Black Life: Newsletter Five
Two events with artist and filmmaker Darol Olu Kae, a new podcast episode featuring jose e. abad and more ~
Welcome back to Black Life. We’re excited to announce two events with our resident guest artist for this season, a new podcast episode and as always, some recommendations from our worlds to yours.
Black Life Resident Guest Artist: Darol Olu Kae
Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker Darol Olu Kae will host a special radio transmission on Oakland internet radio station Lower Grand Radio on the evening of Sunday, November 29 at 6pm. The radio program feature a playlist and a conversation exploring the dynamic universe of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the community that shapes their world and inspires their creations. Drummers Mekala Session and Jamire Williams will discuss the musical selections which are grounded in the history of the Ark and their enduring and evolving legacy in Los Angeles’ music scene. This radio experiment serves as a sonic prelude to KEEPING TIME, the forthcoming short film project from Kae. You can tune to Kae’s radio program online on Lower Grand Radio’s website at the time of transmission. We’ll send a short and sweet reminder via this newsletter just before the show goes live on the airwaves.
Next up, Kae will screen a visual mix, a curated selection of interviews, experimental films and home movies from the Pacific Film Archive. Conversation excerpts from Angela Davis, Jonas Mekas and Les Blank amongst others will be show alongside other selections of Kae that dive into experimental and mundane. Expect works by Shirley Clarke, Jean-Luc Godard and others. Please do join us for this screening which will be hosted by Locally Grown TV on Thursday December 3 at 4:30pm. RSVP here.
Black Life Podcast
The Black Life podcast guest this go around is jose e. abad, a queer social practice performance artist based in San Francisco whose work explores queer futurity through an intersectional lens. They talk about their transition from administrative work for a graduate school to entering the world of experimental dance, the woes of performative liberal politics, and the power of art as a social and political tool.
Born in Olongapo City, Philippines, to a Filipinx mother and a West Indian father, jose uses dance and storytelling to explore the complexities of cultural identity, feelings of landlessness, and the memories and wisdom held within the body that the mind has forgotten and history has erased. They have performed in New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco in collaboration with a variety of companies and artists including Keith Hennessy, Scott Wells, Anne Bluethenthal, Brontez Purnell Dance Company, #DignityInProcess, and Detour Dance. Find jose on instagram, soundcloud and on the Black Life Podcast below:
& via Apple Podcast
Black Life Recommendation at BAMPFA
“On a chilly March weekend in 1972, some ten thousand Black politicians, artists, academics, and journalists assembled in Gary, Indiana, for the historic National Black Political Convention. Welcoming delegates from across the political spectrum, Gary’s Mayor Richard Hatcher denounced the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions as debauched democracy for the privileged few and called for the creation of a unified political agenda addressing the needs of Black Americans that could be leveraged at the 1972 party conventions. William Greaves captures the energy and urgency of the weekend, which featured appearances by Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King, Bobby Seale, Isaac Hayes, Dick Gregory, Harry Belafonte, and others. Poet and activist Amiri Baraka, one of the organizers of the event, eschews Robert’s Rules of Order for what he calls African Consensus, and in the foyer Queen Mother Moore lobbies for reparations. The documentary is narrated by Sidney Poitier but its star is Reverend Jesse Jackson, whose exhilarating speech provides the title. “What time is it?” He repeatedly asks the crowd. “NATIONTIME!” they exclaim.” —Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator at BAMPFA
BLACK ART MIXTAPE: #04 I PUT SUGAR ON MINE
1. 536 I Put Sugar on Mine
They tell me this is a true story. This is very true. Somebody was driving by the Williamsburg Asylum. This mam had a load of compost on the wagon. So the man yelled out the window to him, and said, “What’s that you got in your wagon?”
He said, “Well, it’s compost.”
He [inmate] laughed, “Oh, how foolish! What you gon’ do with it?”
He said, “I’m go’ put it on my strawberries.”
He [inmate] laughed. He said, “Ha, ha, how foolish! I put sugar on mine.”
From Shuckin and Jivin: Folklore From Contemporary Black Americans by Daryl Cumber Dance
2. All the Pretty Little Horses by Fannie Lou Hamer
3. Pizza Pizza Daddy-O:
4. 530 On How to Get Rid of Man
Get rid of a man by taking some pepper when he leave and sprinkle it behind him.
From Shuckin and Jivin: Folklore From Contemporary Black Americans by Daryl Cumber Dance
Take good care,
Ruth & Ryanaustin