By Ruth Terry
/Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan
Reporting for the YES! Magazine-Tennessee News Service

-- YES! MEDIA COLLABORATION -- NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Much of American cuisine is fusion food. Yes, even apple pie. European colonists brought apple trees, which originated in Asia, to these shores. And other foods came from other lands. Hamburger, pizza, and tacos, we know, came here from Germany, Italy, and Mexico, respectively.

Generally left out of the discussion of American cuisine, though, are the Indigenous foodways, which enabled early settlers to survive, as well as the influence of enslaved Africans that shaped our culinary heritage, particularly in the South. The latter is something Black food historians such as journalist Donna B. Pierce, and James Beard Award-winners Michael Twitty and Adrian Miller, are helping to change.

The narrative that emerges is complex and inextricably tied to place.

In his book, The Cooking Gene, Twitty explores these complexities, while sharing how his personal ancestry intertwines with American and African food traditions. He cites the research of historian Stephen D. Behrendt, who documents the relationship between those who were enslaved and the crops they planted grew and harvested that contributed to the wealth of the United States -- crops that were mostly transported to the New World via the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Behrendt even suggests that enslaved Africans were trafficked here at intervals that corresponded to the seasonal growing season.

"This does not start with race and end with commodities, it starts with commodities and ends with race," Twitty says, in a phone interview, referencing those cash crops such as rice, sugar, tobacco, and others. "These crops shaped the way that people [the enslaved and their owners] lived. They shaped the diet."

Throughout the regions where enslaved Africans were concentrated, certain culinary "common denominators" emerged, Twitty writes in his book. These dishes formed the basis for Southern cuisine and "soul food," an umbrella term used to describe Black people's home cooking which, Pierce says, was popularized in the 1960s.

"As a culture, we had lost our language. We had lost our family... all of the things that bind a culture together," Pierce explains of the African diaspora in America. During the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and '70s, the term soul food was embraced because it was a way "to talk about what we shared. And that sharing felt so good to have something in common with all of us with brown skin," she adds.

Soul food may unite Black people but its iconic dishes, including fried chicken, chitterlings, pigeon peas, collard greens, sweet potatoes, and cornbread -- once an Indigenous staple -- are really a fusion cuisine.

"I think that soul food, and you can argue Southern food as well, is the fusing of West Africa, Western Europe and the Americas," says Miller, author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas, and a former lawyer and policy adviser to the Clinton administration.

His research included visiting 150 restaurants in 35 cities and reading 500 cookbooks and thousands of digitized historical newspapers. "These things all come together, and there are dishes that are created that remind people of a precursor."

African American food culture is an especially fitting lens with which to explore African American history because, like DNA-which Twitty goes into detail about in his book, it is one of the only aspects of African American identity that represents an unbroken line from Africa to present-day America. "There's so many of our customs, so many of our ways of looking at seasoning and food and everything else, that's just straight up from Africa," he says.

One of these customs is the concept of "teranga," a West African idea of neighborliness and hospitality, which became a defining tenet of Southern gentility.

"These are... values that were taught to White kids raised by Black women," Twitty says. "[W]e were taught to believe that Southern hospitality was grounded in some sort of, like, medieval pass down. It was this thing that we... inherited from our African side mixed with a little bit of European and Native concepts of hospitality and neighborliness."

This kind of misattribution erases the Native and Black identities that helped shape the iconic aspects of Southern cultural heritage, from country manners to cookery, leading us to equate "Southern" with "White" and creating a false dichotomy between "soul food" and "Southern cuisine," which belong to the same tradition, Miller says.

"Within the American South, the difference between soul food and Southern food is so blurred, it's almost indistinguishable," he continues. In terms of flavor, "soul food, over time, has tended to be more intense in its seasoning" and plays with sweet and savory more than White Southern variations. Another key difference: soul food remains stigmatized. It is characterized as "slave food," an unhealthy diet that "should come with a warning label."

In actuality, Miller explains, enslaved Africans ate a largely plant-based diet, with richer sweet and meat dishes savored on special occasions. The stigma is so pervasive that when soul food dishes such as Nashville Chicken go mainstream, African American cooks are not credited.

