JayVe Montgomery To Present LAKE BLACK TOWN Concert Following NEA Funding Cuts

JayVe Montgomery has announced a culminating performance surrounding a yearlong field recording project focused on capturing the sounds and history of the “drowned towns” of historic Black communities found throughout the Southeastern United States.

This concert, focused on themes of displacement and land; identity, spirit, and belonging; freedom and evolution, is produced in collaboration with chatterbird, a Nashville-based chamber ensemble, where Montgomery is Composer in Residence.

Montgomery and chatterbird, the producing partner for this concert, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in support of this project in 2024. This funding was officially terminated on May 7 with a spend-down deadline of 5/31, as the NEA deemed that it “no longer affectuated agency priorities.” This unjust and disruptive termination, which cut short the creative and generative process, meant that Montgomery and chatterbird had to quickly mobilize to wrap up the residency and produce the concert prior to the end-of-May. Fortunately, through community support, they were able to find a space to produce the concert in partnership with the Darkhorse Theater and Global Education Center.

“We are disappointed in the NEA's decision to terminate this grant after May 31, but are grateful that the nimble, artist-driven nature of this project, along with community support, will allow for a culminating performance in alignment with the necessary timeline,” said chatterbird Artistic Director Celine Thackston. “We know many organizations will not have this opportunity, and will have to forego funding, which is a tragedy.”

“Many of the organizations losing NEA grant funding have been foundational and instrumental to my existence as an American artist, and I shudder to imagine an America where the creativity and empathy of the artist and arts organization is being devalued from the top down,” said Montgomery.

The concert is set to take place Wednesday, May 28 at Darkhorse Theater at 7 PM. It is a “pay your wage” concert, and tickets are available here. All ticket proceeds from the concert will benefit the Sameer Project, a grassroots aid organization that is providing thousands of meals, fresh water, and medical supplies to families and children in Gaza.

Lake Black Town was initially presented in April 2025 at Residual Noise, a conference curated in collaboration between Brown Arts Institute and the Studio for Research in Sound and Technology (SRST) at Rhode Island School of Art and Design. This conference asked Montgomery to present an artist talk and a fixed media piece, the latter hosted in Brown's Lindemann Performing Art Center's Main Hall which features a 41.4 ambisonic surround sound system through which Montgomery was able to have the creative field recording material spatialized throughout the speaker array. 

This presentation helped Montgomery realize the social invitation in presenting the work; gathering a diverse group of willing listeners to sit in the sounds of the displacement of Black folks; to have the listening bodies absorb the sonic vibrations of remembrance despite listening to a drowned erasure; seating listeners in the resonance of emptiness. These invitations to put these sounds of the earth and water and plant life of the drowned town sites into bodies and minds and may be a path to communing with those who have been progressed upon.

The following week The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sound Department and Northwestern University's Slippage Lab also hosted Montgomery's artist talk on Lake Black Town and his use of confrontational field recording.

This will be the first full presentation of the project in Nashville.

Throughout the past year, Montgomery has also served as chatterbird's Composer in Residence. chatterbird featured Montgomery's past and current work through their channels; supported Lake Black Town as it develops; and provided administrative and fundraising support for each of the lake visits and the creative processes surrounding them. This is chatterbird's fourth Composer in Residence, with past composers including Bryan Clark, Wu Fei, and Mark Volker.

About the Project

America's post-Civil War history is rife with stories of successful Black cities being razed and flooded to create lakes largely used for recreational purposes. The most infamous is likely Lake Lanier outside of Atlanta, formerly home to Oscarville, an African American community with more than 1,000 residents who were forcibly removed after a horrific lynching in 1912. These lakes can be found all over the South, their original stories submerged under the waters.

For the past year, Nashville-based artist, creative musician, and composer Jayve Montgomery has led a creative residency that explores the history of these locations. The creative residency, in progress, has included a tour of lake sites of these so-called “drowned towns,” where African-American communities were forced out by local white supremacists and neighborhoods and towns were flooded to create spaces for water recreation.

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