Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

I Coming up, these artists are passing the arts.

We'll explain.

Plus, why is a Jamaican photographer fishing with his camera along Lake Erie?

And a jazz man debuts as a leader at the festival where he got his start.

The Tri-C Jazz Fest.

Hello, and welcome to another round of applause, my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Batya.

Now I'm more of a deejay than a rapper.

If I were a rapper, I'd have better clothes.

But I'd also hit the open mic series known as Pass the Aux What does that mean?

We're going to tell you in a second.

Cleveland rapper Chip the Ripper began the series to give back to the place where he cut his teeth by passing the mic and the aux.

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on Woodward on 45th and Woodward Music was always something that I was fascinated with.

My first time hearing rap music, I heard Will Smith rap on TV, and when I heard him rap, I didn't know where rap was.

So I paid attention and I heard a rhyme in words and I was hooked.

Like it just unlocked something in my brain.

He's he's been an independent artist his entire career.

He's been making music since 0605.

So he's been doing this for a long time, and his city has really pumped him up and made him who he is is here is every day they sleep every chance we got real.

Yeah.

So, so Past the Arts is an interactive event where artists come with their music.

When he plays the music, the artists step forward and, you know, just kind of lets itself be known and shown.

I thought of it as like a cipher, how people would get in a circle and just play, how good they can rap.

But I feel like in 2025 we need to display how good our music you have to execute.

The best arts is a phrase that people have been saying for years, you know?

So sometimes when you're in the car with friends on a road trip and the car has got the arcs, which the auxiliary chord, you know, our phones can play music, so we could be the deejay and play the songs that we like that are coming off of our phone.

So, you know, when someone else wants to turn to play music, they say, Hey, pass the art.

When you attend an event, you either you're either going to react, which is what we usually have, like what concerts?

It's like to, or you can go there and you can interact.

And that's why I felt like it would be cool to have interactive event where people can come down to influence the event with their own content, with their own music.

Let's try to remove the microphone or minimize the mic, and let's just get the experience and the music.

You know, of course they'll be there so they can, you know, still interact that way.

I think it works.

You know, people love it.

There's no politics, there's no gatekeeping, no smelly B.I.G.

Why you name you.

Yeah, okay.

Just my that clip is a perfect example of what my vision was.

So I had recorded a song a couple of years ago on my birthday, and in my cousin she headed it ad libs and everything.

I had kind of stopped doing music and then my cousin just kept pushing me like, you know, you you should keep going, keep going.

Everybody was like, you know, you got the song, you got the song.

And I'm like, okay, you know what?

I'm gonna do it Beyond that, she had it.

She had a really cool song, and she when it was her turn, she was kind of shy and dream.

Her cousin was like, Nah, no, no, no.

Let me get let me introduce you, you know?

So that was important.

You know, that was big.

You know, that was necessary.

Sometimes you have to sometimes you have to have someone with you that's going to do it.

If it's not in you, you know, you don't want to just try to be someone you're not, but someone has to be that we played the record and she just took the took the show over and you know, it was really cool record and it was fun.

Everybody was loving it.

She got everybody involved.

You see, Don't do this to me.

I'll take to you in person.

You need to do this.

Yeah, that was a great example of why I'm doing this.

You know, that was.

That was like getting paid for me.

I just got paid from that moment, you know?

Let's talk about to perform being played also on 1079.

So I'm just trying to get my song out there, build a brand network with people, you know.

So what are the supposed to do this all day?

And he has told me that everyone that they know, they're blessed.

You know, I've learned not to underestimate people you because you never know.

You know, I mean, like OJ came in with the NASCAR long sleeved shirt with the hair and just killed it.

You know?

I mean, I don't I'm not a way of getting done it angles in the music I so to say my name low Jack Newman out of Cincinnati Ohio originally based out of Columbus Ohio right now honestly the the networking of these kind of events is so important like honestly, all the producers I work with and everything, pretty much everybody I make music with has come from events like this, like, you know, where you just meet somebody, you end up swapping Instagrams and then you end up working with them for the rest of your career kind of thing.

So it's important to you understand this and what we had.

I got a muffin, Is it tomorrow or is that a thing?

Is Christian?

Do you all when I'm shopping?

No Check A is something I do when I'm rolling in my head and doing boy 2.0.

He never he every time he comes, he comes with some really good music that has everybody like, whoa, wait, he gets everybody's attention from just the music alone.

There's definitely a lot of rappers that came out of Ohio.

They're doing their thing, you know?

But in terms of like current guys, they're definitely some of the biggest.

So for them to come back and do some events, you know for upcoming Arsenal, how huge.

Yeah.

And honestly I don't know anybody else is doing it so respect the kinship and everybody else that was involved.

