The Blues Music Award on stage
at the Chicago Festival

Barbara Newman, CEO of the Blues Foundation, gave Shemekia Copeland her Blues Music Award

Shemekia won the Contemporary Blues Female Artist Award at the Blues Music Awards in May in Memphis. She couldn’t be there as she was performing in New York.

Barbara Newman, president and CEO of the Blues Foundation, came to Chicago to deliver it in person, this Friday June 10, on the Petrillo Music Shell stage, in front of tens of thousands festival-goers, right before Shemekia’s performance, her first as a headliner at the Chicago Blues Festival.