Grammy-nominated musician Pierce Freelon stopped by Live and Local this week to discuss his new album “AnceStars” – and its role in this year’s Paperhand Puppet Intervention show.

Learn more about Pierce at PierceFreelon.com.

Released in May, “AnceStars” is a first-time collaboration between Pierce and his mother Nnenna Freelon, a six-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist. For Pierce, the album is both a continuation and a break of sorts: it’s his third children’s album already this decade, after “D.A.D.” and “Black to the Future” – but while Pierce’s art and music often lean toward Afrofuturism, “AnceStars” hearkens back to the past.

Inspired in part by the life of Pierce’s father, the late famed architect Phil Freelon, he and Nnenna created 13 songs that interrogate their connection with their ancestors – celebrating not only their own family legacy, but also the tradition, the folklore, the contributions, and the spirit of Black people in general and humanity writ large. “AnceStars” also explores the cyclical nature of life and time: how the past is everpresent in the now and the future, and how birth and death feed and grow out of each other.

“AnceStars” has been out since May, but local residents now have a chance to experience the music in an all-new way. This year, Paperhand Puppet Intervention is using the Freelons’ songs as the basis for their beloved annual show.

This year’s show, “Where Our Spirits Reside,” features puppetry inspired and informed by the music and the message of “AnceStars.” (The Freelons aren’t the only contributors: the Paperhand show is also incorporating poetry, from former Chapel Hill poet laureate CJ Suitt and current North Carolina poet laureate Jaki Shelton Green.)

Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s show is on stage at Chapel Hill’s Forest Theatre, every weekend through September 17.

Visit Paperhand.org for tickets and a full performance schedule.

Pierce Freelon stopped by Live and Local to discuss the album and play the song “Little Mushroom.”

Listen:

 

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