So Chip does pass the ox whenever he can, whenever he can make it to Cleveland.

He's based in L.A. so it's been getting a lot of love from the city and I just see it growing.

It's bigger than us and we we understand that.

So bringing people together is what we love to do.

And this will be like that record right there.

I want it to be a thing where people come from far and wide to to Cleveland and maybe like make it a an attraction, you know, for for the city.

I mean, when I think of Austin, Texas, I think of South by Southwest, you know, and there's no reason why we can't think of Cleveland for something to really cool, you know, is something great for people to do and for us to discover.

I feel like I always felt like it's a music town, how people look at like a Tennessee, you know, or something like, you know, Nashville for like Cleveland is a is a music town just like that.

Every week here, we tell you all about Northeast Ohio arts and culture.

And you can get even more from our free weekly newsletter, The to Do List.

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AM Thanks.

Why would an award winning photojournalist who's worked for TIME and ESPN magazines move from New York City to northeast Ohio?

Did he miss a connecting flight?

No.

Jamaican born photographer Ruddy Roy vied with Cleveland a few years ago when the public library asked him to archive our community.

Since then, he's moved here and fallen in love with the Lake Erie shoreline.

And the folks that fish there.

Hi, my name is Roddy Roy and I'm a freelance photographer.

We're actually a 55th and marginal.

It's a pier that I frequent.

And just like the locals, I come here to find something different, to look at life differently.

It started off us as a very curious space to come to, and it has blossomed into this space where residents of Cleveland, of all nationalities, come to to find a peaceful time fishing.

I usually come here and I walk around slowly with a camera and a lens.

It takes time to create connection.

It takes time to make somebody feel comfortable with you being in their relaxation space in this piece of.

I wanted to get into my Zen, right.

I don't really need a camera shoved into my face, so I have no problems coming here and walking the length of maybe 100 yards back and forth, just trying to find one or two images.

I am looking for a type of person who tells the story of coming here and fishing.

It could be a guy who is down here with his beer.

He just leaves his rods.

He doesn't have a kid, but he's here to just let it go.

Or the other guy who sits quietly by himself.

He has his slow jams on and he's just lost in connecting with his walleye and his music.

Or it's a woman who works in a factory, comes here from three tonight just to unwind, just to leave the factory life.

I've never met anybody yet who has said to me, Don't photograph.

Don't come into this space.

I came down here only because it was an attraction.

Only because for me it was about trying to figure out what the culture of the fishing in Cleveland was.

And the more I delved into each particular fishermen's story, the more I got its place A piece away from killing my man in Cleveland.

This one kid said to me that he would spend sometimes nights here, he would sleep not necessarily free, but he would spend the whole night here.

I ask him, what does he catch?

He said, Walrus, if you eat while I do love what I see, I don't eat fish, but I'm not in kinsman.

I'm not at 100/230 in that area.

And so the more I come here, the more I hear stories of people coming here as if it is a place of refuge away from the gunshots and the horrors that they see in their neighborhoods.

It's a sanctuary.

I think one of the things I saw me doing with my photography was speaking about situations, people, conditions, things that I did not see in mainstream media, giving up with purpose.

And so when I moved to the United States, I found myself gravitating towards voices that were muted by the bright lights of, let's say, sports or the news that did not in capsule8 the small man or the poor communities.

I found myself gravitating toward these communities because I felt like with the platform that I was building, I could help to amplify their voices.

I came to Cleveland about four years ago to do a story for the Cleveland print room in conjunction with the Cleveland Library, and they wanted an exhibition and they wanted to rejuvenate or restart their archives of Cleveland life.

I remember coming to Cleveland every other week and driving around.

Then I realized that there were things here that I could photograph.

I came here photographing the way I loved to photograph, where I see an image, I introduce myself.

I invite somebody or I invite people into a series that I'm working with.

We have a conversation.

I get to know you within 15 to half an hour that I'm with you and we make a picture of all the states that I have worked in, lived in Cleveland afforded me a space that made me feel like I was a photographer again.

New York, a beautiful place to photograph in.

It felt oversaturated to not just with imagery, but with stuff that did not feel like New York anymore.

Cleveland just felt like the place that I could dive into photography in the way that I've always felt like I wanted to photograph.

That is part and parcel the reason why I came here.

I want to be able to jump out of my car, photograph an image or make an image that I know will have impact 100 years from.

I've always felt like photography was the thing that I used to grow to be a better person, to be a better man, to be a better seer, to be a better philosopher, to be a better father.

And this constant learning process and I think photography has been the vehicle that has pulled me through these processes, learning not to use the word short when referring to my travels places Sensitivity on the victims of gun violence.

