Open Line: Roll Call

A short introduction to the world of Bicentennial Baby through layered voices, memories, obsessions, and sonic fragments. Part mixtape, part memoir, "Roll Call" tunes listeners into the frequencies that shape the series.

Bicentennial Baby was created and produced by Yolanda Wisher for ArtPhilly’s WhatNow 2026 Festival. The series was stitched and spun by sound engineer V. Shayne Frederick. 

Transcript

Yolanda: Hello? Yeah. I'm here. What you gettin into tonight? Alright, stay on the line for a second. 

1976. Fireworks, flags, soul records drifted out the window. America is throwing itself a 200th birthday party. And somehow, we arrived right in the middle of all that jazz. I'm Yolanda Wisher, and this is Bicentennial Baby. Conversations with six other Philadelphians born in 1976. All of us staring down 50 and trying to make sense of what we inherited. These are stories about survival, contradiction, joy, grief, memory, and the blessing of being here. Before each voice steps out on its own, first, we gather.

***

Stewart: March 11th

Naila: 3/18

Michi: March 29th.

Kenny: September 19th.

Maleka: December 15th.

Laurie: December 23rd.

Maleka: 1976.

Kenny: This year is the kickoff point. The jump-off. And everybody invited!

Michi: You know what? I think the opening line is beautiful: “We the people.” I mean that like, you can't really get a lot better than that.  

Maleka: Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, ThunderCats!

Stewart: I remember growing up, my uncle for one of my birthdays—maybe it was when I was born—gave me like a framed—he had framed every coin.

Kenny: It said 1776 on it. That was the year that America became America, the Declaration of Independence. That was the year I was born.

Naila: I’m about change. I'm about to, you know, as a Bicentennial Baby, wanting to wanting to make the world a better place, you know? And I'm not just going to let it go, you know…

Michi: There's something there, like, we live on a pivot. We're gonna be those last people who are going to be able to tell you about certain things. You know?

Maleka: We're at the end, and we're right in the beginning.

Michi: I lost a good, good friend when I was 25. It is very cliché, but the lesson that that instantly teaches you, I think, as a young person is that, um, it's, it's amazing to get old. It's a gift.

Stewart: It is difficult for me to think of myself as sort of a future person, but that's the only thing I can be. That's where I'm gonna wind up. I'm not going to wind up in the past, and I never thought I wanted to.

Naila: Like, almost like they knew like, this is, this is the year we were this Bicentennial year, we're going to make sure they have all the stuff, but we're cutting it off after that. Nobody else gets all this stuff.

Kenny: Our generation, everything was big, big hair, high top fade, big earrings, but also big dreams.

***

Naila: Power, knowledge, and perseverance.

Michi: And I'm wearing this shirt that has a Campbell’s soup can on it. Campbell's was obviously a local company, and we were boycotting it. Um, and the shirt just says “Cream of Exploitation.”

Kenny: 1985 and 1986 was when being a young kid born in 1976, is when things started to get real.

Laurie: The thing that I do think is sort of special to the Bicentennial Babies, a thing if I'm like chatting with someone for long enough about this era, which is, um, the Vietnam War.

Naila: It always kind of felt like because she always would talk about being a bicentennial baby. I was like, okay, well, it got stuck in the back of my head somewhere that probably that I'm supposed to be part of the movement of this country. Not, without having any idea how or why.

Michi: I think I was born at the end of a certain American delusion.

Stewart: When people say patriotism, I get nervous because I think they're going to start talking about nationalism.

Kenny: So for our household, it was different because not only was it a sense of pride for the flag, but it was almost like a middle finger to everybody who tried to keep them from getting to that point, too.

Laurie: I don't know what it, what it means to compare countries anymore.

Maleka: We need each other for sustainability in every way imaginable.

Naila: We love this place where, in theory, we can be free, but as a black person, it's still only a theory.

Michi: But it was the first time in my life, and I felt like a politician was speaking to my America. Like saying, like we're American. And I was like, I am American, actually.

Kenny: I got love for everybody because America is all of us. We are all here together.

Laurie: I didn't feel like we had a story about our own time. We were, like, at the tail end of whatever…

Naila: We're not our ancestors. We are the survivors of everything that our ancestors went through.

***

If these stories resonated with you, stay with us. Follow Bicentennial Baby wherever you listen to podcasts. Share this series with someone who grew up alongside, after, or ahead of you.

Bicentennial Baby was created and produced by Yolanda Wisher for ArtPhilly’s WhatNow 2026 Festival. The series was stitched and spun by sound engineer V. Shayne Frederick. 

Special thanks to executive assistant Maya Björnson, designer Elliot Waters-Fleming, and photographer Mochi Robinson for their support.  

With sisterly affection. Peace.