MLK, Jr. Day Freedom Songs Listening Session
GRAILS
1020 Chapel St.
New Haven
Jan. 19, 2026
The voice of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer greeted downtown record shop GRAILS’ soundscape Monday, and it wasn’t in the form of speeches, or interviews. It was through song.
Hamer’s singing voice emanated from GRAILS’ hi-fi speakers by way of a special vinyl pressed by the Smithsonian Institution’s nonprofit record label, Smithsonian Folkways: a collection of Black American freedom songs from 1960 to 1966.
It was how King Kenney, owner of GRAILS, decided to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year. Throughout his life, he’s always commemorated the holiday, including by listening to music and honoring the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. His mother jokes the holiday is his birthday, too, because of his name. Now, after opening GRAILS in October, he has a space to hold a proper listening session.
All day long, he played music from vinyls detailing the Civil Rights Movement and its reverberations. It was a program that “traces Dr. King’s legacy not only through speeches and marches, but through the songs that gave those moments breath, rhythm, and resolve.”
Some visitors who came, Kenney noted, were not quite sure if there was a specific way they were supposed to participate. He told them they were already doing it. It was a listening session; all they had to do was listen.
From GRAILS’ gorgeous orange speakers, Fannie Lou Hamer sang “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Wade in the Water.” The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)’s Freedom Singers quartet sang “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Freedom.”
Poet Nikki Giovanni’s voice floated through, reading her poems to melodies by the New York Community Choir in her album Truth Is On Its Way.
“Music was never ornamental to the movement; it was foundational,” wrote Kenney in a description of the listening session.
“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.”
He has had multiple copies of the Smithsonian Folkways album over the years, starting in the 2000s. The one he was playing, he’s had for a year.
“This is like, exactly like the church I grew up in,” he told me as gospel harmonies streamed through the shop.
Before coming to New Haven, Kenney lived in the Bronx and D.C., both of which have a culture of listening sessions.
“It’s like a movie theater,” he said. You sit in front of the speakers and share the experience together. Sometimes the venue was somebody’s house. When he was in D.C., one of his friends (“the first to get a house,” he said) set up a barn in his yard.
A barn?
Well, they called it the barn, Kenney said. It was a structure with enough space to set up a sound system and vibe out. He remembers when he would swing by, grab a drink, and just sit there absorbing the music.
“Dr. King understood that culture shapes consciousness,” Kenney continued in his written description. “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.”
He decided to give the Smithsonian Folkways record away.
Someone had come to the shop who seemed like she would take good care of it. She stayed for about an hour, listening and appreciating the songs. And she was the only one who asked for the record.
She wanted to buy it on the spot, which isn’t a rare occurrence with the records Kenney plays in the store. In this case, though, he couldn’t sell it to her right then; he needed it for the rest of the listening session. He seemed happy at the thought of giving the record to her later.
Kenney’s record-shop-turned-listening-room may not be a “barn,” but all signs point to it being something even better. By the end of the night, he reflected on how it felt to play his Freedom Songs lineup to a wide array of customers.
At first, he wasn’t sure how they would react. He gained confidence over the course of the day, starting to wonder if he could play these liberation songs on a regular day too.
“Today I realized I probably can,” Kenney said. “And to not be afraid of it.”
GRAILS is open Mondays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 1020 Chapel St.
