Social Practice artist and Central Connecticut State University art professor Ted Efremoff and musician, producer and Greensboro College music professor Dave Fox founded The Healing Blues project in 2014 in Greensboro, NC.
In this social practice art project homeless storytellers and musicians collaborate to create albums of music based on the life stories of the storytellers. Professional musicians donate their performances to the project. The homeless storytellers receive a share of the royalties and an honorarium as cultural producers for the albums.
This Healing Blues project illustrates how the healing process of talking about and memorializing one’s struggle in living music can improve the lives of individuals and how broad community partnerships involving the arts, education, social services and philanthropy can address the needs of our most vulnerable communities.
The project has received national and international press and songs from the albums have been played by dj’s around the world. Musicians such as Bob Margolin, a former band-leader for Muddy Waters and Fred Wesley the trombonist for James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic have participated in the project and are on the recordings.
The Healing Blues project has raised over fifteen thousand dollars for the IRC (an innovative day center for people experiencing homelessness in Greensboro, NC). The project has engaged 27 Homeless Storytellers, over 80 musicians who performed over 15 concerts and produced two albums, and over 100 students from Greensboro College, Central Connecticut State University and St. Joseph University. Students performed various stages of production from singing on the recordings and concerts to transcribing interviews for songs, to filming footage for the documentary film and facilitating concerts.
Piedmont Blues Preservation Society, Arts Greensboro, Greensboro College, Open Art Society, Elsewhere Museum, Central Connecticut State University Art Department, St Joseph University and many individual donors have sponsored the project.
Now Playing: I Come From A Place