"We're now in a phase where restaurants menus will tell you [everything about] what you're eating, where it was grown or raised, [the animal's] personal hobbies, whatever," Miller jokes. "So why can't they just say, 'this is an African American specialty'? Just give a shout out to where you got it from. Just acknowledge the source."

Miller, Twitty, and Pierce have made it part of their work to do just that.

Twitty's The Cooking Gene safeguards against cultural appropriation. Rather than writing recipes and techniques -- look to Donna Pierce's website, Black America Cooks -- he focuses on food as part of the lived experience of enslaved Africans and as an element of our shared Black American cultural DNA.

"I deliberately said to myself, [White people] will not be able to appropriate these three things: our Africanness, our experience on the plantation, and our blood," Twitty says. "No one will be able to take these things away from us. I was telling a Black story that cannot be appropriated."

This story was produced with original reporting from Ruth Terry for YES! Magazine. Read Terry's full story here: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/02/26/food-african-american-history.


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By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

Assembled on a soundstage at Huntington University last week, Gov. Mike Braun, legislators and community officials were optimistic about the potential for more soundstages, more cameras, more lights, more action coming to Indiana as the state positions itself to become a go-to location for film and movie production.

The governor was in Huntington for a ceremonial signing of Senate Enrolled Act 306, which makes Indiana’s film and movie tax credits transferable and, therefore, attractive to out-of-state filmmakers. Leaders at the event said the new law will help grow the state’s digital media production industry, creating new jobs and bringing new money to existing businesses.

Braun did not see Indiana’s wooing of Hollywood as simply a star struck pipedream. Recounting a conversation he had had earlier this year, when Angelo Pizzo, who wrote and produced the film classics “Hoosiers” and “Rudy,” “was bemoaning” that he could no longer make movies like that in Indiana today, Braun said SEA 306 would enable the state to capture an opportunity that is coming.

“The hardest thing in business and in government is not to get stuck in a rut where you just think the same things are going to work in the future,” Braun said, noting that as a business owner, he was always “looking for new horizons, new things that needed to be done.”

Braun continued SEA 306 will help Indiana seize the moment and possibly exceed expectations. “We’re here,” he said. “We’re all dressed up and ready to go and you’re right at the forefront of what I think is going to be a great industry.”

Several states, like Georgia, Louisiana, Illinois and New York, have tax credits geared toward filmmakers and production companies. However, studies have shown movie tax credits, even when they are refundable or transferable, generate little, if any, economic boost. The subsidies offered as tax breaks to film companies have been found to increase movie productions, but the activity has had only a marginal impact on the states’ economies and, in fact, some states actually lost revenue. Moreover, the number of jobs created has been small.

Michael Hicks, professor of economics at Ball State University, was skeptical the now-transferable tax credit would entice movie producers and directors to start filming in Indiana. He said movie and television production companies choose sites for the attributes, such as scenery, that the particular location offers. Cost does not really factor into the decision-making process, when film professionals are identifying places to make the movie or episode.

Also, Hicks said, any movies that are filmed here will likely not have a huge or lasting economic effect on the state. The making of a movie does not spur new construction of hotels, restaurants or venues where people can gather, he said, so any increase in sales that local businesses notice when a film is being made in their community will evaporate when the production crew packs up and leaves town.

“You’re taking a lot of money out of the public coffers,” Hicks said of the film and movie production tax credits. “Other taxpayers are paying for this. They’re either paying for it directly or they’re subsidizing services that somebody else is using and what that ends up doing is generating a lot of costs for very little additional benefit.”

Enticing filmmakers to pick Indiana

Bill Konyha, president and CEO of the Regional Chamber of Northeast Indiana, is optimistic that SEA 306 will give the Hoosier State a starring role in motion pictures. He envisions not only production companies coming here to film, but also, eventually establishing a permanent presence by building movie studios in the state. All of that activity, he said, will create an economic boom by bringing jobs for local residents.

“It’s not a goal that’s going to happen tomorrow …,” Konyha said, “but it’s the opportunity to turn Indiana filmmaking back into … a meaningful, important industry.”

Senate Enrolled Act 306, which passed during the 2025 legislative session with bipartisan support, amended a 2022 state statute that established tax credits for films, documentaries, commercials, television shows, music videos or other similar media production. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. is charged with confirming the eligibility of the applicants and determining the amount of the tax credit.

