The votes are in: CityBeat’s first official Culture Maker of the Week is Yemi Oyediran.
Oyediran was nominated by Jess Smith.
He spent nine years making “King of Them All,” the documentary on Cincinnati’s King Records that aired nationally on PBS in October 2025 and pulled an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Directing. The film treats King not as a footnote but as the integrated Cincinnati label that put Hank Ballard, James Brown and the Stanley Brothers on the same roster in a city that wasn’t supposed to allow it. He had his pick of major festivals and turned them down to premiere it at home, at the OTR International Film Festival, before it went out through PBS’s Open Call program for emerging filmmakers.
He’s a working jazz drummer with decades of sideman gigs in the local scene, and he’s served as music director at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and in theater around town. He’s taught computer science at Xavier and the University of Cincinnati. He sits on the boards of Friends of Music Hall and Carnegie in Covington, plus the national Percussive Arts Society. Right now he’s coordinating the King of Them All screening at the Garfield Theater and managing the tt stern-enzi Memorial Award campaign, a $5,000 prize for an emerging Cincinnati filmmaker.
Cincinnati culture doesn’t just happen. It’s built every day by artists, musicians, chefs, organizers, performers, business owners, neighborhood champions and wonderfully weird people who give this city its personality.
That’s why CityBeat is launching Culture Maker of the Week, a new contest celebrating the people who make Greater Cincinnati more vibrant, joyful, thoughtful and alive, whether they’re working center stage or quietly making things happen behind the scenes.
Nominees are submitted by you, and our editors pick the three up for voting. Read about this week’s contenders below, then cast your vote for the person you think deserves the title.
Stay tuned for the next round of voting!