In this long awaited return to the podcast, a whole 2nd baby and two years since our last episode, Adenike & Natasha sat down to record one of the many conversations we've had over the last several months. NOTE: this episode is being released as both audio AND video! Access the video of this episode here . Our conversation touches on the following topics: The BCH book (more details on that soon!) an how it relates to the original episode 501 that we teased last year Ways for non-Black folks ...
May 18, 2025•28 min•Season 5Ep. 501
Natasha and Adenike take a crucial moment to pause together and reflect on the past Season of Black Creative Healing, which - thanks to our new, shorter episodes model - has now spanned 15 episodes! We review the trajectory from the first few episodes of BCH Live through our early "HJ Bytes" discussions with Nsamu Moonga, which led to the phenomenal Healing Justice in Music Therapy Event that has taken up the last few episodes, and all the arts based reflections and events that have happened bet...
May 26, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 415
We are excited to share the conclusion of our healing justice in music therapy conversation that was held March 30th, 2023 between your hosts (Natasha & Adenike), Marisol Norris and Nsamu Moonga, Black music therapists. We deepen the exploration from previous excerpts of this conversation on healing happening in community to look specifically into the profession of music therapy. Marisol kicks us off by diving directly into this discussion of dissonance, and the profession of music therapy's...
May 18, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 414
In this third excerpt of our March 30th conversation on Healing Justice in Music Therapy, we expand on the idea of Healing in the now, as mentioned in the last episode, and dive deeper into the idea of healing forward, and healing as something that is done in community. Nsamu and Marisol share critical questions for us to consider, including what we allow into our bodies, how we hold it, and for what purposes, in order to help us distinguish between numbing and intentional healing. This excerpt ...
May 11, 2023•24 min•Season 4Ep. 413
Hello and welcome to the continuation of our Healing Justice in music therapy conversation featuring Nsamu Moonga and Marisol Norris! In this continuation of the conversation, we're gonna dive deeper into uncovering what some of the impact of White Supremacy is on our bodies, and why it matters to sit with those memories and sensations. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains surface level discussion of white supremacist violence. You will hear a brief moment of us naming a particular type of vio...
Apr 26, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 412
We are excited to share the first excerpt from our Healing Justice in Music Therapy event, featuring music therapists Marisol Norris and Nsamu Moonga. In this excerpt, you'll hear Marisol, Adenike & Natasha spend some time discussing the role of fugitivity in the healing process. Stay tuned for future excerpts where we'll hear Nsamu and Marisol share insights on the pathologization of the Black Body, expand on the Wisdom of slowing down to feel things in our bodies, and more! This event was ...
Apr 19, 2023•23 min•Season 4Ep. 411
In this episode, Natasha reflects on the film Daughters of the Dust, by Julie Dash, relating it to recent conversations on Healing Justice in Music Therapy, and the importance of sitting with Dissonance and gathering as community/family for Ritual. The close of the episode features an original song that will be shared in our Community Spaces as an exclusive download! Engage with the interactive transcript for this episode here: https://share.descript.com/view/MwYLuQrNgKD Join one of our Communit...
Apr 05, 2023•24 min•Season 4Ep. 410
We're excited to share with you the finale of our 4 part "HJ Bytes" series with Nsamu Moonga! Here, we conclude our conversation on the glorification of overwork and reliance on "mechanistic" ways of thinking about our fellow human beings, and the "tools" we use to serve them. We build on our previous discussions about imagination to center on the crucial nature of relationship building as an integral part of our work as therapists, and as community builders in general. Access the Interactive Tr...
Mar 29, 2023•17 min•Season 4Ep. 409
In this episode, Adenike takes a moment to reflect on a favorite Soca piece, Up you Mighty People! by Freetown Collective. She shares a little bit of information about Soca, the uniqueness of this piece within the genre, and provides a prompt for listeners to consider in the context of our recent conversations on white supremacy, healing justice and collective power. Enjoy the full lyric video of this song on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXM2Yut3gg You can engage with the inter...
Mar 22, 2023•8 min•Season 4Ep. 408
Welcome to Healing Justice Byte #3, where we continue our conversation with Nsamu Moonga about the construct of Healing Justice as it relates to the profession of Music Therapy. We continue building on our concerns about "grind culture" and the way it is impacting how we teach and learn, particularly as it shows up in music therapy students in training. We critique our often obsessive relationship with our tools, and the deep necessity of just "holding space" for therapeutic relationships to dev...
