Reggie Harris

• Singer/Songwriter

Reggie Harris is a singer-songwriter, storyteller and world-renowned song-leader who is a powerful interpreter of the global music narrative. A passionate, engaging inspirational entertainer and concert artist Reggie is recognized for focusing new energy on the important role of music in the discourse for inclusion and the struggle for human rights using the lessons of history as a base. As an expert on the music of the Underground Railroad and the Modern Civil Rights Movement he is at home on stage as performer, lecturer or leading discussion in seminars or in the classroom. Known for over 40 years as one-half of the eminently prominent duo, Kim & Reggie Harris, Reggie continues to criss-cross the country, carrying the message of joy, unity, tolerance and peace through the powerful medium of live music. Reggie remains in high demand for concerts, schools, University residencies, community-building, festivals and teaching workshops.

Pamela Means

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

“Stark, defiant songs.” – New York Times

Pamela Means, singer-songwriter and jazz musician, is “one of the fiercest guitar players and politically-rooted musicians in the industry today,” (Curve Magazine) with her “insanely brilliant” (Press Herald, Portland ME) and “stark, defiant songs.” (New York Times)

Pamela Means is a Easthampton MA-based Out(spoken), Biracial, independent artist whose “kamikaze guitar style” and punchy provocative songs have worn a hole in two of her acoustic guitars. With razor wit, an engaging presence, elegant poetry, irresistible charm, plus jokes, Pamela Means’s “stark, defiant songs” (New York Times) set the status quo and the stage afire.

Pamela’s commitment to interrogating social ills was fostered by her unique childhood. “As the adopted daughter of a white mother and black father, I learned about dismantling systems of oppression from the inside out.” Pamela received her first guitar at the age of fourteen, just after her mother died of cancer, and it soon became Pamela’s primary vehicle for expression. It would also serve as a passport out of a life that consisted of poverty, foster homes, and the inner city life of hyper-segregated Milwaukee WI.

Pamela Means relocated to Boston, busked in the city subway and famed Harvard Square, founded her own record label and began touring. Pamela has since performed on three continents and across the country, gaining fans and rave reviews from Anchorage to Amsterdam, Sydney to Stockholm, San Francisco to Honolulu to New York, breaking album sales records at national festivals and sharing stages with Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Shawn Colvin, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Gil Scott-Heron, Adrian Belew, Violent Femmes, Holly Near and more. Means has also been the recipient of several nominations and music awards in multiple categories.

Pamela Means “exhibits a rare emotional fire in today’s folk world,” (Seven Days, Burlington VT) so much so that Ani DiFranco exclaimed, “you’ve got such a deep, deep groove, I can’t get out. And, I wouldn’t want to.” With Truth as ammunition, Pamela Means brings the fight for social justice and human dignity to the forefront of a new generation.

Zakiyyah

• Hip Hop

Zakiyyah is an artist-changemaker who utilizes music and visual media to explore themes that centralize marginalized communities via her production company, Black and Bold Productions. As an actress and classically-trained singer who is well-versed in Opera, Hip-Hop, Jazz, and R&B, she employs her extremely versatile skill-set to reach a broad range of audiences and craft a sound that is uniquely her own—including her most well-known creation, “Hip-Hopera.”

Zakiyyah has served as a racial equity consultant through Arts Connect International, a peer mentor for Music to Life, an artistic partner with Boston Children’s Chorus, and currently teaches voice through Harvard’s Holden Voice Program. Her recent TEDx Talk, “Being Good Is a Privilege,” highlights the repercussions of overlooking class in our quest for social change.

Stephanie McKay

Stephanie Mckay is a recording artist, arts educator and advocate whose work lies at the intersection of music, education and community.

Stephanie has toured over 35 countries playing her original music at major festivals, appearing on TV and major radio stations in five continents. Her music fuses soul, folk and is inspired by legends such as Tracy Chapman, Odetta, and Mavis Staples.

