Thank you to all who came out to our press conference with Mayor Tecklenburg and Council Member William Dudley Gregorie this week to launch the 2023 MOJA Arts Festival.  Alexandria Searles was on hand as well to discuss the poster art for this year’s festival.  In case you missed it, you can view it here. […]

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Singer/Songwriter Angela Brown was born in Columbia, South Carolina on December 18, 1961. She began singing gospel music at First Nazareth Baptist Church. At the age of 16, she formed the rap trio “The Sequence”, a female hip-hip group, and they were signed to Sugar Hill Records. The group enjoyed success with the song “Funk […]

Songwriter/Producer/Bandleader Horace Ott was born in St. Matthews, South Carolina on April 15, 1933. He learned to play piano during his childhood. Once in high school, he played in the school band and started performing in, and writing for, a local jazz band. He studied music at the South Carolina State University graduating in 1955. […]

William Alonzo Anderson was born in Greenville, South Carolina on September 12, 1916. At the age of four he lost both of his parents and was sent to live at Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, where he learned to play the trumpet. His classmates gave him the name “Cat” because of his fighting style. Anderson toured […]

Significance with Jazz The Jenkins Orphanage was established in 1891 by Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins in Charleston, South Carolina. Rev. Jenkins, a former orphan himself, stumbled across four homeless boys huddled together in a freight car with nobody to care for them and decided to organize an orphanage for young African Americans. Located next to […]

Guitarist (Count Basie Orchestra) Freddie William Green was born on March 31, 1911 in Charleston, South Carolina. He was exposed to music at a very early age. Green learned to play the banjo before the guitar. One of his father’s friends, Sam Walker, taught him how to read music. Mr. Walker later gave Freddie his […]

Singer (La Bouche) Melanie Thornton was born on May 13, 1967, in Charleston, South Carolina. She began studying music at an early age. She grew up listening to Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack. She financed her college studies with appearances in talent shows and smaller band concerts. She frequented a club called the “The Peacock […]

Chubby Checker was born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941 in Spring Gully, South Carolina and raised in Philadelphia, PA. As a child his mother took him to see Sugar Child Robinson (a child piano prodigy) and Ernest Tubb (a famous country singer) and was so impressed that he vowed to enter show business. By […]

Singer/Actor/Activist/Dancer Born Eartha Mae Keith on January 17, 1927 in North, South Carolina. During her childhood, she was ostracized because of her mixed-race heritage. At the age of eight, she moved from South Carolina to Harlem to live with her aunt. While living in New York she auditioned for the famed “Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe” […]