In 2008, Detroit’s Queen of the Blues, singer Alberta Adams thrilled the crowd at that year's AACW Blues Fest. (News archive photo)
‘Revival’ nods to Blues Fest, H.U.M.A.N.
- Published: September 24, 2026
When “Revival: A Celebration of American Music” comes to the John Bryan Community Center this weekend, organizers with the Village’s Public Arts and Culture Commission hope the free, three-day event will bring back some of the communal spirit of Yellow Springs’ former AACW Blues Fest. As Village Council member and liaison to PACC Carmen Brown put it, Blues Fest was the place to be.
“You knew where your parents were. … You knew where your grandpa was. You knew where the baby was. You knew where you were gonna be,” Brown told the News last week. “That’s the kind of community-building we’re missing, because the people who were organizing these events are gone.”
“Revival” will be held Friday–Sunday, Sept. 25–27, and is presented by the Village through PACC in partnership with the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and the Beloved Community Project of Yellow Springs as part of the Village’s America 250 observance.
Brown, who brought a slate of America 250 programming before fellow Council members last year, said the Village’s plans to fete the nation’s semiquincentennial initially included a signature concert around July 4, but ultimately moved away from that date because of the demands the holiday already places on Village and Township staff. At the same time, she said she’d been thinking about the former Blues Fest, and hearing from others who missed it.
“Obviously, it can’t be what it was, but it is a revival,” Brown said. She noted the Christian imagery inherent in the word “revival,” but turned instead to traditional West African imagery: she called the effort “a little Sankofa,” invoking the Ghanaian bird that looks back with its feet planted forward: “Go back and get a little bit of what was there.”
DJ Smooth of the Ark Band performs at the 2006 Blues and Jazz Festival, begin held this year from Friday, Sept. 10 to Saturday, Sept. 11 at the Antioch Amphitheater. (Photo by Robert Hasek)
The AACW Blues Fest began in 1997 and, for nearly two decades, was one of Yellow Springs’ largest annual cultural events. It was conceived by longtime local educator and organizer Faith Patterson and the late Bill Chappelle, an Antioch College music professor, under the auspices of African American Cross-Cultural Works. AACW grew out of African American Cultural Week, organized in 1991 by Antioch College student and artist John Sims, and focused on diversity and education within community.
Over time, the event expanded beyond blues, eventually taking on names including the Blues, Jazz and Cultural Fest and the Blues, Jazz and Gospel Fest. Alongside music, the festival featured workshops, art, food and performers from Yellow Springs and beyond.
“It celebrates community and cultural diversity — it’s not just a concert,” Faith Patterson told the News in 2010. “It’s not about musicians standing up, but people learning.”
The festival went on hiatus in 2014 while Antioch College constructed its solar array near the amphitheater grounds where the festival was typically held, and rain washed out much of the outdoor program when the event returned in 2015.
Dean Simms of Springfield brought his band and impersonation of Louis Armstrong to the 2013 AACW Blues, Jazz and Gospel Fest at the Antioch College amphitheatre. (Photo by Suzanne Szempruch)
Patterson died in January 2016 at age 85. That September, her daughter Karen Patterson led what would become the final AACW Blues, Jazz and Gospel Fest, with much of the weekend devoted to Faith Patterson’s life and her oft-repeated maxim: “Everybody counts.”
Brown also pointed to another local lineage behind “Revival”: Help Us Make A Nation, or H.U.M.A.N., a grassroots human rights group formed in Yellow Springs in 1978. Antioch professors Chappelle and Jim Dunn and community activist Glynna Garrett were central to its founding, organizing around racism, poverty, civil rights and other issues.
Education, organizing and social gathering often overlapped in H.U.M.A.N.’s work. Its “floating coffeehouses,” held in homes around Yellow Springs and at Prether’s Lodge in Clifton, mixed public discussion with music, poetry, skits and other performances. The organization also brought activists and artists to town, including folk musician Pete Seeger.
Brown said the example of H.U.M.A.N. — like that of Blues Fest — informs the kind of gathering she hopes “Revival” can become.
Faith Patterson, the festival’s founder and a beloved Yellow Springs community member, died in January 2016. Here, she is pictured watching her son, musician Nerak Roth Patterson, perform at the festival in 2006. (News archive photo by Robert Hasek)
“Music is the thing that’s always brought us together,” Brown said. “It’s the equalizer — it dissolves differences. There are no delineating lines when you’re listening to music.”
She added: “The music — blues, bluegrass, all of that — was and is a constant borrowing from each other, and that’s what I think makes blues and early American music so special.”
“Revival: A Celebration of American Music” is free and open to the public Friday–Sunday, Sept. 25–27, at the John Bryan Community Center, located at 100 Dayton St.
Friday kicks off with multi-instrumentalist educator and Black music researcher Joe Zavaan Johnson; according to a press release from the Village, Johnson’s research encompasses Black banjo recovery at the intersection of Black studies, human geography, folklore and ethnomusicology, and his work often involves collaboration with organizations that work toward coalition building, community healing and cultural reparations. Johnson will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a music presentation, a banjo performance at 6:45 p.m. and a Q&A at 7:45 p.m.
Saturday’s music begins at 3 p.m. with Phil’s Big Ass Brass Band, followed by the Eric Henry Band; Sharon Lane and Danny Sauers; MoJo Power; Tony Huston and Prime Time Blues Band with Snapper Mitchum; and Georgia Anne Muldrow.
Sunday begins with an open mic at 3 p.m., followed by Geoff Hohwald, Mark Babb and George Byrd.
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