Content:

Join us on Zoom webinar for a conversation celebrating This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement by Gayle Wald. Wald will be joined in conversation by Shanta Nurullah.

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-event-this-is-rhythm-by-gayle-wald-with-shanta-nurullah-tickets-1980734805122?aff=oddtdtcreator

Ella Jenkins was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. Her songs “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” and “Who Fed the Chickens?” are classics in the world of children’s music. In a career spanning more than sixty years, she recorded forty albums, won a lifetime-achievement Grammy, and became the best-selling individual artist in the history of Smithsonian Folkways Records, the independent label that played a significant role in the 1960s folk revival movement and introduced listeners to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. During her remarkable career, Jenkins joined forces with twentieth-century luminaries such as Odetta, Big Bill Broonzy, Armando Peraza, Bayard Rustin, and Fred Rogers. Despite her wide-reaching influence on children’s music, Ella Jenkins’s sonic civil rights activism isn’t widely known today.

Gayle Wald is Professor of American Studies at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is the author of four books, including the acclaimed biography Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Her latest book,This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement, is the product of seven years of research and access to Jenkins' personal archive. Wald's work, including the Jenkins biography, has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Shanta Nurullah makes music primarily on sitar, bass, and mbira, and works as a storyteller and teaching artist. She has been performing professionally as a musician since 1972 and as a storyteller since 1978. She co-founded two all-women’s groups, Sojourner and Samana, and currently leads the ensemble, Sitarsys.

A member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Shanta has received an Artist Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers. She has performed in venues across the country, distinguishing herself as a sitarist and bassist exploring African American improvisational music. ShaZah, her collaboration with vocalist Zahra Baker, has been featured recently on several virtual platforms. Shanta teaches in the early childhood program at the Old Town School of Folk Music and is an advocate for women in music.