The Rhapsody Project Celebrates 10 Years and a New Home With Blues at Benaroya

by Jas Keimig

Over the past 10 years, The Rhapsody Project (tRp) has grown exponentially. From its beginnings in the Hillman City Collaboratory to its now-permanent digs at King Street Station, this decade has seen it connect youth and students of all ages with the power of American roots music. On Dec. 2, tRp took the grand stage at Benaroya Hall for its Blues at Benaroya program in celebration of all it has accomplished. For musician and tRp facilitator Joe Seamons, it was a joyous occasion.

"Our project started in 2013," he said. "And we are celebrating the fact that our community has grown so much that we now have a home at King Street Station."

A decade ago, Seamons co-founded tRp with frequent collaborator and fellow musician Ben Hunter. With a team of people, they built a multi-generational community of musicians who connect to their heritage through music — whether that be blues, Northwest folk, Yiddish music, or jazz — using an anti-racist lens. The organization hosts music classes, virtual programs, workforce development, and events, folding in local culture bearers and teachers from different backgrounds to work with students. Much of its programming is youth-oriented, and in a time of hyperfast TikTok turnover and algorithm-pushed music trends, working with kids to find their roots takes time.

"If we're playing them some old scratchy recording, they'll comment, 'I can't connect with this because the recording quality is so bad.' Which is a common experience not just with young people," said Seamons. "We're showing them it's not something that just exists in scratchy recordings. What we're talking about are living traditions, and if you have the wisdom to tap into them, there's a whole world of opportunity and possibility that opens up to you."

Using two models — the Movement Acknowledgement Renewal Collaboration Heritage (MARCH) and Layers of Heritage — tRp works with each student to develop their own personal framework for how they exist in relationship to the communities they were raised in and live in, and how that, in turn, can inform the way they approach playing music from their heritage. Students have the choice to steep themselves in Yiddish tradition in tRp's Klezmer Jams, learn the roots of Northwest blues from Lady A, or freestyle with musicians of all different backgrounds at Unbroken Circle. It's a bespoke model that speaks to everyone who has passed through the program.

"We emphasize and always will teach roots music, but to us, it's really been about asking the young people to learn as much as they can about where they come from, bring that to us, and then we find the culture bearers in the community that embody that heritage," said Seamons.

In November 2022, the City of Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture announced ithad partnered with tRp and four other BIPOC-led or BIPOC-focused youth arts organizations to take over the second floor of King Street Station in a new $3.5 million project called Station Space with a 60-year lease. This space is an interdisciplinary arts hub where underserved youth can have a permanent, stable space to make art, write plays, record music, and develop into well-rounded artists and musicians.

"The prospect of all the things that can happen there, it's so exciting. It's almost overwhelming," said Seamons. "We want to do all the things but we have to build it up at a sustainable rate."

For four years, tRp has been working alongside other tenants, like Totem Star and Red Eagle Soaring, to fundraise for the space. And since its October move-in, it has looked for ways to "serve the people in each other's program and learn and connect with one another" now that they are all neighbors. Being in a new community also presents the tRp with new potential avenues of community and engagement with Pioneer Square and the Chinatown-International District.

"Traditionally, our programs very much take place down in South Seattle in the Rainier Valley. While we'll still have programs down there in places like Black and Tan Hall, the borderline of the CID and Pioneer Square is a whole other community," said Seamons. "So it means figuring out the best ways in which we can serve the communities that immediately surround that space. We already started doing some listening sessions in the International District last year. We're trying to really reach out to the many different Asian communities that exist there and say, 'Hey, this space is for you too.'"

The Blues at Benaroya event on Dec. 2 was a celebration of all that tRp has been doing these past 10 years, from the classes of youth who have passed through its program to its new move to Station Space. In addition to members of tRp staff, Sondra Segundo, a local Haida artist, sang a song she wrote as part of her activism with the Standing Rock movement, and musician and producer John Oliver III, who leads Lady A's band, joined them onstage. tRp also flew out blues musician Justin Golden, who is holding down the new Richmond, Virginia, wing of the organization, to perform for the Seattle audience. And, of course, the young Songsters performed their own songs demonstrating all the hard work they've been putting into their craft.

📸 Featured Image: Students and staff of The Rhapsody Project take a break from a stage presence workshop hosted at Jazz Night School with Lady A. (Photo by Tierra Tate, courtesy of TRP.)