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Florinda is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator that I’ve been art-family with since 1998. Here she talks about tending not only to her art, and her communities, but to her own mental, physical, spiritual health. A Texas gurl who calls Austin home, Florinda has worked with Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Rude Mechs, the Vortex, Paper Chairs, Theater en Bloc and Teatro Vivo in Austin, TX and the Ensemble Theater in Houston.
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Influenced by nature, the earth, Spirit and early experiences with Douglas R. Ewart and Laurie Carlos. Mankwe says she found herself in Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge, which was filled with Black folk from all over the world. There she grew herself as a creative musician and composer - working to hear an expanded audio palette of color. https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-3
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In this conversation Renita speaks about being from Terry Mississippi/feeling the Angels, Ancestors, animal Life and Trees playing “all up in my head.” Renita talks about learning how to navigate Spirit, and growing towards her mission of advancing social and economic development in our communities through the creation and promotion of world-class art. More at: whoyopeopleis.com/season-3
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Aimee speaks of being from Detroit, raised southerners that migrated there. A founding company member of Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago, Aimee encourages emerging artists to build a Life and career centered in being kind, empathic, compassionate and Loving. She says, “Take a leap of faith, move towards what you want, what feels good - even if it is scary.”
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-3
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Sonja Parks has stayed true to her spirit by staying free, curious and expansively true to who she is professionally and in Life. After being an outsider - as a Black person in prominently White spaces - Sonja is dedicating her work to decolonizing artistic spaces. She wants to make certain that the “entire artist” is taken care of and respected. https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-3
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Stacey Karen Robinson shares that her work is “about the emotional and Spirit-Life of Black FOLX.” She speaks about walking with the Ancestors - being an improvisor, stewarding what is coming through - while creating time, space and containers for listening, vesseling, and allowing during the creative process. At the end of our conversation you will hear Stacey’s performance of the excerpt from “bull-jean & dem dey back/Dreaming”.
Visit: whoyopeopleis.com -
Season 3 will drop soonsoon! Stay tuned for more...
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Today we honor anthologized writer, regional theatre director, and Off-Broadway Obie Award winning performer Diane Rodriguez. Diane transitioned April 10, 2020 from cancer. May God Bless her Soul in Flight. May all the Love Beauty and Divine Blessings that she so Brilliantly and generously gave the world/carry her in Light with Love. I am SO grateful to have received Diane's support/encouragement and generosity, and that she made time for a conversation with me. You can Listen to episode 18 and receive her wisdom/and Glory. More about Diane at: https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/04/10/diane-rodriguez-a-light-and-a-fire
Season 2 of "Who Yo People Is" has come to a close. THANK YOU TO/YOU - TO ALL who worked/supported/are a part of this podcast series.
How PERFECT that/in closing - our very own Marine Mammal Apprentice/Alexis Pauline Gumbs reminds us, "We are powerful in what we say yes to and hold close." Now is a Divine Time to hold each other close/with Love, in Light, in Seeing, in Heart, in Virtual space, in Memories, in Prayer, with Intention. Alexis says, "one foot in the water one foot in the sand is where I hear the best." May we each find the space to Listen . . . and Receive.As I Dream and Listen/I want to thank Season 3 donors! See the list of donors and join in/if you can in helping$ to bring Season 3 to Life HERE
Stay tuned at http://whoyopeopleis.comWishing you/yours/and ALL safety-wellness-resource-Blessings-Beauty-and Love.
Till soonsoon!!
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An academic guided by intellectual practices inspired by Black liberation and Love, Alexis is a 2020-21 National Humanities Center Fellow. She says she is a Marine Mammal Apprentice...one who is carrying on blood line traditions of listening to whales. Alexis says, "one foot in the water one foot in the sand is where I hear the best."
Alexis speaks of coming from mental health and spiritual workers...shoreline people, oyster workers, church founders, freedom practicing people/and a grandmother who designed the revolutionary flag for Anguilla, and is founder of the Caribbean Mental Health Association. Always thinking about birthing, Alexis became a doula because her Mom (who is a therapist) is a doula - and she wanted to do mother-daughter doulaing.
Early on in her academic career Alexis asked herself, "what is the best way for me to do my intellectual work in community...what is a way that I can understand how this work has been happening...and how can I make those histories more visible". When I ask her what her Soul's mission Work is, she says she is here to help us know that "we are Loved, infinity Loved. That we have access to all the Love".