Photography is something I hold dearly, and I do appreciate the way it has allowed me to be a better person.

I've only ever got one fish in my life, ever, and it was something this small.

So but I do understand fishing in terms of photography.

The patience.

Actually, whenever I talk to these guys, I say to them that me getting an image equates to you getting one piece.

Like, I'm waiting and waiting for that one fish to come into my frame.

That's kind of like the joke here.

When they see me coming, they go, Oh, he's just fishing with his cameras.

We've got something special for you in a minute.

Jazz lovers.

But first, have you checked out Idea Stream's free online music service.

Jazz?

Neo.

It's jazz all day and all night.

From all eras.

From miles to Monk and from Coltrane to Cleveland's own Joe Lovano.

You can hear it online at Ideastream Talk.

now.

Maybe you're thinking, what is jazz?

Well, Dr. William Ted McDaniel is a jazz professor emeritus at the Ohio State University.

And he wants you to not only understand jazz, but to love it as much as he does.

Jazz is the hybrid form of music traditions that came about in the 19th century, primarily through antebellum, through parts of slavery, minstrelsy, through reconstruction, or well into the 20th century.

That represented a number of those features that coalesced with ragtime music, with brass bands.

The blues, I might say, sort of colored all of this in the blues expression.

I mean, the blues, of course, is this synthesis hybrid form itself coming out of musical features that were in some spirituals and some shouts, cries and hollers and some work songs.

And much of the minstrelsy, music.

So blues is important to all of this, and the blues is probably the most impactful, influential aspect of what we call jazz in the late teens and early twenties crystallizes into a band, an instrumental group that's largely informed by vocal expression in terms of tonality, how you can bend a tone, bend a pitch, how you can imitate vocal sounds through a wind instrument.

And this band idea provided just a wonderful vehicle for creative expression through improvization.

Probably the single most important feature of the tradition Columbus.

Like Detroit.

Like Indianapolis.

Like Chicago.

Like Pittsburgh.

Like Cleveland.

Changed during the 1920s because of the rather massive migration of black people looking for a different way of life and in a sense, more job opportunities.

Who migrated from the south to the north to all of these cities and when you have a migration of of people, they bring their cultural expressions with them and their cultural desires.

And so music, again, is very important.

Church talk.

We could talk forever about the black church and how that music, that sacred music, informs the secular music.

And so these people brought this music and they demanded a certain kind of music that caught on and through radio and eventually TV, but particularly radio and most importantly, the recording industry.

And music was becoming more and more popular in the 20th century, where we can just for pleasure, just be able to turn on the radio or turn on a recorder and enjoy the geographical locus in this city.

For much of the jazz was in the Mt.

Vernon Long Street neighborhood where there were churches, where there were funeral homes, where there were insurance companies, there were businesses, mom and pop stores, convenience stores, beauty shops, barber shops as well.

But jazz clubs existed and not obey these seniors.

Novelty bar, which was maybe the first 24 hours spot in the city.

And he welcomed everybody and anybody.

So it was a hotspot.

So that that was a magnet and it and it served to make that neighborhood very important to the vibrancy of that mostly black community.

It helped to situate this city as a very important city where jazz could could, could thrive, where it could be performed, and jazz musicians could come from here and could leave here and go to other places.

Columbus has been blessed to have some wonderful musicians here.

We can go back to the Earl Hood Orchestra, old boss Riley Randolph and his Sultans, and with the rise of bebop and more modern jazz after World War Two, Columbus truly gets on.

On the larger map.

And we have figures like Rusty Bryant, figures like Hank Ma, and the list goes on and on.

I would certainly have to call the name of Nancy Wilson.

She is an incredible singer.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, graduate of Eisa High School, a tremendous musician.

Jazz is something and many say that, you know, it's America's gift musically to the world.

Two filmmakers are just wild about Cleveland.

So they filmed a comedy here and the city plays a major part I kind of fell in love with Cleveland and it became this really beautiful marriage between story and setting on the next round of applause.

We share the very silly story at the heart of Lost and Found in Cleveland, and we take shelter from the Storm with the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of Sebelius's The Tempest.

All that and more on the next round of applause Okay.

We're going to keep things cookin to close out this round of applause.

I'm idea streams Notorious could be leaving you with music from the Tri-C Jazz Fest, which returns right here to Playhouse Square, June 26 to 20 eighth.

Saxophonist Chris Coles is originally from Cleveland and is known throughout northeast Ohio.

He studied music at Youngstown State.

Currently teaches at Oberlin's Jazz Conservatory all while living and playing an accurate.

He's also a graduate of the Tri-C Jazz Fest Academy.

So it was fitting when Coles made his debut as a leader at the 2024 Tri-C Jazz Fest with his band Gleam.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.