe, and all of these things that has not been happening in this country for hundreds of years.

And I wanted to put it in this song.

- When did you hear it for the first time?

And what was the reaction?

- The first time I heard it for the public is when my Twitter started blowing up.

(laughing) I had no idea they were gonna use it for the Ad campaign which I'm glad they did that too.

But I'm like, why is my phone blowing up?

And I went to it.

It was like nine o'clock at night.

And people were liking me and following me all of a sudden on my Twitter page.

And so I went to the reason why, and I'm like, whoa, this is really, you put it on this commercial for the two senators down in Georgia.

- It's the intersection of what you said is speaking your truth, activism, everything colliding in one way.

And you said, even stretching yourself into places maybe musically that you hadn't been before.

- I wanted to write a song speaking on the things that have been going on as far as the police brutality and people making peaceful protest and having the president at that time answer with more violence.

And I'm like, how does this work?

Why can't we just be at peace?

I'm just looking forward to better days happening.

I got a song called I Believe everything's gonna be all right and a lot of things happened this last year that helped me have me struggling with that belief.

And I believe God gave me that song to help others keep the faith.

♪ I believe everything gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ Everything gonna be all right now ♪ - You may be thinking, wait I want to hear more of Thornetta singing.

So just hang on at the end off tonight's show we'll hear her performance of I believe everything's gonna be all right from her latest album.

All right, this past week Detroit lost two iconic artists, Motown legend Mary Wilson of The Supremes and artist Charles McGee.

This is Mary back on American Black Journal in 1986, it was called Detroit Black Journal then.

She was a long reigning member of The Supremes, was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, wrote three books and fiercely loved Detroit.

Mary died at the age of 76 and you can see that interview at onedetroitpbs.org.

And you've seen Charles McGee's murals on buildings in Detroit at the Charles H. Wright Museum.

He passed away at the age of 96 last week but here's Charles in his own words, back in 2017 after the unveiling of his piece called Unity on our show, Detroit Performs.

- The world is my canvas.

I'm just one little speck on the canvas.

Is trying to understand the aura that holds the world together.

That's very important to me because I think that if we understand it, we respect it.

When we all work together, we understand more, we tolerate more.

We live better lives because we are talking about being moved by togetherness.

We're able to live together harmoniously.

I think art tries to help to understand where we are and achieve order out of our existence.

It's important for me to try to understand what it is that nature gives us in existence to make a reason out of fly, we are who we are.

I live in all of the beautiful things that nature empowers to us.

I create pieces when it's not a physical involvement it's a continual investigation with some kind of purpose and understanding of trying to make the world better.

And so the neuro in my situation the reason that I use the imagery that I did was to create that juxtaposition of opposites.

It balances out and it's telling you about the order in the world, because nature didn't want that to be guess one of anything.

So that kind of dichotomy of opposites creates harmony, creates diversion for me is pointing toward peace to that kind of organization.

And that's why I think I'm hungry to create.

Because I think that that was my call in nature was to be able to make a mark, make another mark that balances that note.

We live in a rapidly changing world and is very important we learn to adjust ourselves to these changes.

We're all gonna make me mistakes.

We are working toward a better world each from their own direction, according to their experiences and how open and how looks are.

It takes time, it experience and requires a lot of giving and understanding to get us through this maze of life in peace.

And so the basic thesis behind everything that I do has to do with trying to make it better.

It's very important to be able to understand the insides of how I can assist them and why if we look at one color, close our eyes we see the after image of that particular object.

And it's complimentary.

That's just one element of understanding.

Everything is rapidly metamorphosizing, there's a little more unity I feel, there's a little more understanding I look around and I feel greatly accelerated by the newness that's happening to Detroit.

I thought I'd never lived to see it.

I feel fortunate to be a part of that.

Being able to put a fingerprint on the building of a new Detroit.

- If you'd like to see where Charles's murals are across the city, we have an interactive map of Detroit on our website, just head to onedetroitpbs.org.

All right, turning now to artists who have been struggling across Detroit, since COVID hit.

There is a new initiative starting this month by the city of Detroit, that really speaks to the resilience of Detroit artists.

WRCJ program director Dave Wagner talks with City Arts and Culture Director, Rochelle Riley, for more on the undefeated project.

- Let's start with the title undefeated and tell us about that.

- Well, that's how I'm feeling right now as we work very hard to move past COVID 19.

We did a series of conversations almost 30 of them last spring with artists and performers and organizations called The Way Forward.

And while that was important and that's what we're looking at.