Mar 15, 2023•16 min•Season 4Ep. 407
We're excited to be bringing you the continuation of our conversation with Nsamu Moonga, Zambian Music Therapist, exploring the concept of healing justice. This week we talk about the constructs of work and imagination, and how the two can intersect and impact each other. To access the interactive transcript for this episode, click here: https://share.descript.com/view/hqeS0pCKnzM To dive deeper into these concepts, check out our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/blackcreativehealing If you're a ...
Mar 08, 2023•16 min•Season 4Ep. 406
In this episode, Natasha reflects on the book Healing Justice Lineages, by Cara Page and Erica Woodland. She gives a brief overview of the content of the book, how it relates to the Healing Justice Bytes conversations we're having with Nsamu Moonga and other colleagues, and then shares some of what the book is motivating her to do, including the creation of a new playlist and related prompts for your own creative exploration of this topic! You can purchase the Healing Justice Lineages book here:...
Mar 01, 2023•18 min•Season 4Ep. 405
Welcome to another episode of Black Creative Healing! A space for radical conversation, mindful collaboration, & holistic visioning centering Black Communities. This week, Adenike & Natasha start a new short series titled "Healing Justice Bytes," featuring conversations with colleagues relating to the construct of Healing Justice in the context of the Music Therapy profession, as well as our world at large. We welcome back Episode 104 guest Nsamu Moonga, who provides a brief assessment o...
Feb 22, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 404
Welcome welcome welcome to the conclusion of our conversation at the joint conference between the American and Canadian Academies of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry! We're excited to share with you our third episode of February 2023 (and our third in this new experiment of dropping weekly content)! We began in Part 1 with an arts-based grounding meditation, and last episode (Part 2) you got to hear us process a little bit more of what it means to be creative, even if you don't necessarily consid...
Feb 15, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 403
Welcome listeners to part two of our conversation at the joint conference between the American and Canadian Academies of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry! You're getting a new episode every week now from Black Creative Healing, and we're excited to share with you this week, the continuation of our conversation that was started last week with an arts-based grounding meditation. That arts-based grounding is accessible now via our Patreon, where you can get a downloadable version of that meditation ...
Feb 08, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 402
We are beyond excited to share 2023's first episode of the BCH Podcast, which we've titled Black Creative Healing Live! This episode was recorded at the joint conferences of the American and Canadian Academies of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and will be getting released weekly throughout the month of February. You can access the interactive transcript for this episode by clicking here: https://share.descript.com/view/kedJqnFP7iJ Part 1 includes an arts-based grounding meditation, which subsc...
Feb 01, 2023•25 min•Season 4Ep. 401
In this episode we continue the recap of the June 2022 BCH Retreat. Shout out to kei slaughter (@keislaughter on Insta,@kei_slaughter on Twitter), Zelda Lockhart (@zelda.lockhart on Insta, @zeldalockhart on Twitter), and Hakeem Leonard (@musicallman across platforms), our retreat team for joining us for this conversation, and to Ben Great (@bengreat513 across platforms) for the remastering of our theme song! This time, we go deeper into each retreat session, and share about our experiences with ...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 10 min
In this episode we do a recap of the June 2022 BCH Retreat as part of documenting our process, both just for our own reflection and processing, as well as to help paint a general picture of what the retreat was, and the space that is still being held for our Black Community going forward! Shout out to kei slaughter, Zelda Lockhart, and Hakeem Leonard, our retreat team for joining us for this conversation, and to Ben Great for the remastering of our themesong! Stay tuned for part 2, where we go d...
Oct 17, 2022•38 min
In this episode, dance/movement therapist Breanna Davis joins us for a conversation about self-care. We explore the role creativity can play in that when we use it to meet our need for well-being and not only for our work. We discuss the importance of re-connecting with our bodies, re-discovering joy in movement, and then put that in practice by coming together to pose, move, and dance virtually. Breanna Davis, MS, R-DMT, LMHCA is a Registered Dance/movement Therapist from Indianapolis, Indiana ...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 304
Natasha & Adenike sit down with BCH Students Kalysta Bryant and Breanah Williams to reflect on a previously recorded conversation with our Retreat Planning Team members: kei slaughter, Zelda Lockhart and Hakeem Leonard. We share the Date for the retreat (June 3-5, 2022!) as well as other details around our process and progress. Past Collaborators have already been invited to see inside the Sutra Space that we discuss here, but coming soon our general Black Community will also have an opportu...
