When Clydie King died on January 7th, 2019, the world appeared to be largely indifferent. Her New York Times obituary was a case study on the ways in which rich histories are often hidden in plain sight. As a relatively obscure soul singer bearing no pop hits of her own, the news of her death had little to no resonance within the popular consciousness. Yet her cross genre work as a backing vocalist with stars such as Barbara Streisand, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles spoke volumes.

Soul singer Ruth Brown left the music industry after creating a string of hits from the late 1940s through the 1950s for then fledgling label Atlantic Records (colloquially referred to as “the house that Ruth built”), taking up work as a domestic worker to make ends meet. When she told her grandchildren years later about her former life as a star, they did not believe her. Mamie Smith’s 1920 hit “Crazy Blues” simultaneously broke the race and gender barriers in American popular culture. In 2020, the New York Times called it the “song that changed music forever.” Yet she died penniless.

History is brimming with Black women like King, Brown and Smith. Black women who gave so much of themselves and their craft, only to have their stories and contributions become largely obscured with time. While their songs have been perpetually covered and sampled by artists across genres and generations, many Black women recording artists have yet to receive their recognition as stewards of culture and sonic innovation.

Your Grandma Is Funky rectifies this by addressing the inaccuracies in the historical record, de-centering the white gaze and presenting an accurate and authentic aggregation of information on the cultural impact of Black women recording artists. Your Grandma Is Funky is a material read of the work of Black women recording artists. An unprecedented database encompassing photography, oral histories, audio, archival documents and video, the project is constructed as a multi-platform interrogation of the cultural impact of these women’s works across genre.

Your Grandma Is Funky is a perpetual correction of the public record. It seeks to contextualize the sonic and cultural contributions of Black women whose works have been misconstrued, downplayed or erased. To this extent, future iterations of the project will bridge the divide between the material and digital archives, mobile app technology, web3 and extended reality (XR). The project is an outgrowth of ongoing research conducted by published music journalist, interdisciplinary artist, and vinyl record collector Rico Washington, with assistance from web designers Dan Black and Kai Gittens.