I wanted something that spoke to the resilience of Detroit, which we've always been.

So we will not be defeated by this, we will continue to have our great arts and culture.

And when we come out on the other side of this pandemic we're gonna have the joy that we had before it struck.

- Detroit at once was called the Paris of Midwest and I think we're proving our resiliency once more with all of the arts and artists and performers that are here in Detroit.

- Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I tell people all the time Detroit never left, we just stopped talking about us.

We are still the Paris of the Midwest.

We still have the amazing talent.

Detroit has more talent on one street than some cities to have within their entire borders.

But we felt a little defeated.

We felt like we weren't really worthy.

We didn't brag about ourselves and it's time for us to start doing that again.

We have an amazing creative stratosphere here, and my job thanks to the mayor is to be the person to remind you of that, to nurture that.

And by God to make sure it gets even better.

- Well, this is a year long celebration, now, I want people to know that you're looking for artists, visual artists, musicians, performers and everyone from the entire cross section of our community can submit their work.

Tell us about that.

- Well we kicked this off during Black History Month because it is Black History Month and I wanted to make sure that people saw some of the really great brilliance of African-American artists and performers and everything from storytellers to dancers.

But the Undefeated Campaign is for all artists of all ages, sizes, colors, genres, we want everybody in the city to feel like this is their time to shine.

- Something that you've just done a brand new book and it's called That They Lived, African-Americans who changed the world, tell us about the book and how it came about.

- I'm so excited.

And this is what it looks like.

Yes, a couple of years ago on Twitter and Facebook, but on Twitter particularly because I'm fierce on Twitter.

There was this young mom in the Seattle area who was posting photographs each day in February of her daughter, her four year old daughter, five-year-old daughter dressed as a famous African-American woman.

And it wasn't just a costume.

She embodied those folks Fannie Lou Hamer, Bessie Coleman and Aretha Fran, I mean, just amazing.

And I thought, God, that's the best thing I've ever seen.

She did it again the next February.

And I said, I have to find her.

And I found her on Facebook and I talked to her and I said, "I would like to write some inspirational biographical essays to go with those photos."

People should know who these women are.

And she was so shy, she wasn't really sure.

So I got on a plane and I flew out to Seattle and I got in a car and drove to her suburban town and met with her family and got her to do it.

And that's how we wound up with this books.

So they're 10 photographs, actually 11 of her daughter Lola and it's all of these amazing characters including Rosa Parks in this iconic photo of her being arrested.

- Oh my goodness.

- And then that's my grandson, Caleb SWEB Dubois and Thurgood Marshall.

- Thurgood Marshall.

- Yeah, Thurgood Marshall, he also portrayed Frederick Douglas and so in between shoots, we would take a break and he wanted to go to the movies with the Frederick Douglas hair.

And I said, no, you can't do that.

But we did get it to go with the Thurgood Marshall hair.

So I walked around with this eight year old kid with gray hair.

And people were like, I wonder if that's that kid from that movie where he gets really old.

(Dave laughing) But it was an amazing experience to teach them about these folks.

And we want to use it to teach all kids of all races and all sizes and a little bit adults that every important person was once a child.

- And for more on the Undefeated Project and Black History Month programming in the city, just head to onedetroitpbs.org.

This next story is the latest in our ongoing series that explores different faith communities here in Southeast Michigan, we get to learn about them through the eyes of students.

It's part of the Interfaith Leadership Council of Metro Detroit program called Religious Diversity Journeys.

And this week we're heading to the Muslim Unity Center in Bloomfield Township to learn about Islam.

(islam music) - As-salamu alaykum, peace be upon you.

My name is Dima El-Gamal I am a member of the Muslim Unity Center Interfaith Committee, and a former board member.

The Muslim Unity Center was founded in the early 90s and there's about 300 families who are members of the Muslim Unity Center.

Muslim Unity Center is home away from home to a lot of community members.

Maria is gonna be our guest today.

We'd invited her through multiple sessions to explore our values and our tradition of the Muslim faith traditions.

She will learn about the fundamentals and origin of Islam.

She will also learn about the contributions of Islam civilization as well as the role of women in Islam and much more.

As-salamu alaykum, peace be upon you.

Welcome to the Unity Center.

My name is Dima El-Gamal, I'm an Interfaith Committee member, welcome to the journey let's start.

This is Patrick and this is Areeb.

- Hi.

- Hi, As-salamu alaykumm Maria, nice to meet you.

- What are the fundamentals of Islam?

- [Patrick] The fundamentals of Islam.

Well, Islam is built upon five pillars.

