Production of Broad & High is funded in part by the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

Celebrating expression, fostering talent and connecting the community to Columbus.

Artists, Performances, Exhibitions, Concerts, Public Art and more at Columbus Makes Art dot com.

From these contributing sponsors and viewers like you.

Thank you.

This time on Broad & High, meet an artist who is proving his theory that music enables empathy.

Discover two artisans who have decades of experience perfecting their creations and hear from a local band that's been described as outlaw lounge music.

This and more right now on Broad & High.

Welcome to Broad & High.

I'm your host, Kate Quickel.

In our first segment, we meet Michael Powell, also known as Blakk Son.

Michael is a spoken word artist, poet, musician and actor who is determined to live a creative life.

He channels his joy, pain, humor, regret and redemption into masterful writing and moving performance, giving inspiration to others, as well as providing mentorship to the next generation.

Blakk Son invited us into his home and studio to talk about his process.

My name is Michael.

Most people call me Blakk Son.

I'm a spoken word artist, rapper, actor, Improvizationalist friendly neighborhood black man.

I started with rap Criss Cross when I was little.

We're going backwards.

I want to record my little brother on a Barbie tape recorder, you know what I m sayin , and there's a like Max in instrumentals.

So that's where I started that.

But the poetry came in from a friend of mine, actually.

I wasn't able to quite create music at the time.

He was like, Well, why don't you try poetry?

You got a lot to say.

I want to try it that way.

And I'm glad I did.

I'm glad to listen to one because at first I didn't want to, but it helped me expand my my writing capacity.

I figured I d compensate by doing what other people did, you know, following the lead, whatever conflicting deeds.

I just did the things I seen, hoping someone would feel my presence and welcome me to arms.

Outreach like a present and a smile to say a welcome.

Even if just for a second.

But it never came.

And with poetry, I could slow down.

I could speed up.

I could.

I could go in depth and, you know, it.

It helped me to enhance my creativity of how I want to capture what I'm trying to say.

I'm not a man of many words, per se, so.

and if I was, my words probably wouldn't be in depth about me.

So with my music, I'm able to create a mood with it.

So this song is a song that I wrote.

The song was something about why I wrote this Mad Dark, but is is just a question.

It's not like I like I like them, like I'm actually trying to do it or thinking about it.

It's just a question and the reasons why.

Maybe I'll never know what the meaning of life is.

I ask for signs they never show whom I ask to be cultivated, but purpose in me doesn't grow.

And if I don't have it, then this life worth living.

I don t know.

Hmm.

So I flirt with thoughts of ending it.

I don't think it matters much.

I ain t had so many things invested.

My bank account.

The time spent was reckless.

I ain't really loving the memories.

A mean was filled like burden.

So if I checked out, they probably wouldn't notice.

I'll be happy that I'm gone.

Sweat off on a brow.

Maybe ending it my own way would be the thing to make them proud.

Like I was a man again.

Still not a father owning up to my responsibilities.

I didn't bother.

I made too many mistakes.

No give.

I just take place.

I know there's all my weight banking on the backs, the break.

People receive stories different ways.

So you know, that's why I do so many different things.

I like to play a character because people identify the characters.

If you wanted to identify with me, you would listen to my poetry and you would get a chance to hear my emotions laid out in front of you.

But it's all about connectivity, though, and those are the ways that I use for, you know, me to seem human to everybody else.

If I'm talking about me, that's when I do the riff and thing like, you know, I just, you know, play with sounds the way my voice sounds, how I'm feeling at that time.

And it is probably start with just a few little words and, you know, I might say something I like and I'm like, okay, that's the topic.

Or if I'm writing about something, sometimes I'm asked to write poetry or something about stuff, and I wouldn't want to mislead the people through the message.

So I fact check, you know, I do I do research.

I you know, my Google hand is crazy.

I gather, as much as I can and then write about it, you know, and I don't really like to revise a lot.

So I want to make sure that I get it right pretty much the first time.

Struggling to find my path and show me some things that I wanted.

But when I started getting bad, you won't want to help me confront it.

