HEART & SOUL: Songs of Peace strikes a chord for connection
- Gwenyfar Rohler
- Aug 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 18
It is the summer of 2025. In the Port City, two long-nurtured dreams are journeying toward reality. On August 30, from 6-9 p.m. at Waterline Brewing, Wilmington Peace Festival and Encore present Songs of Peace, a fundraiser for both organizations.
For Anna Mann, Founder and Director of Wilmington Peace Festival (WPF), this has been an idea of hers throughout a decade's long career in local music events. For Shannon Rae Gentry, relaunching the Cape Fear's Alternative Voice is necessary for the heart and soul of our community. For both women, Songs of Peace is a first step toward something bigger. For Mann, a full-scale music, arts, and peace festival in 2026. For Gentry, a community centered media group that houses our beloved alternative press and pursues the stories and conversations that connect us.
Mann is known to many people in town as the organizing energy behind Carolina Pine Music Festival and Alt-Zalea Fest.
"I was in film school in 2014 and a friend of mine had just dropped out of college and he's a musician so he wanted me to film music videos for him,” Mann recalls, "and we didn't do that—we ended up starting Carolina Pine Music Series."
Rebecca Todd, L Shaped Lot, Randy McQuay, and a host of other local musicians found their way in front of the camera for the series.
Then came Alt-Zalea, a collaboration with Allister Snyder of Detour Deli (now, The Half) in the Brooklyn Arts District to highlight as much local music as possible, showcased in local businesses on arguably the busiest Saturday of the year: during Azalea Festival weekend. After 10 years, and Alt-Zalea swelling to 14 venues with 98 performers in 2025, Mann says the community seemed ready to embrace a bigger project with a greater impact: Wilmington Peace Festival. Its mission: to inspire, educate, and mobilize us toward a culture of peace within ourselves, our communities, and our world.
"I want to bring in people like Rhiannon Giddens," Mann notes of who she’d like to see billed for its inaugural event in 2026. "The high goal is someone like Joan Baez—it's scary to admit, but it's what I want.”
Songs of Peace will feature five musical acts singing only songs of peace, including The Port City Ukuholics, Jesse Stockton, Jesse James DeConto (The Pinkerton Raid) Kelly Zullo, and Nate Gerry. In addition to music, Songs of Peace will offer speakers, interactive art, and poetry.
"People who perform and speak will get paid based on how much we raise,” Mann adds, "they'll get a percentage and then a percentage will go to each organization."
The speaker line up includes TR Nunley, Program Coordinator for Wilmington Transgender Support Services and Homeless Street Outreach Social Worker for New Hanover County; Velva Jenkins, CEO of the YWCA of the Lower Cape Fear; Dr. Leslie Daspit, Senior Lecturer in International Studies at UNCW; and Rev. Meg McBride, Pastor of Hope Recovery Faith Community and Neighborhood Center and Director of The Warming Shelter. The Warming Shelter opens on the coldest nights in Wilmington to serve Wilmington's unhoused community.
From the artistic expression of peace on display to the speaker selection of the day, this event seems to fit with Gentry's vision for the relaunch of Encore.
"Songs of Peace is a chance for people to see who else is here trying to do the work of bridging divides. I think things like apathy, anger, and bad actors lead us away from meaningful connection with ourselves, the people around us, and the world at large," Gentry explains.
For over 35 years the familiar square newsprint of Encore arrived on Wednesdays to restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and entertainment venues throughout the area. The pages, filled with local news, reviews of theatre, music, and film, provided a blueprint to everything happening culturally in our area from auditions to gallery openings, election forums to tour groups. With Encore in hand, you were connected to the pulse and life of the community.
Encore was founded in 1984, and only missed one week of printed issues (due to a hurricane) ... until Covid hit in 2020 and left a palpable void behind for many. Gentry, who served as the Assistant Editor from 2015-2020, set out to revive Encore.
"I kept looking around at the dwindling local media ecosystem—how hard it’s becoming for accessible, free, community-rooted reporting—but also this deep disconnect with community and people.
"The turning point came when I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling disconnected. When we started hosting our focus groups, people across the arts and creative sectors kept echoing the same thing: there’s a crisis in how we communicate, how we stay informed, how we trust each other. Encore, or something like it, could be a way for us to reconnect—and not just to what’s happening around town, but to each other."
Thus the vision for Encore's return is rooted in the community partnerships, with events like the Wilmington Peace Festival and the Stone Soup Zine Festival on August 9, 2025 at the Hannah Block Community Arts Center.
"Wilmington Peace Festival and Stone Soup are both rooted in this idea that community isn’t just something we inherit—it’s something we create. They're platforms for creative expression, civic engagement, and shared humanity. And that’s exactly what Encore is trying to uplift," Gentry notes. "Stone Soup Zine Fest is Encore’s opportunity to connect with zines, comics, and creatives for new connective storytelling and potential collaborations. We also launched a comic strip contest and will announce a winner at Stone Soup on August 9 and they’ll be published with Encore."
Both Mann and Gentry recognize that Songs of Peace is a first step, not the finish line, and that by collaborating across the community they can keep on course.
"I want Wilmington Peace Festival 2026 to connect all the different organizations in town and even further out of town that are already doing work for peace. In a way that maybe they have not been able to connect before," Mann pauses. "Not exactly sure how we're going to do that yet, I think including as many organizations as possible in the festival and other related events that we do is going to be an important part."
Gentry concurs, "I want people connected again. I want us to talk to each other and really listen. I want us to build trust in journalism again, especially local journalism, and the people behind it (your neighbors who went to school and trained to do this work) who are trying—often against the odds—to get it right."
Details:
Saturday, August 30, 6-9 p.m.