She is a member of the Inaugural Folk Collective at the Legendary Club Passim and founder of We Start With Art an arts education and community building organization, whose mission it is to impact children’s lives by nurturing their self expression through the arts.

Stephanie brings her years of performing experience as an international touring musician into her community work as an artist in Boston. Whether in the classroom or on the stage, Stephanie aspires to deeply connect to people through her art and find meaning across cultural divides. As an artist, “I come to every situation with curiosity and wonder.”, ‘I love the way music unites people and connects while simultaneously breaking down invisible walls of difference.”

She is currently facilitating a monthly workshop for children at the Boston Public library on the art and activism of artists from the Harlem Renaissance. Stephanie also teaches master classes in integrated arts at K-12 schools across Massachusetts, community centers, as well as performing her original songs within the Folk Collective tours.

In 2022 she was awarded a Live Arts Grant from the Boston Foundation and has been featured on WGBH Boston’s Jim and Maury show. A Creative Entrepreneur Fellow with the Arts and Business Council of Boston. Stephanie has a Masters in Education from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA and an undergraduate degree from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pa. Her new music will be released April 19th and is a collaboration with her son.

Kemp Harris

• Blues
• Folk
• Jazz
• Roots

Kemp Harris defies categorization. He is a singer and songwriter, a master weaver of American musical styles. He’s an actor, activist, author, and storyteller, and an award-winning educator who has taught young public school students for more than 40 years.  

“It’s all about communication,” Kemp says. “Everything I do.”

Born in segregated Edenton, North Carolina, and transplanted to Massachusetts, where he bounced between relatives’ homes, Kemp learned to adapt to whatever world he found himself in – a talent that has come to define him as a person and an artist. He began writing songs at 14 and recording them in college, using a pair of old cassette players to track parts, and has been delighting music lovers ever since with his earthy, soulful creations.

Kemp honed his powerful, intimate performance style in Cambridge’s coffeehouses, developing into a magnetic frontman who has shared stages with artists such as Koko Taylor, Livingston Taylor, Gil Scott-Heron, Kandace Springs and Taj Mahal. He has composed original music for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Complexions Contemporary Ballet, established a songwriting residency at Boston’s Wang Theater, and recently delivered a series of master classes at Berklee College of Music on the subject of Artists as Activists, alongside Chad Stokes of the band Dispatch and members of the dance troupe Urban Bush Women.

Kemp’s most recent album, Edenton, featuring vocals from the legendary Holmes Brothers, is a modern blues journey that fuses the personal and the political, the sacred and the profane, to haunting effect. Edenton’s title track, a bittersweet valentine to his birthplace, explores a simpler time in a racially-divided town with the clear-eyed grace that is a hallmark of Kemp’s work. Everything he makes is built on a foundation of social awareness and the desire to reflect the world as he sees and experiences it. Whether he’s performing a rousing soul tune backed by a 14-piece orchestra in a grand concert hall or a hushed meditation alone at his piano, Kemp speaks truth the only way he knows how: by baring his soul. Considering the state of the world, it is no wonder Kemp is back on the road playing to the biggest audiences of his life – selling out rooms from Northern New England to New York City and enjoying a wave of new fans who have discovered this seasoned Renaissance man via word of mouth.

“Kemp Harris is a thief, a tease and a heartbreaker. He knows too much. And it’s all right there when he sings… beautifully there. He’ll take your breath away.”  – NPR: ‘On Point’

Alastair Moock

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

Alastair Moock is an award-winning singer-songwriter; a Grammy-nominated family musician; a social justice and songwriting educator for all ages; and co-founder of The Opening Doors Project, an anti-racist music organization. He has toured throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, performing at renowned events like the Newport Folk Festival and Scotland’s Celtic Connections. The Boston Globe called him “one of the town’s best and most adventurous songwriters” and The Washington Post declared “every song a gem.”