The Story of The BMA

In celebration of The BMA podcast's 100th episode, I thought that I'd share with you the story of how this all began.

In October 2006, I lost my job. They told me to say my position was eliminated, but however you say it (downsized, laid off, fired, whatever) after six years, I no longer had a job. During the time I was also in school pursuing a degree in graphic design. As part of my artistic studies, I was trying to learn some digital video editing. As anybody who dabbles in video editing knows, you can't edit video without any footage to edit. So I began to search the internet and other various sources for footage (mostly of black people, just a personal preference) that I could practice my video editing skills on. In my search for practice footage, I began to accumulate some interesting open source videos, that was historic footage of famous and unknown African-Americans. So then I began to search out some audio as well.

Well after some time had passed, I realized that I had accumulated a nice collection of pretty obscure films and audio. Around this same time, I had also begun to hear of a thing called podcasting. So I did some research, and learned that a podcast is basically like a TV or radio channel. Something that people all over the world could subscribe to, and be able to download and view content without having to remember a specific website address, YouTube page, or anything to really get in the way of being constantly up-to-date with the latest and greatest. Well, this was a revelation to me. I had a collection of video and audio files, and now a new avenue to share them with the general public had presented itself.

So, I went over to iTunes...learned about how a podcast works...studied up on some XML code (I'm a designer, not a computer coder)...found a cheap software alternative to writing code (Podcast Maker by Lemonz Dream available online at www.lemonzdream.com for only $29.95, I highly recommend it)...and searched iTunes to see what other podcasts existed that focused on the African-American community (in October 2006, I
think only Girl600 was doing her thing on iTunes). In creating this podcast, I also hoped to turn it into a central resource for black history in multimedia formats, that anyone interested could easily find and utilize. I mean, let's say you are curious and want to hear what Marcus Garvey sounded like (episodes 3 and 4), or want to learn more about Robert Williams (episodes 50 and 76)...where do you go? There is no one place that immediately come to mind. No real all-encompassing black history resource that has tried to unify all of this type of content into one place. With all of the media that exists by and about black people, there is no one place that has attempted to combine it into an online cohesive collection.

Well s#!%, here was an opportunity for me to get into the game quick, and establish a podcast for black people before anybody else. BET or any other TV channel would never broadcast the types of content that I had collected, and iTunes had podcasts listed for all kinds of other topics...but none for or about black people. Ladies and gentlemen, if you think you have a good idea that nobody else is currently doing...DO IT. So I did. I installed a copy of Final Cut Pro from a classmate on my laptop, edited together a quick intro ("this is the BMA...Black Media Archive Podcast") and got busy. Hell, with no job to take up my day, I had plenty of free time to explore a project that I could never get around to working full-time and going to school.

Over a year and 100 episodes later, here we are. The BMA podcast has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, and my collection of content just continues to grow. I've been able to meet extraordinary people through email, try and educate and share some important content with the world, and shed some light on the image of black people that has been perpetuated through the media for decades by re-exposing this content to a new generation.

Anybody out there that has been considering starting a podcast or blog...I say do it. This has been a great experience for me, just starting a new media outlet for and about black people and watching it grow. The beauty of this podcast to me, is that I did not create any of this footage, I just share it with you just like I get it...the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is our history in multimedia format...no more, no less. And it has been a pleasure bringing it to you. That's the story.

P.S. This past week I got a new job (anybody out there who is unemployed, keep the faith)!! So I'm going to be moving soon, and the BMA might slow down a little bit. But I definitely plan to keep it going even after I relocate for as long as I can. I feel like the first 100 episodes have been a good introduction, and I have enough content remaining in the collection to do 100 more. I'm going to begin jumping around in time with future episodes even more as the podcast goes forward. So stay tuned everyone! Thank you for spreading the word while still keeping it underground, and allowing this project to be successful. Peace.