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, M Archive: After the End of the World, Dub: Finding Ceremony and the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. She was dramaturg for the world premiere of dat Black Mermaid Man Lady by Sharon Bridgforth, is the literary advisor for the Ntozake Shange Estate and the creative writing editor for Feminist Studies. Alexis, along with partner Sangodare, is in the midst of building the Mobile Homecoming Living Library and Archive in Durham, NC which sustains the lives and legacies of Black Feminist elders their legacy bearers and caregivers.whoyopeopleis.com
Alexis's website
Mobile Homecoming Project
Brillance Remastered
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Sangodare speaks of learning how to sermonize, study, have critical analysis, deep thinking about sacred texts/and how to have integrity as a spiritual leader - from her preacher father, and other preachers in her family. Creating energy and vibrational fields to open space for people to be more of who they are, Sangodare makes connections between the vocality of Black preaching styles, and Ifa oriki traditions and tonalities. Sangodare and her partner, Alexis Pauline Gumbs are actively visioning building an intergenerational assisted living, residential space. In addition to investigating sustainable models for collective economic practices and re-imagining collective wealth and investing - they are asking: what are the cultural practices, the sacred texts, the strategic plans, the songs, the welcomes and goodbyes - and how do we build trust.
Sangodare creates media and art for healing and transformation. Sangodare is an artist, filmmaker, composer and preacher. Along with primary collaborator, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sangodare co-created Mobile Homecoming (a national intergenerational experiential archive project that amplifies generations of Black LGBTQ brilliance) and Black Feminist Film School (which facilitates access to and discourse about Black Feminist films and provides film production opportunities to those most under-represented in film and media fields). As artist in residence at UMN (2017-19) and visiting faculty in Film Studies at Lawrence University (2017-18), Sangodare shared Black Feminist Film School approaches through teaching, events and exhibition.
More about Sangodare and all dem Guests at:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Sangodare's website
https://www.sangodare.comBlack Feminist Film School
https://blackfeministfilmschool.wordpress.comMobile Homecoming
https://www.mobilehomecoming.org -
Amara speaks of having family members who were Seers/that didn't talk about it - and how she learned to navigate her own Seeing. She names that we are living in present day traumatic stress syndrome as she talks about her walk with depression, learning to hold both grief and sorrow, and valuing what she has come to view as an opportunity to be bought into a space of darkness - darkness that holds possibility. Orisha traditions gave Amara a feeling of coming home and helped her move towards becoming more herself. Amara says that all her work is about healing. She says, "I am a death doula for patriarchy. Every piece is I make is really in service of helping patriarchy die."
Amara Tabor-Smith is a dancer, choreographer, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. Tabor-Smith’s work, as described by the artist, is Afro Futurist Conjure Art. Her dance making practice utilizes Yoruba spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. Tabor-Smith is a recipient of the 2018 USA Artists Award, the 2016 Creative Work Fund grant, the 2017 MAP Fund grant, and the 2017 Kenneth Rainin Foundation grant, and a co-recipient of the 2016 Creative Capital Grant with longtime collaborator, Ellen Sebastian Chang. In 2017, she received the UBW Choreographic Center Fellowship. Her work has been performed in Brazil, the Republic of the Congo, New York, and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area where her company is based. Tabor-Smith is an Artist in Residence at Stanford University and faculty at UC Berkeley.
More about Who Yo People Is: http://whoyopeopleis.com
Amara's Ed Mock Tribute: He Moved Swiftly but Gently Down the Not Too Crowded Street | Ed Mock and Other True Tales in a City that Once Was:
http://www.deepwatersdance.com/portfolio/hemovedswiftly
Support Amara and her collaborator Ellen Sebastian Chang's "New ChitlinCircuitry: Reparations Vaudeville":
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ReparationsVaudevilleCheck out Amara's website: http://www.deepwatersdance.com
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gina talks about the grief work that she currently does as being rooted in her people's histories of keening and wailing/as a way to move grief...grief being sometimes distant, sometimes intimate, and sometimes lineages old. gina says sound has helped her turn, dive into and surrender to the waves of grief - feeling it - as a way to release it. gina says, "I am deeply and profoundly interested in your freedom." With that in mind, she asks herself what is the sound that will set you free, what is the sound that will bring you back to yourself, your body and the absolute miracle of the cells in your blood/and what runs through that. gina says that all the work that she does is ritual. If you have ever experienced gina's Work, you know the truth of that.
