The Blues Jam is beginning in the Atrium of the MOHAI. Annette Taborn, blues singer and archivist, and Reese Tamimura, blues guitarist, are leading the discussion of blues and their performance. Annette loves to teach about the history of music and explains how you can trace history of the United States through music.

They started their performance with a traditional blues in C major with Annette playing harmonica and singing. The next song they picked up the tempo by performing “Johnny B. Goode”. A song originally written and recorded by Chuck Berry back in 1955. For this song, they got the crowd involved! They brought a student up to play tambourine, which made it a more fun and interactive experience for the audience. Following Johnny B. Goode, our professor Michelle Habell-Pallán got on stage to play some tambourine and the drummer started singing while playing drums!

Through their performance we went on a trip through history of blues. Especially when Black Mama came up stage for a song to freestyle because it showed the essence of blues that still can be heard within hip hop today.

The Claiming Space Breakout Sessions have begun and a screening of Sara Salcedo and Cecile Hansen’s Promise Land is being held in the Prologue Theater. The film documents the roots of the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest and the link of Seattle’s history to the indigenous peoples of the area. By documenting the Duwamish and Chinook history, Hansen and Salcedo’s film gives a voice to the history of the indigenous people in and around Seattle that have been written out of the history books. It exposes the amount of loss that the Chinook and Duwamish peoples experienced as the Pacific Northwest developed.Treaties were broken, lands were striped away, food sources were lost, and the indigenous people were displaced. Lands that had been inhabited by the Duwamish for generations were erased by the development of the city of Seattle.

After the first chapter of the film a discussion was held, where Julie C. said if you want to support the Duwamish and events such as today, you should support 4 Culture and call the state and advocate for the state not to take over 4 Culture.