On Saturday night, June 20, the Chocolate Church Arts Center is incredibly proud to present Booker T. Jones and his band. The show is sold out, but I wanted to write about him anyway — not as a way of promoting a concert but as a way of thinking about the power of music and art. Not simply as entertainment but as an essential part of how we grow, connect and evolve as human beings.
Booker T. Jones is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and one of the most influential figures in American music history. As the leader of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, he helped create the sound of Southern soul and instrumental R&B. Songs like “Green Onions†have become part of the American musical vocabulary. Beyond that, he was a key musician, songwriter, arranger and producer at the legendary Stax Records, helping shape the careers of artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett.
But what makes Booker T. Jones so important goes beyond the music itself.
Soul music emerged during a pivotal period in American history, drawing from gospel, blues, and rhythm and blues traditions to create something both deeply personal and profoundly communal. At labels like Stax in Memphis and Motown in Detroit, Black artists brought their stories, creativity and cultural traditions into the mainstream, helping to transform American culture in the process.
Stax was especially significant because it was one of the first truly integrated workplaces in popular music. Booker T. & the M.G.'s, made up of Black and white musicians, performed and recorded together during a time when much of the country remained segregated. Their success demonstrated something powerful: that creativity, collaboration and mutual respect could transcend divisions.
And really, this is what the Chocolate Church Arts Center is all about: an acknowledgment of culture as a living organism, an aspiration of human being and becoming, and a refuge for togetherness. Whether it is Booker T. on the main stage, local steel drum players at the free waterfront series, our Art Lab welcoming everyone to make things without a paywall in the way or the long history of community theater celebrating the creativity of our neighbors — it is all part of the same braid.
That braid says Bath and the Midcoast are places of people on a continuum of time. We inherit stories, sounds, traditions and possibilities, and then we add our own voices to them. And maybe, if we pay attention in real time to our creativity and togetherness, we are okay.
When we welcome an artist like Booker T. Jones to Bath, we're doing more than hosting a concert. We're connecting with a living piece of American cultural history. We're celebrating music's ability to bring people together, to bridge differences and to remind us that art is not a luxury. It is one of the ways we understand ourselves and each other. And that feels worth celebrating.
Matthew Glassman is executive and artistic director of the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath.