And in the back of my mind, I know you will always need me because everything is temporary.

And that's why every time that you call, every time you called, every time you call, I always came running.

There was no discussions.

I got speakers in my car and in the basement and it hits you hard and make you feel different and nobody else can hear me.

You know, sometimes.

Sometimes I'm a little shy with my voice.

And especially when I don't know what I'm doing with it.

So I'm just, you know, I'm in the car.

I got a couple of things planned or, you know, might be in my head about something.

And I just start making noises and whatever comes out comes out.

That's how I try not to reject anything because, I mean, obviously I was feeling it and I try to, you know, bring whatever is sticking the most to the forefront.

I started doing poetry while I was in prison.

That's why I couldn't do music before that.

When I was, you know, a teenager.

I got locked up when I was 18.

So when I was a teenager, I didn't do poetry at all because I was only doing music as a way for me to, you know, continue to create.

I was challenged with the poetry thing.

It turned into something that was really good for me.

And when I got out here, I really was doing more poetry than anything that was that was great for me because that's like, that's my that's my therapy.

So, you know, I did that, did the music.

And I'm like, all right, now, dabble in the business, make some beats, try to do just try to enhance everything that I can while I'm doing it.

And it's it's a it's a process.

But yeah, I started while I was in prison and I was there for a long time.

The song that I'm creating a beat for right now is a song that I wrote in prison.

I did something to get here and you had to pay the consequences for that.

But no one that I've done with the life that I was living in and I still can't leave and I have to wait.

So it's a waiting game and it was the song is really about like, I don't want to wait anymore.

People tell me all the time, like, you're a leader.

Back then, I was not.

I was a very good follower and I was following the wrong things.

I'm still figuring me out a lot.

I know.

I'm a good writer.

Uh, I know I can write about a lot of things.

I don't necessarily know if I found my sound yet.

You know that we all got influences, and I can still hear my influences.

You might not be able to, but I know where they're coming from.

So, like, my sound, which is.

Which is the sound is our feel for every artist.

But that's where I'm at with it now.

And other than that, I'll still be I'm still out here, like, not in the streets.

I'm out here in the capacity of actually, I'll take it back.

I am still on the street because I was just at Barnett library yesterday mentors and some young people.

So I am still in the street but in a much, much better way now.

And I'm I'm happy with it.

I'm on to you honest Abe.

We re detrimental to your brain more than a paragraph or a page.

And when people read those chapters, they'll see this whole claim to fame.

It's just a new way to oppress us by changing the rules to your own game.

In the shrills and shrieks of people just like me.

Keep my dreams, haunted, and thinking about tackling this battle justly can be daunting.

But if you gave us freedom just to exercise your power trying to flaunt it, then thanks, but no thanks.

Mr. Lincoln.

I don't want it.

To hear more of his work.

Find him on Instagram at Blakk Sun.

Next.

A Reno, Nevada, based artist celebrates his Mongolian heritage and love of nature through his intricate paper silhouettes.

He uses black paper, sharp scissors and a lot of patience.

Let's learn about his process that he's perfected over the last 30 years.

My name Turburam Sandagdorj .

I am a Mongolian American professional silhouette artist.

I create so what's called Tsagasun Baru.

Tsagasun Baru is the paper silhouette art in Mongolia.

My father employs me as the artist.

In the college, I learned ceramics, ceramics, two dimensional, the ceramics and the paper.

That's just not different.

It's same thing, same feelings, just using different tools.

Yes, you need the scraps of paper, scissors and stuff to cut.

It's very important in the silhouette, the tools, the scissors.

I tried it using that aggressive tool into the fragile materials I using hot pressed paper.

It's very thin.

It's almost like silk, and you're just cutting straight into a curve.

I always think about connection.

Without connection, all the lines collapse down.

I try to start to end.

Just one image, one meaning, one feeling.

Sometimes you see this whole concept in your mind.

A lot of my art express the life of the nomads and nomadic lifestyle also has very minimal.

The nomads love their nature.

That's my message.

I love the nature.

You see the open space and the sky, like the blue, like the ocean.