Under SEA 306, that tax credit is now transferable to another individual or entity. A single credit may not exceed $250,000 and the total amount available between Jan. 1, 2026, when the law takes effect, and July 1, 2031, when the statute expires, is capped at $2 million.

Konyha explained transferability is the key to attracting movie making to Indiana. The 2022 statute was not enough incentive, because the benefit of the tax credit was limited to only those investors or companies based in Indiana. With the new legislation, he said, out-of-state film companies will be able to sell the tax credits to entities that actually pay taxes in Indiana and then use the equity from those sales to invest in film projects.

“The problem is the film companies are mostly out-of-state, and the tax credit that’s available is an Indiana tax credit,” Konyha said. “It has no value to anybody from out-of-state. So it has to be able to be sold or transferred or syndicated to have value for them.”

Supporters of SEA 306 pointed to Huntington University and its department of digital media arts, where students learn the behind-the-scenes film-making skills of recording and lighting, cinematography, editing and producing, and screenwriting. When the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the internship opportunities in Los Angeles, two digital media arts faculty members, Lance Clark and Matthew Webb, created Forester Films, a film production company connected to the university, to give their students hands-on experience.

Forester Films has written, filmed and produced two movies, “A Carpenter’s Prayer” and “Tea on the Beach,” and is finishing a third, “Overhill Manor.” Clark, dean of the arts at Huntington University, described the films as “faith and family friendly” and said they tackle difficult topics like alcoholism, depression and dementia.

To make the movies, Forester Films has relied on industry professionals and Huntington alumni, while the students worked as interns. Clark said the actors, directors and crew members who have come to Indiana to shoot the three flicks have loved the community and enjoyed working in northeastern Indiana. Also, he said, business owners and local officials have been accommodating and helpful in offering locations to film.

Clark believes the transferable tax credit will lure filmmakers to Indiana. Most likely, large movie companies will start by filming a scene or two in the Hoosier State before undertaking a complete production here, he said. Independent film companies, he said, may be more comfortable to start doing entire movies in Indiana.

Forester Films raised about $2 million from donors and investors to produce its three feature-length motion pictures. Clark said his production company will be “first in line to apply in 2026 for the tax credit” and he anticipates other filmmakers will be lining up as well.

“It’s already helped us talk about financing for our next features, because people that are investors, they like to hear, ‘Oh, there’s a transferable tax credit,’” Clark said. “I think serious filmmakers have a good shot at it here. So it’s already helped have great, great conversations.”

Unsupported economic claims

Clark and his students created a set on the digital media art department’s soundstage as a special backdrop for Braun’s ceremonial bill signing. They filmed the governor walking to the desk, which was draped in black cloth and displayed the state seal, sitting down, signing the bill and then holding it up for the audience to see.

Production was quickly halted after the first take had started. The crew had discovered that the main prop – a ceremonial copy of SEA 306 – was still in the car. The second take appeared flawless.

Huntington Republican Sen. Andy Zay, along with his GOP colleagues, Sens. Travis Holdman, of Markle, and Kyle Walker, of Lawrence, authored SEA 306.

Speaking at the ceremonial bill signing, Zay said Indiana has a rich film history with movies such as “Breaking Away” produced and filmed in the state. SEA 306, he said, will change the tax culture so that movies can again be made in Indiana.

“The credit that we are passing begins to make those opportunities a reality moving forward,” Zay said. “So this is a great step of legislation, of work, where we sign something that doesn’t end something, but we sign something that begins something anew.”

Zay then pointed to Georgia as an example of a state that has seen its movie industry blossom with the introduction of tax incentives. He claimed the Peach State is realizing a return of $6 to $7 for every $1 spent through the film tax credit.

A 2019 policy brief examining the economic impact of the film industry on Georgia’s economy tells a different story. The report from Kennesaw State University blamed “incredible multipliers and dubious data” with inflating economic claims that movie making had a $9.5 billion impact on the state in 2018 and created more than 92,000 jobs.

Instead, the report found, Georgia has approved more than $4 billion in tax credits between 2008 and 2018, while the film industry has contributed about $3 billion to the state’s $588 billion gross domestic product, which represents 0.5% of the state’s economy. Also, the industry directly employs about 16,000 workers, but the report highlighted that assuming every film job is the result of the tax credits, the cost equates to $64,000 to $119,000 in tax credits per job.