The first of which is called the Testification of Faith, the Shahada, and basically it states that you believe that there is no God worthy of worship, except God, one God and that the prophet Muhammad is his messenger.

- Is Islam a new religion?

- Muslims believe that from the time of Adam and Eve all the way up to the present and continuing through a line of prophets and revealed scriptures that Islam came as a completion of that chain of revelation.

- Who are Muslims?

- Muslims represent every race and nationality across the world.

- Did you know that not all Muslims are Arabs.

Only 15% of the worlds muslims are Arabs.

- Here at the Unity Center you'll find people with origins in the Arab world, from East Asia, from Africa, all over the world.

- Hey, what are you doing?

- [Yusuf] We're just setting up decorations for Eid.

- What's Eid?

- Eid is the Arabic translation for a holiday and Muslims celebrate two holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

- How do Muslims celebrate Eid?

- They celebrate Eid by gathering at the local mosque for special congregational prayers and services.

They give charity to those that are in need.

And they also gather with family and friends and celebrate with good food, fun, new clothes, and plenty of gifts.

- What do you say to a Muslim during Eid?

- We say Eid Mubarak which means the blessed holiday during both Eid.

(upbeat music) - How many times do Muslims pray each day?

- Muslim pray five times each day.

- When you see a Muslim pray, you will most likely see them going through different motions.

You'll see them standing up, you'll see them bowing down, you'll see them then prostrating.

This is the greatest way of showing ones submission to God.

- Do Muslims only pray in the mosque?

- So for a Muslim, he or she are able to pray anywhere, any place.

The moment the time comes in for prayer they are asked to pray.

- This is why some students prefer to pray in a quiet place in school.

- Do men and women pray in the same place in the mosque?

- The answer is that women are given the option in the time of the prophet peace be upon him, women and men prayed in the same prayer hall.

So it is permissible Islamically for men and women to pray in the same prayer hall.

- Can you tell me about what Islam has contributed to civilization?

- That's a brilliant question.

As you can see from these 1001 invention posters that the Muslims contributed to schools, hospitals, the universe, and the Muslim civilization, and this around from the eighth century all the way to the 16th century.

This was titled the golden age for the Muslims.

- Can you explain to me why you're covering your head?

- Sure, that's a question I get asked often.

Islam teaches modesty for both men and women.

The Islamic dress code for women is referred to as hijab.

So once a Muslim girl reaches the age of puberty, she will cover her body with loose clothing, only showing her hands and her face.

And hijab looks different in different parts of the world because it's influenced by culture.

And you'll see some of the moms and the daughters outside, some of them are wearing hijab, some of them aren't and there might be a little some subtle differences in the way that they choose to wear hijab.

- What is a woman's role in Islam?

- So Islam teaches respect for women regardless of what their role is as mothers, daughters, wives.

the Quran has many verses and through the prophetic teachings that emphasize respect for women and teaches equality of men and women in their deeds and their spirituality.

- Does Islam support arranged marriage?

- No, not at all in Islam for a marriage to be valid, both the bride and the groom have to give their consent to the marriage, otherwise it's not valid.

- Thanks for answering my questions about women in Islam.

- Yeah, no problem thanks for asking.

- Thank you for coming today Maria and for visiting the Muslim Unity Center and learning about your Muslim friends and neighbors and hopefully you can come again and bring your friends and your family.

- Thank you for showing me around.

- My pleasure, come again.

Goodbye.

- Bye.

- Bye.

(upbeat music) - For more religious diversity journeys, just head to onedetroitpbs.org.

All right that is gonna do it for me, but we are going to leave you with a performance from Thornetta Davis.

The song is from her album called Honest Woman and it's called I Believe enjoy it.

And I'll see you next week.

♪ Well my baby up and left me did me a favor when he did ♪ ♪ Shoo shoo shoo shoo ♪ See he'd been lying all along ♪ ♪ By another woman and two kids ♪ ♪ Shoo shoo shoo shoo ♪ I guess he wasn't mine anyway ♪ ♪ So I'm not sad to see him go ♪ Shoo shoo shoo shoo ♪ He was not good anyhow ♪ And he spent up all my dough ♪ Shoo shoo shoo shoo ♪ But I believe I believe everything gonna be all right ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ I believe I believe everything gonna be all right ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ (upbeat music) - [Announcer 1] 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 2] Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

Community foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Announcer 3] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV among the States 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 4] Business Leaders for Michigan.

Dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income and to help the economy.

AAA, Nissan Foundation, Ally.

The Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music)