Jan 21, 2022•53 min•Season 3Ep. 303
It’s PART TWO of our collaboration with Clinical Bopulations featuring Van Gammon, American rapper, singer, and songwriter from Fayetteville, North Carolina. This was our first time collaborating with another podcast. You can listen to part one of our discussion over on the Clinical Bopulatations website (HERE: https://clinicalbopulations.fireside.fm/51), or just dive into the recap with us at the top of this episode! Wanna keep the story going afterwards? You can access the editable Google Doc ...
Nov 19, 2021•26 min•Season 3Ep. 302
This episode features your co-hosts as the guests! Adenike and Natasha take time to reflect on what drew them to creating and producing this podcast, and they share ideas for the vision of Black Creative Healing in general. They talk about their values, their work, lives and loves, and take a moment to discuss the importance of addressing grief and community from the center of their most precious relationships. The arts-based collaboration is one that you’ll become quite familiar with, as it is ...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 301
Welcome to Episode 204! This episode marks almost exactly 1 year since Black Creative Healing began as a podcast, and we’re marking that occasion by closing our 2ndseason with another multi-guest collaboration. Yes, you heard right, this is our Season finale! More on that later J Our guests for this collaboration are Jaia Cooper and Breanah Williams, who have been working alongside us this past semester as work study students from Shenandoah University. Both Jaia and Breanah are students in Shen...
Jun 21, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 204
We ditch the script for this episode and start with some frank discussions about the last month’s challenges and heartbreaks. We also take some time to thank all our supporters for helping us raise funds for Volcano Relief in St. Vincent! We remain tremendously grateful for all our BCH family, whether you support monetarily or in other ways. Every like & share matters! This episode’s guest is Cynthia Francillon. Cynthia is a 30-year-old storyteller born and raised in the city of Brooklyn, NY...
May 16, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Season 2Ep. 203
Brenda Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 202
Just in time for the end of Black History Month, our Newest Episode of #BlackCreativeHealing is NOW LIVE! #BCH201 Marisol Norris, Ph.D., is a board-certified music therapist, educator, consultant, and founder of the Black Music Therapy Network, Inc. In our collaboration for Black Creative Healing, Marisol, Adenike & Natasha explore concepts of Refusal and Solidarity. Our conversation and collective art making weaves through personal experiences with mindfulness of Consent & the potential...
Feb 27, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 201
Welcome to Black Creative Healing - a Space for Radical Conversation, Mindful Collaboration, and Holistic Visioning, Centering Black Communities. Enjoy this little peek into our process, with all it's profundity and mischief :-) A visual version of this trailer is available via our Youtube page: https://youtu.be/Ce7hvz3y1mI Season 2 coming February of 2021!
Jan 28, 2021•29 sec
We humbly present our season one finale! Recorded as part of a live event, this episode features returning collaborators from season one of the podcast, as well as some folks from our earlier video blog days. We were joined by Anika MacDonald, Hakeem Leonard, Zelda Lockhart, Nsamu Moonga, and Vilissa Thompson, but also by general members of the Black Creative community on the webinar “stage” with us, if you will, including (in no particular order) Jamilia Jacobs (who you’ll hear referred to as J...
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 105
Episode Description: Our guest for this episode is Nsamu Moonga. You can read more about Nsamu via the bio below. In our collaboration for Black Creative Healing, Nsamu, Adenike & Natasha discuss colonialism's impact on African Diasporic Peoples, Indigenous perspectives on creativity, and share in an intimate exploration of affirming each other through music. Nsamu's definition of music is not to be missed! You can find a transcript of this month’s episode here: https://tinyurl.com/y3y9fhp2 ...
Sep 22, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Our guest this episode is Jenni Graham, LCAT, ATR-BC, MPS. Jenni is a Nationally Registered & Board Certified Art Therapist & has been working in the mental health field since 2005. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University & Pratt Institute; where she earned her BA in Psychology & her MPS in Art Therapy & Creativity Development respectively. Jenni co-creates compassionate & empowering spaces of healing, liberation & connection by creating space for the full...
Aug 17, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 103
