When Clydie King died on January 7, 2019, the public response was muted. Though not a household name, her work as a backing vocalist for artists like Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles shaped the sound of American popular music. Her relative obscurity reflects a broader pattern: Black women’s cultural labor is foundational, yet frequently unrecognized.

This pattern is not new. Ruth Brown, once central to the rise of Atlantic Records, left the industry and later worked as a domestic worker to survive. Mamie Smith, whose 1920 recording “Crazy Blues” transformed the music industry, died in poverty. Across generations, Black women artists have shaped the sonic landscape while their histories remain fragmented or obscured.

Your Grandma Is Funky is a cultural archive and media project that addresses this erasure. It documents and contextualizes the contributions of Black women recording artists through archival research, oral history, and media storytelling. The project brings together photography, recorded narratives, audio, and historical documents to construct a living record of cultural impact across genres and generations.

Grounded in archival practice and music journalism, the project functions as an ongoing correction of the public record. Your Grandma Is Funky centers Black women as innovators, authors, and cultural stewards. Current work focuses on research, writing, and developing the project’s archival framework, with future iterations expanding into digital platforms and public-facing media. Future iterations of the project will bridge the divide between the material and digital archives, public programming, mobile app technology, web3 and extended reality (XR).

Created by Rico Washington, a cultural archivist, writer, and interdisciplinary artist whose work has been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, Your Grandma Is Funky builds on a long-standing commitment to documenting Black life, memory, and cultural production.