Jul. 18—Former Dark Horse graduate Crystal Taylor has been making waves as a business owner in Raleigh and Durham through her love of music and community.
Taylor was a graduate of Clinton High School back in 2001 before going on to attend North Carolina Central University for Business Marketing — the place that put her on the path she's now on as both owner of her own creative agency, (The Underground Collective) and her own business (The Farmers Black Market) in Raleigh and Durham.
"I'm a country girl for sure, I'm from Clinton and I still have family there," Taylor said. "After I graduated in 2001 I went to Central, and when I went to Central, I got connected with some people through a business fraternity, Phi Beta Lambda. When I joined, it just helped inspire my whole thought around what kind of things I wanted to do, because I had no idea at that time what I wanted to do."
"All of that just gave me a very clear opportunity for me to figure out some things about my future plans."
It was then, following her graduation, that she had her eyes set on pushing her career forward in the field on marketing. It wasn't meant to be then, however, as struggle followed her out of college.
"When I graduated from school, I really thought that I was going to just work for this marketing agency, flourish in marketing and just do all these things," she said. "That was just not the case and it was a struggle out of college trying to figure out where I was going to work."
In her search for work, Taylor landed a job at Blue Cross but left to work for Medical Mutual before leaving to return to Blue Cross. It'd be on her return that a new position came available which helped put her current career into motion.
"When I went back to Blue Cross they made a position for me in marketing and I started working there again," she said. "I had such a great experience and I learned so much about project management and coordination. "
It was around this time that Taylor was also involved in her other life passion, music, as a curator. Something she felt deserved more attention as the need for it's cultural representation was sparse around her.
"Within that time, I was curating Hip Hop shows because I recognized there was nowhere I could go with my friends to simply smoke, get a shot and enjoy the type of music we grew up on," she said. "So that's when the idea came to me to start creating shows."
"I'm a band kid myself and I was in marching band for four years, Mr. John Lowe was my teacher and I was a section leader," she said. "Band was like my thing, it helped me in so many ways and it literally saved my life."
"When I got here and recognized this as a culture shock from Clinton and Durham, I was just like, Okay, I need to do something," Taylor added. "I just wanted to have events to have fun at and do stuff with my friends so I just started curating shows."
That lead to the start of her creative agency The Underground Collective in 2012 and her very own music festival, that's steadily growing, Beats n Bars Festival in 2015. An event she started with only $1500 that is now fully corporate sponsored.
"I started with producer battles which catapulted into a showcase that people would be able to come to and perform," she said. "It was about straight up enjoying that good hip hop music we grew up on. Not like some of the negative things you hear on the radio these days but, you know, good music. When people would come to the shows they'd always be like, oh my God, who's doing all these good shows and so I started my hip hop festival Beats n Bars."
"Crazy thing is I was unemployed then, which is a whole other story, but I started the festival with $1,500 and now it's corporately sponsored," Taylor said. "We have an NPR (National Public Radio) sponsor, plus American Tobacco Campus, and the Durham Bulls have sponsored."
Taylor even went on to form another event to help battle gentrification that was commonly happening, an event that grew to have 12,000 attendees.
"So some friends of mine reached out and asked did I want start this event for the community because gentrification was taking over rapidly here," she said. "With Durham being such a historically black base, like with apartment buildings and all these things, we started Black Artists in the Park. Now we've got like, 12,000 people coming to that event just to be able to come together and have a moment of black joy and a moment of liberation."
Through the success of her curating events the birth of her own business The Black Farmer's Market came into being. A idea that came to her following ongoing request she'd get about selling ware at her events.
"From that people wanted to sell stuff and we were like, no, we just want people to come hang out, listen to music, feel liberated, to have fun and a great time," Taylor said. "They keep telling us well, no, we want to sell stuff and so we said we'll just start a market."
"So we started The Black Farmers Market so people could have a space to come and sell their stuff and also fruits and vegetables," she continued. "As part of that we also wanted to reintroduced farming to the black community here because I'd hear people say — black farmers don't exist. Which always made me say, 'What do you mean, it's the longest entrepreneur job of black people.'"
Fast forward to today and Taylor's endeavors have continued to bear fruit. Her skills as a music curator itself landed her at the Governor's Manson by request.
"With all those things, the state reached out to me two years ago and said, 'we heard you're the person to curate, any and everything that we need," she said. "Actually the state has music trails, and many people don't know this, but North Carolina has an African American Music Trail and then a Blues Trail in Asheville."
"So with that they asked me to curate the trails, it runs through 10 counties of North Carolina and my job has been to curate that, to uplift it and revive it," Taylor added. "And to let people know about it throughout the state. So tourists can come and it helps to put money back into those rural communities as well."
"That's how I got asked to curate the Governor's, First Lady's Music at the Mansion and that was such a beautiful experience to be able to do that."
That was last month and Taylor isn't even close to slowing down either, as she detailed some of the future events she already has lined up.
"North Carolina has a new Freedom Park now, which is beautiful, and I'm curating that next month," she said. "Then I'm going to be doing the First Lady's Music at the Manson again at Tryon Palace in New Bern in December."
"So yeah, Clinton's truly got a great product right here, you know," she said with a laugh. "I'm excited, it's a lot of great work and now, if push come to shove, I have my own creative marketing firm. It's all a dream come true, I'm absolutely in love with the work that I do, the people I get to meet and being able to support rural community because I am from one of those places."
I recognize how Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh get all the love and all the support but you know, we country folk have something to say as well," she added laughingly. "We just want to make sure people know that as we work towards supporting and uplifting our black and brown communities."
To find out more about Taylor's business or about upcoming events and more visit their websites at www.beatsnbarsfestival.com and www.blackfarmersmkt.com/
Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.
