Pierce Freelon

Pierce Freelon is a GRAMMY® nominated musician, author, and educator from Durham, North Carolina. Pierce has traveled the world teaching Hip Hop and music production as co-creator of Beat Making Lab, an Emmy Award-winning PBS web-series. He is the writer, composer and co-director of the animated series History of White People in America, an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival. Pierce is also the founder of Blackspace, an Afrofuturism digital maker space for Durham youth. 

He has taught in the departments of Political Science, Music and African, African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina Central University. Pierce’s critically acclaimed children’s music has been featured on Today Show, NPR, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Now This, Parents Magazine, MSNBC with Reverend Al Sharpton and more. 

His album BLACK TO THE FUTURE was nominated for Best Children’s Music Album at the 2022 GRAMMY® Awards, the same year his mother Nnenna Freelon’s album TIME TRAVELER was nominated for Best Jazz Album — making Recording Academy history as the first mother and son to be nominated for golden gramophones in different fields at the same GRAMMY Awards. His debut Children's picture book, DADDY-DAUGHTER DAY was published by Little, Brown books in 2022. Freelon is a former city Councilman, a husband and a father of two based in Durham, North Carolina.