And in light you see just the Milky Way's thousand stars and you just connect.

It's talks with you.

I always simplify everything.

It's kind of minimal.

I just choose the minimal life forms that works for me and also expressing into my art.

I illustrated more than 40 books anthology, The Folktales, Poetry and History.

I loved the history.

It's made me think about where I came from.

To see more of his work, check out STuro.Art.

In his workshop in Athens, Ohio, acclaimed Luthier Don MacRostie creates Mandolins.

Having studied the instrument for decades, he makes each one by hand and uses his immense knowledge and skills, resulting in each instrument having an incredible sound.

Let's take a listen.

I moved to this farm a little over 40 years ago.

I've been out here about 41-42 years.

Moving here.

There was a machinery shed that.

That'll make a nice shop.

I think I got kind of interested in guitar, in high school.

It was during the folk revival of the 50 s and 60 s, and I was interested in that music and trying to learn that.

My name is Don MacRostie, I own and operate Red Diamond Mandolins here in Athens, Ohio.

I graduated college in 66 and that was around the start of the Vietnam War.

So I wound up in the Navy.

I was in Vietnam.

I was on an aircraft carrier.

I got out of the service in 70.

I decided to use my GI Bill and go back to college.

I came to Ohio University.

I enjoyed not only, you know, going to college, but I loved the area.

I saw a lot of the county and a lot of the southeast Ohio, and I've been here ever since.

My sister-in-law had a mandolin.

So I was looking at that and I don't have a lot of space.

The a lot easier to build a smaller instrument.

So that's how I got picked, the mandolin.

I was thinking about a name that I could put on the peg head, and I was reading a book about a fellow who in the 1800s was traveling in Europe hunting Stradivarius violins.

And one of the names of the Stradivarius violins was the Red Diamond.

I said, Oh, that's a name.

I'll use that.

I've been building for close to 50 years and seen how instruments come through to the audience.

And there's an instrument that seems to for bluegrass music really project out a sound.

And that's the Gibsons of the early twenties.

They were signed by Lloyd Loar.

Don MacRostie is one of those guys that was always on the search for the secret formula to the best sounding mandolin, and in my opinion, he found it.

What sets Don's mandolins apart from the rest, in my opinion, is the constant pursuit of the golden era sound.

And when I say that, I mean the mandolins of the early 1920s that were manufactured by Gibson.

He's come up with this really interesting process of measuring the flexibility of the top and back of some of those legendary mandolins and then using those measurements to kind of guide his own building process.

When I build mandolins, I start out with the sides, I make the blocks, I bend the side bars and glue them up into a rib assembly.

That's the first step.

And I even put the linings in that allow the tops and the backs to be attached to the side.

Then I'll.

I'll carve tops.

Next the tops will be carved and glued on.

And at that point I'll voice it.

To some extent that means make it of a flexibility and it will produce a good sound.

It's a combination of the art shape, the flexibility, the species of wood, and many other things that produce a sound.

Once that's done and the neck is fitted in, I ll glue the back on, which makes the rib assembly, the body assembly very rigid, and then you can put the neck back in it and set your angle and finish up the neck.

You'll get a fingerboard and you'll get a peg head for mounting tuners and decoration of the peg head.

It's traditional for a good mandolin to have a darker finished.

It's a sunburst, they call it.

So it's a shaded finish from a bright sun in the center, golden to a darker edge.

Once the instrument is completely done, you put strings on it.

I was building mandolins in mid-seventies.

It turned out that there was a company here in Athens that did instruments there, and it was called Stuart MacDonald.

And then I got into product design with them.

I was able to do things there because of my prior building experience and the things that I was doing there.

I was able to bring home and better do my building for bluegrass and a lot of other styles of music.

The F five mandolin is what's desirable.

It's beautiful.

The design is incredible.

It's attractive.

A lot of people buy kind of on reputation.

If I build instruments that really please other people, I get customers.

People are excited about playing music.

They want to.

They want a good instrument.

They they love it.

And and they share with their friends.