Most importantly, the tax credits are hitting Georgians in their wallets. The report noted the $800 million in tax credits given to filmmakers in 2018 represents about $220 per household that Georgia residents could have spent themselves on goods and services in their state.

Hicks, the Ball State economist, called the film tax credit “Republican socialism,” because the GOP is giving money to businesses. The consequence, he said, is the state will be giving a tax break and have less money to spend on roads, bridges and emergency response systems to warn about floods.

“I guess I’m just a little puzzled on the economic argument for desiring some sort of economic activity that doesn’t pay taxes,” Hicks said.


Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.


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More than 400 teen artists will gather this Saturday in Southern California to learn about equity in arts education. The 3rd annual Arts Advocacy Day kicks off the California State Summer School for the Arts. Speakers and workshops will tackle issues like the troubled rollout of Proposition 28, which was supposed to fund new arts classes but has been diverted by some school districts.

Caitlin Lainoff, senior manager of youth engagement at the nonprofit Create CA which sponsors the event, said the event is important for its informational value.

"We want to make sure that students leave knowing that they are guaranteed money for the arts and that they can connect with their administrators to see how that money is spent and can reach out to their legislators at any point," she explained.

The program takes place at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita. The goal is to inspire the state's next entrepreneurs, artists and culture makers to fight for education funding, during a particularly challenging time. The feds just froze almost $7 billion in education grants nationwide to see if they align with Trump administration priorities. The money was supposed to be distributed on July first, leaving districts scrambling.

Lainoff added that the programs such as theater, music and fine art are often the first to go when budgets are tight.

"The potential impact on arts programs is that instead of Prop 28 going to additional arts classes, they will be plugged in to previous arts classes or cut completely for other uses," she continued.

In May, the Trump administration proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and has already canceled grants to hundreds of arts organizations.

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Scene: It's December 2023. Reggie Holmes, 72, faces the audience at a choir concert. She's been singing since she was a baby, but things have changed.

"I turned around to apologize to the guy behind me. I said, 'I just want to sing, but it will sound really bad,'" Holmes says.

"My voice was lovely, but Parkinson's stole that from me."

In the past couple of years, she's somewhat reclaimed that voice-in large part thanks to Parkinsong Choir in rural Washburn, Wisconsin. Last year, it sprouted from a network of choral groups across the Midwest (and world) for folks with dementia and their caretakers.

Eyleen Braaten is the executive director of that parent network: Giving Voice, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In it, she sings with her dad, who has dementia.

"[It] is an opportunity to have a human-centered approach to creating programs that really bring wellbeing to people that are often told that they don't have too much to give," Braaten says of Giving Voice, which offers free toolkits for communities looking to start their own choirs.

Getting your song on is proven to boost memory and overall health, especially in cases of dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Polls show music (even just listening) is especially remedial with older adults. Music is social. Active. Even scientific.

It's something Stephanie Johnson knows well. In 2009, the board-certified music therapist founded Music Speaks and has worked with clients struggling with communication, memory, learning, early development, mental health ... the list goes on.

"If the brain is not operating in a way that it used to, due to a physical traumatic injury or a stroke or Parkinson's or dementia, we can incorporate music and help pull the information from a healthy part of that brain back into processing, whether it be speech or motor or cognition," Johnson says. She's helped nonverbal clients sing, even when speech remains difficult.

Think of the alphabet, she says: Would you have been able to memorize those 26 letters, in order, without that kindergarten-famous alphabet song?

Johnson's team of music therapists works across the Midwest and beyond, adjusting song tempo and dynamics to meet client needs. But folks without this care access, a local choir, or even a diagnosis can still reap musical benefits.

Anyone can queue up a beat (may we suggest our Essential Midwest playlist?) and let the brainwaves work their magic.

"Most often, the western world thinks of music as a song or a genre or an artist," Johnson says. But what about music as healing? As identity, recovery?

Singing, especially with Parkinsong Choir, is a source of joy, friendship, and belonging for Holmes: "My voice is not what it used to be . . . It's still kind of harsh and I have a vibrato you wouldn't believe," she says, laughing.

"But I can sing. And it's beautiful."


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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