CEO: Jazz Leadership Project; Co-Director: Omni-American Future Project; Host: Straight Ahead: The Omni-American Podcast
New York
Joined December 2010
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RIP to Cassandra Wilson, whose velvety, smoky contralto infused the Southern blues she loved to share.
In 2012, I did a Q&A with Cassandra Wilson. She had just released a self-produced album on her own label, and she was in good spirits. I will remember her that way. R.I.P. #CassandraWilson ebony.com/interview-cassandr…
Helen Andrews calls the DEI regime "race communism" in her Compact essay and says America has to choose: restore color-blind law or accept permanent racial spoils.
The diagnosis is sharp in places. But cataloging the pathology on one side while giving the other a pass isn't a crossroads. It's picking a lane and calling it the high road.
I agree with where she wants to end up. We part ways on the discipline it takes to get there honestly.
My response: freeblackthought.substack.co…
2)
"An essay on race in America that catalogs the pathology on one side behind an attack slogan like 'race communism' while waving the other side through doesn’t describe a crossroads. Andrews chose a lane and called it the high road. The actual test of whether someone wants race out of our law, rather than their tribe’s version of race back in charge, is whether she can name the excesses in both directions with the same nerve she brings to the ones she already dislikes."
—@gregthomas22
freeblackthought.substack.co…
Greg Thomas retweeted
Very saddened by the news that Cassandra Wilson has passed away. One of the most distinctive voices in modern jazz, Cassandra wove an alluring tapestry of jazz, blues, folk & R&B into a singular sound that opened up new avenues of expression for vocal jazz bluenote.lnk.to/CassandraWil…
Albert Murray on the mud cloth jacket I wore to his apartment: "Don't you know we follow Greenwich Mean Time?" “Don’t you know that Mandela wears a Western suit when he comes to the U.S.?”
Fortunate for me, Murray spent crucial time correcting my fuzzy thinking about Black American culture and history and connected me with his #1 protégé. The lessons have been perpetual and perennial.
New essay on Murray, black nationalism, and the blues idiom. 👇
tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
We lost a giant this year: Jean Houston, pioneer of the human potential movement.
Her gift wasn't just wisdom. It was seeing greatness in others before they saw it themselves.
Her words to my wife and me in 2020 still stay with us:
" You have spoken the essence of making the new world. I am learning so much from you. Truly."
That's real leadership. 🎵
Who has seen greatness in you?
tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
Robert Woodson spent 40+ years focused on one conviction: the people best equipped to heal a broken neighborhood aren't distant policymakers; they're its own social entrepreneurs.
Grace isn't weakness. It's the harder, stronger choice.
• Kaylah Spring named herself rather than let her attacker define her
• Mickey Guyton met a racial slur with “God bless you”
• Jacob Blake Sr. chose humility after tragedy
As America turns 250: will we nurse our grievances, or build with radical grace?
Read more → tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
#Leadership #RadicalGrace #RobertWoodson
At lunch in Philadelphia, "Ben Franklin" sat across from me. So I asked a machine trained on Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray what they'd make of him.
The answer: a master of improvisation and the American art of the mask.
The founders left us a lead sheet, not a finished score. tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
Greg Thomas retweeted
Polyhymnia's president @19danielasia53 reviews Albert Murray's Stomping the Blues.
You can find it right here:
polyhymnia.org/2026/06/05/a-…
Greg Thomas retweeted
1/ Before 1776, no one believed people could govern themselves at the scale of a nation. The Founders changed that forever. Had a lot of fun talking to Mo Rocca about this for CBS Sunday Morning.
Tony Brown, 1933 to 2026.
He taught me to distinguish the predicament from the problem.
Racism is the predicament. What we do about it is the problem.
Most people spend a lifetime arguing the first and never reach the second.
I wrote about him this week:
tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
Jazz doesn't teach leadership per se so much as reveal it.
At our last workshop, a participant listened to one song and answered with a poem she invented on the spot. The room went quiet.
That's Big Ears. That's soulful listening.
Essay and poem here:
🔗tuneintoleadership.com/newsl…