I think Don is helping to strengthen the arts in Ohio by building the best instruments possible.

And I would consider Don's mandolins to be some of the best in the world.

You see him across the bluegrass scene.

Alan, by the way, a really great bluegrass mandolin player, plays his mandolins regularly.

Josh Pinkham, another amazing kind of world renowned mandolinist, plays Don's mandolins, and it makes sense that his mandolins are some of the best in the world because he is a sensitive person.

That way, you know, he can see what you need and what you're looking for in an instrument and wants to make a product that that fills what you need.

It almost feels like a family relationship when you purchase an instrument from Don.

I own two Red Diamonds, and when I look at every nook and cranny and corner, everything is just perfect.

There's not a single thing out of place.

And it's really interesting to kind of look at a mandolin and then hear the sound that comes off of the lows are rich and sustaining the highs aren't too shrill.

They're very glassy and bell like.

So it's really interesting to play a red diamond compared to some of these other mandolins.

There's life in every single note all across the fingerboard.

Not only is he building the best instruments that he possibly can, he's bringing attention from around the world to central and southern Ohio through the kind of craft that he's chosen in his life.

And I think that's really important because it it brings fresh musicians and fresh perspectives to this region.

And then they take a little bit of Ohio back with them whenever they take one of his mandolins.

And as I started building mandolins, I started learning to play mandolin, too.

By playing, you're able to understand musicians that you're building for.

I played with a couple of guys regularly right now.

We've played together for 40 years, probably music has allowed me to buy a farm, raise a family and love what I do.

There was a term back in the sixties that I latched on to.

It's called Right Livelihood, and it meant what you're doing, you know, in your working life has to be right, you know, contribute to the the planet, the world, the neighbors, and not be destructive.

And I think that building instruments and playing music is right livelihood.

I was able through both.

Stuart MacDonald, employment, Stuart MacDonald and my building to do do well you know, to to have a good life and it will.

Discover more at red diamond mandolins dot com.

We round out the show with a band that is pretty much summed up by the name of their first album, Sensational, Bold and Startling.

Change It Up.

Charlie Sound is a fusion of retro jazz, smooth blues and upbeat swing.

Let's take a listen I got Honey in my tea, But I really love him next to me.

Kiss me Holding hands, Make the world know he's my man rivers flowing to the streams.

I tell you, folks, he's like a dream.

I just can't get enough of my man.

So, all you Jekylls all you Hydes and all you fakers stand aside.

Nothing's gonna make change my mind is Here I am.

Right time, wrong place.

Looking for his lovely face.

I may not know my wrongs from right.

My boy is out of sight.

Gives me love all the time Makes me want to lose my mind I tell you, folks love to make a scene.

So all you Jekyll's, all you Hyde s, all you fakers stand aside that's gonna make change my mind this is how it's meant to be.

Morning kisses him and me rolling tumbling all around me in such a ruckus sound, people You could stop and stare.

You know that We just don't care.

Him and me was simply meant to be.

All you saints,, Oh, all you sinners All you losers and the winners Oh, you big guys and the tough guys.

To him your such a small fry.

All you dapper and rich sorts Your just a bunch of poor sports.

All you Jekyll s and all you Hyde s and all you fakers stand aside.

Nothing's gonna make me change my mind.

Can't get enough of my man.

I said I can't get none of my man.

Go has come to hear more from Change it up, Charlie.

Check out Change it up, Charlie.

Dot-Com.

Well, that's our show.

Remember, you can find all of our stories online at WOSU dot org, as well as on our YouTube channel.

For all of us here at WOSU, I'm Kate .

Thanks for watching.

I can't begin to explain to you can't even bear to wonder why we just seem to stroll along.

Everything else seems to die.

Sometimes I gaze at you.

A stranger who sleeps in my bed.

Don't care where you might have been wrong and should come home to me.

Afraid to ask if you dear still Love me.

Production of Broad & High is funded in part by the Greater Columbus Arts Council, celebrating expression, fostering talent and connecting the community to Columbus.

Artists performances, exhibitions, concerts, public art and more.

Columbus makes art.com.