Make sure to check out the companion piece to this article, which covers the actual performance.
As part of the school’s Black History Month celebrations, Bryn Mawr welcomed Steve Green and the Elevators into Goodhart Hall on Feb. 6 for the “Griot’s Groove,” a musical journey through African American history. I had the honor of interviewing Green, who is not only the bassist and vocalist of the band, but also the Director of Transportation here at Bryn Mawr.
According to Green, the Griot’s Groove was actually inspired by the Empowering Learners Partnership program at Bryn Mawr (see a reflection on the program here). Led by the Teaching and Learning Institute (TLI), a staff member would teach students a skill, and the students would teach the staff a skill in exchange.
“My daughter was in high school, so the students would teach to her, and then I would teach them about the history of Black music, the history of Jazz.” Green reminisced. “When that program ended, I was thinking about, you know, the research that I had done about African American music and then I said, well, [I] should put it into a show, and that’s what I did.”
And so, Griot’s Groove was born. Green describes the experience as embarking on “a journey” through the history of African American music from West Africa to hip hop. “There will be some very painful points. There will be many joyful parts,” he told me. “But it’s all relevant to the strength and endurance of African American music…It’s about what [Black Americans] have given to the culture of the United States and the world from that pain.”
Green stressed the importance of honoring African American history. “Traditions are the backbone of our people,” he asserts. “Because, really, we are one of the only people in the world whose roots can only trace back to slavery. We don’t know exactly where we came from and who our relatives were and what our genealogy is—We are lost in that way. But what we do have is the strength that we created—the music, the art, and everything else—here in the United States, under conditions that were meant to hold us down.”
“The bloodshed, the agony…the moan of the slave ship, the moan of the cry of of enslaved people…it’s all embedded in our music, and that’s why it touches folk here—” he pats his heart “—because it’s a deep pain that emanates a wonderful joy.” Green goes on to assert: “We can’t forget. We’d do ourselves a great injustice as a country to forget, to try to act like things never happened.”
For Green, music is a way to reconcile with wounds of the past and deal with injustices of the present. For him, the Griot’s Groove is cathartic: “A lot of the terrorism that I experienced when I was coming up as a young man—[the] hatred that I saw towards me—I still feel it today. So this music helps to really relieve [that]. Not heal, but relieve.”
Green says he finds it rather unfortunate that some young folk are not connected to the realities of what happened and how it happened. “You really have to pull back and see,” he remarks, “because if you don’t search, and if you don’t look, you won’t find.”
Green also emphasized the importance of attending live concerts as a way to support local Black artists. “What a lot of artists in Philadelphia and all over the country deal with is that [they are] playing for small audiences and people don’t know where they’re performing at…I think it’s really important to seek out and find the music. So tell your friends about it, take a group of people to help, buy tickets, you know.”
In fact, Green also has another band, Breakwater, which will be performing on April 3, at 118 Wayne N. Wayne Ave, PA. He encourages people to check it out if they have time and interest.
I also interviewed Breia Vann-Crump BMC ’27, a Sisterhood* member and Black History Month coordinator who helped organize this event, to get a different perspective. As the host, she was responsible for taking attendance and recording the event for social media. We sat down in Carpenter Library to discuss her experience in more detail.
Given the scale of the performance, Vann-Crump was working with three other BHM coordinators (Vivien, Kaili, and Amy) and Joi Dallas, the former Assistant Dean for Intercultural Engagement. “Joi was looking for artists, specifically Black artists, who use music to really tell their stories and tell the experience of the Black diaspora,” she told me. “Especially for Black History Month, since our aim is celebrating Black artists and Black excellency.”
I expressed my astonishment at the elaborate calendar of events that the BHM coordinators had organized for 2025. “Well, because Black History Month is honestly just 28 days, we wanted a full month of fun and amazing activities for the Bryn Mawr community to come together,” Vann-Crump answered. They actually started planning in September 2024 and worked over five months to finalize the schedule for February. “So yeah,” she laughed, “just a lot of planning.”
“[There] was also a lot of events where we were also inviting community members that are not part of Sisterhood*,” Vann-Crump noted. It was a very collaborative process that highlighted the local community: For the 2025 BHM celebrations, Sisterhood* collaborated with the Impact Center, LITS, AMOs, and other Black artists from the Philly area to bring a variety of events onto campus, ranging from the Douglass Day Transcribathon, to Keynote Speaker Sonya Renee Taylor, to of course, the Griot’s Groove performance.
We then talked about the performance itself. “The highlight of this process was honestly getting to see Steve Green and the Elevators,” Vann-Crump remarked. “It was beautiful. Everything was well put together, and I really enjoyed it.” She noted the accompanying images and videos in particular: “I always see those visuals in history class, but I have never seen it in a performance like Steve Green’s…[so] it was very impactful.”
We also discussed the importance of cultural appreciation outside of established holidays. “Black History Month is every month,” Vann-Crump states. “I always say that there is not a singular month where we should celebrate our BIPOC students. I believe that there should be spaces like the ECC…[and] that we should [be able] have conversations where we are not afraid to speak our mind.”
As we approached the end of the interview, Vann-Crump touched on the importance of Black music to her personally. “Being a singer myself, and also being a nervous singer, Black music to me is expressing oneself…I think Black music is a way for other groups who are not Black to really see and hear our stories, whether that’s through singing, dancing, poetry,” she concludes. “Black music brings us together, specifically Black people together.”
After talking with Green and Vann-Crump, my appreciation for the Griot’s Groove increased even more. By talking to the people involved, you can tell very clearly that the organizers and the musicians really cared about the performance and the community it served.
Green did an excellent job representing both the deep undercurrent of pain that Black history embodies, as well as the resilient culture of art and music that bloomed as a result, while Sisterhood* did an amazing job bringing this experience onto the Bryn Mawr campus. The concert also highlighted local Black artists, which I really loved.
If this event sounds interesting to you, please check out Steve Green and the Elevators and keep up with Sisterhood* for future activities. I’d also urge you to look forward to next year’s Black History Month for exciting events of this kind!
