As the nation marks Black Music Month this month, the Community Music Center of Houston (CMCH) celebrates its tenth annual Legacy Project at the Eldorado Ballroom in collaboration with Community Artists’ Collective to honor its visionary co-founder, the late Ron Scales, on June 8.
“Jazz June,” as this year’s theme calls it, is a full-bodied invocation of Black musical lineage and the community figures who carried it forward.
The Legacy Project reveals the stakes and significance of honoring Black music on its terms, especially in Houston.
The musical lineup featured groups such as the Musical Truth Choir, The Too Laid Back Band, and the Scott Joplin Chamber Orchestra, now one of the nation’s oldest Black chamber ensembles still performing. It promises a dynamic fusion of genres, from gospel to hip-hop to classical. The deeper story lies in how this annual project threads past, present and future into a living archive of Black musical heritage.
Honoring Ron Scales
The initiative was the vision of the late Ron Scales, CMCH co-founder, cultural custodian and passionate advocate for safeguarding Black musical traditions. Alongside the late Reverend William A. Lawson and other foundational figures, Patricia Johnson, Audrey Lawson, and Dr. Clyde Owen Jackson, Scales helped establish what would become a local treasure and a defense against cultural erasure.
“We’re so grateful for the renovation,” says Dr. Anne Lundy, music director of CMCH. “The Eldorado Ballroom represents our Third Ward Black cultural history. This is where the great musicians came through, it’s literally part of our local legacy.”
CMCH’s first home was Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. It was Reverend Lawson who encouraged the team to expand outside of the church.
Lundy has known Scales since the early 1980s and continues to carry his vision forward. “Ron could see things others didn’t,” she says. “He understood that if we don’t keep this music alive, it disappears.”
Prince. Credit: CMCH
Twenty-three-year-old violinist Michael Prince, founder of the Hood Orchestra and one of the performers for the Legacy Project and one of the organization’s brightest stars.
“I grew up in the Third Ward. I live in the Third Ward. I went through CMCH when I was in high school and middle school,” says 23-year-old violinist Michael Prince. “It’s always kind of been a legacy for string players in the neighborhood.”
He blends classical violin techniques with hip-hop, R&B and gospel. “It’s not just hip-hop, it’s really any genre. I’ve been exploring. “All of my music is made by me, from me, about me, about my life,” he says. “That hasn’t been done for the individual instrumentalist in our community. I’m trying to create new flavors, new flares.”
“We are our own archive. And we’re still writing it.”
Dr. Anne Lundy, music director of Community Music Center of Houston.
Performing at the Eldorado Ballroom carries weight for Prince. “It means everything,” he says. “I grew up in the church across the street, by Emancipation Park. I’ve seen the Eldorado when it looked completely different. Now it’s been restored. Every time I play there, it’s meaningful because I know the history behind it.”
Prince hopes the concert plants seeds. “I hope someone who sees me decides to pick up a violin,” he says. “My purpose is to show people this path exists and it doesn’t have to look one way. You don’t have to be in a tux playing Beethoven. You can explore. You can be yourself.”
That spirit is exactly what the Legacy Project is built on, honoring where we’ve been while daring to imagine what’s next.
“We are our own archive,” says Lundy. “And we’re still writing it.”
