FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GRAILS to Observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day with ‘Freedom Songs,’ a Daylong Exploration of Music and the Civil Rights Movement
New Haven, CT—On Monday, January 19, 2026, GRAILS will open its doors for Freedom Songs, a daylong communal experience dedicated to the music that carried, shaped, and sustained the American civil rights movement. Timed to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the program invites the New Haven community into a shared act of listening: one that traces Dr. King’s legacy not only through speeches and marches, but through the songs that gave those moments breath, rhythm, and resolve.
Freedom Songs explores music as both witness and instrument of social change. From spirituals and freedom anthems to gospel, jazz, soul, and protest music, the day foregrounds sound as a living archive of Black resistance, hope, and collective imagination.
“Music was never ornamental to the movement; it was foundational,” said King Kenney, founder of GRAILS. “Songs organized people emotionally before they organized them politically. They carried courage when language failed, and they made belief audible. Freedom Songs is our way of honoring Dr. King’s legacy by returning to the music that helped make his vision possible, and by listening together, with intention, in the present tense.”
Throughout the day, GRAILS will curate a continuous sonic program drawing from historic recordings, rare pressings, and culturally essential works associated with the civil rights era and its extended influence. The experience is designed not as a performance, but as a sanctuary for attentive listening: an invitation to slow down, reflect, and consider how music functions as memory, moral force, and communal glue.
In keeping with GRAILS’ mission, Freedom Songs also underscores the space’s broader commitment to cultural stewardship and education. Through the GRAILS Scholars Program, GRAILS supports need-based, tuition-free music education for New Haven Public School students in partnership with the Neighborhood Music School, ensuring that access to music, and to the histories it carries, remains intergenerational.
“Dr. King understood that culture shapes consciousness,” Kenney added. “To engage his legacy seriously means engaging the art that moved people to act. At GRAILS, we believe listening is a form of respect, and sometimes, a form of resistance.”
Freedom Songs is free and open to the public. Community members, students, artists, and music lovers are encouraged to come and go throughout the day, to listen deeply, and to encounter the civil rights movement as it sounded: urgent, collective, and alive.