GREAT GRIEF

WITH NNENNA FREELON

A podcast about loving greatly through grief.

Wailing Women, Season 1 of the podcast Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon
—available now on all platforms

From the mind and lived experience of celebrated jazz artist Nnenna Freelon, Great Grief is a life-honoring outpouring of word, story, and song that plumbs the depths of her own sorrow after the death of her beloved husband, Philip and her sister, Debbie Irene.

The award-winning podcast Great Grief re-emerges this summer at Scalawag as a dynamic space through podcasts and live events for Black women to indulge our griefs, savor our loves, and mourn in community. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences, topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love.

A new season drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Find community at the next Great Grief: Live! event, by joining the Great Grief Facebook group, and reading more stories from Scalawag's ongoing commitment with grief.

In the four-episode season "Wailing Women," Nnenna uses music and story to focus on the intimate beauty and irreparable sorrow we know as Black women, with episodes touching on the shock of widowhood, the bittersweet of sisterhood, and the love-hate journeys many of us have with our hair. As we give voice to the wailing women within, we find more than tears. We also find new songs. 

Subscribe and listen to all four episodes of the first season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon wherever you listen to podcasts—and read along on our site with new episode transcripts as they drop every other week:

Latest episode

Sister Sister

No woman makes it through life without a sister. Through faith, family, and struggle, we inhabit a deep solidarity that allows us to hold one another close, even at the very end. Nnenna Freelon walks us through her journey of losing her sister, Debbie.

Read the full episode transcript.

more from Season 1

When Grief Speaks

Grief is a woman with plenty to say. In the first episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon asks us to consider what happens if we stop running from our grief, sit down, and listen to her for a change. Listen and read along with the podcast transcript.

Read the full episode transcript.
IN CONVERSATION:

More press for Great Grief:

Nnenna and Pierce Freelon's individual albums were inspired by a common thread: family grief. The first mother and son to be individually nominated in different categories in the same year call their double Grammy nods a "beautiful coincidence."

— TODAY

"When [Freelon] started putting the podcast together last winter—with the help of an all-Black women team—she realized that of the podcasts that deal with loss, Black women's voices weren't present enough."

— Essence

"Neither the spectre of annihilation that threatened to consume Freelon after her husband's death, nor the gentrification of Durham, nor the ongoing death-dealing effects of the Middle Passage, will keep her from singing these new changes."

— Scalawag

Nnenna Freelon (host/creator) is a Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist, music educator, arts advocate, producer and arranger who has achieved international acclaim in both recording and live performance. Follow her latest updates at: nnenna.com

Andrew Berinson (musical accompanist) is a pianist, composer and educator born and based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Andrew's debut album as a leader, Of Love, was released in April 2019. He performs with his own trio (THRIO) and as a musical accompanist on various projects.

Great Grief is produced for Scalawag by OnlyUs Media, with the support of Arts & Soul Editor-at-Large Alysia Nicole Harris, and Executive Director Cierra Hinton. From the heart of Downtown Durham, OnlyUs is a media company that seeks to shake up the music industry and what it means to build a legacy by producing revolutionary media, events, and workshops that bring power to the artist. Great Grief was originally produced by Lindsay Foster Thomas, Stacia Brown, and Sean Roux for WUNC 91.5, North Carolina Public Radio.