The inimitable, pioneering DJ and producer Kelli Hand, the First Lady of Detroit, has passed on. Our hearts go out to the family, friends and fans of K-Hand. Kelli was a singular figure in dance music history, helping to lay the groundwork for Techno to take over the world. She blazed trails for women in […]
Supercharged 1970 Roy Brooks Live Release! All Proceeds from the Release Benefit Detroit Sound Conservancy! Understanding is a blazing 1970 concert recording featuring the Detroit-born master percussionist Roy Brooks leading a gifted quintet through its spirited paces at Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom, will be released by Reel to Real Recordings this week. Comprising more than two […]
Flying the Coop: Jazz Downtown Legacy of the Blue Bird Downtown with De’Sean Jones Trio featuring Six Mile Strings and Tariq Gardner’s Evening Star Trio.
As of April 30, 2021 Detroit Sound Conservancy is pleased to announce that we have moved the majority of our archive out of storage and into a large and wonderful climate-controlled room at the WGPR building on East Jefferson in Detroit. Our Detroit music artifacts and audio-visual collection has been largely inaccessible-but-safe, secured quietly in […]
Join us at 7pm April 29th, 2021 for “Sounds of Detroit Archaeology Series” presented by The Detroit Chapter of the Michigan Archaeological Society. Our Executive Director and Director of Collections, Michelle McKinney shares our ongoing archival work and preservation of the Blue Bird Inn.
Today we write to thank Councilwoman Raquel Castañeda-Lopez for her service as City Council Representative for District 6 where the Blue Bird Inn is located. The councilwoman has announced she will not seek reelection for a third term. Councilwoman Raquel Castaneda López @raquel4detroit has been a tremendous ally and representative for our work in District 6 at […]
We are saddened to report that Wednesday, February 9th, 2021, we lost our friend and new boardmember, Karen Hudson Samuels. Karen was a cultural warrior who fought tirelessly to preserve and uplift Black Detroit history. She was a role model, mentor, inspiration and friend to so many. With DSC, she served as chair of our […]
Detroit Sound Conservancy has been awarded $100,000 for Community-Based Archives from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation! The grant will provide two years of funding for our archive to complete physical processing and inventorying, as well as digitization, processing, inventorying and description, of our audio-visual collections. With this grant, we are focusing on three largely hidden […]
The Blue Bird Inn, an institute of Detroit music and a hearth of the Black community, has been designated a local Historic District by the City of Detroit.
We are pleased to announce that Karen Hudson Samuels, journalist and instructional designer, has joined Detroit Sound Conservancy’s Board of Directors.