Medicine woman gina Breedlove is a sound healing vocalist, composer, actor, & abolitionist from Brooklyn, NY. gina began her walk with spirit and music when she was 15 yrs old, singing behind the incomparable Phyllis Hyman, and then went on to tour with legendary artist and activist, Harry Belafonte. She created the role of "Sarabi", in The Lion King on B'way, and has appeared in 2 Spike Lee Joints; "Livin Da Dream", & "Chi-Raq", as an actor, and working on set as a Healer. gina tours the world with her music that she calls "folksoul", holding sound healing circles in every city she visits. She shares, "sound is the medicine that you walk with, and can bring you to presence in an instant" In Goddess culture gina Breedlove is a vocal priestess, think Dianne Reeves & Minnie Riperton having a prayer circle, you will leave lifted.
More about gina and all dem Guests at:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Check out gina's websites at:
http://ginaBreedlove.com
http://vibrationofGrace.com -
Ron shares some of his Journey growing up in Perry, Georgia being from story telling historians who primed him to be a critical thinker with things like post school pre-homework sermon sessions with his grandfather - centered on questions like "what does it mean to be a man and how can you grow into that all areas of your life?" Growing up singing as part of congregational choirs, Ron speaks about time traveling through song/Shape Shifting imposed assumptions.
Ron is co-shaper - with Rebecca Mwase - of Vessels - a seven-woman harmonic meditation on the transcendental possibilities of song during the Middle Passage…that asks, “What does freedom sound like in a space of confinement?” Junebug Productions is presenting Vessels, March 26-29.
Ron says, "I write, sing, compose, and make interdisciplinary performance work that integrates sound, text, and movement. My creative practice incorporates music of the African Diaspora, embodied ancestral memory, improvisational creative processes, liberation aesthetics, and the development and maintenance of spiritual technologies. My artistic work centers around the role of sound, and the un-amplified human voice in particular, in transforming our environment, our selves, and each other. I grew up in Perry, Georgia and received my earliest musical training at the Saint James Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. I live in New Orleans, make a mean red velvet cake, and can throw down on some biscuits."
More about Ron and all dem Guests at:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Ron's website:
https://ronragin.comVessels
http://www.vesselsperformance.comJunebug Productions
https://www.junebugproductions.org/2020 -
Rebecca speaks about: coming from deep connection to Spirit; growing up African in rural Arkansas; navigating belonging; finding fortitude through literature and the arts; and the work of crafting ritual in performance. Rebecca is Creator of "Vessels" a seven-woman harmonic meditation on the transcendental possibilities of song during the Middle Passage - that asks, “What does freedom sound like in a space of confinement?” Junebug Productions production of Vessels, co-shaped by Ron Ragin, opens March 26, 2020.
Rebecca is a Zimbabwean-American theater and performance artist, consultant, and cultural organizer working at the intersection of art and social justice. They craft performance, processes, workshops and curriculum that investigate possibilities for embodied revolution. Rebecca's work creates spaces to reckon with and release the impacts of oppression while deepening connection, healing and belonging.
More about Rebecca and all dem Guests:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2More about Vessels:
http://www.vesselsperformance.com -
Stephanie speaks about: being from singers and medicine people; growing through self-doubt imposed by the public school system; creating life-long friendships in art making spaces; her determination to make and hold space for Black creatives; and being part of a second generation of connection and partnerships between Junebug Productions and Urban Bush Women.
Stephanie is a performer, choreographer, educator, facilitator and cultural organizer based in New Orleans, LA. She is the Artistic Director for Junebug Productions Inc., the organizational successor to the Free Southern Theater (FST), which was formed in 1963 to be a cultural arm of the Civil Rights Movement and was a major influence in the Black Theater Movement. Stephanie is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a New Voices emerging leaders alumnus and has been a faculty member and facilitator for the Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute for over 10 years. As an artist, Stephanie believes art is for everyone and is deeply committed to creating art that substantively reflects disparate conditions, and leveraging that art as a powerful tool for change.
More about Stephanie and all dem Guests:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Junebug Productions:
https://www.junebugproductions.org -
I am proud to share my conversation with one of the most Beloved artist/scholar/community members of our times - Dr. E. Patrick Johnson! Patrick talks about growing up in North Carolina in communities where everyone made sure everyone was taken care of. He says that he owes who he is/how he moves in the world/how he theorizes/and what is possible in his life to his mom, her side of the family, and the sacrifices they made.
Patrick says that in these perilous times, he feels art is the thing that is going to save us and keep us sane...and so will grace. All who know him know - he not only is one of the hardest working/fiercely advocating/ground breaking/door openers...Patrick is the embodiment of Grace.
Patrick Johnson is the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar, artist, and activist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance. He is the author of several books, including, Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women. His stage play, Sweet Tea—The Play, premiered in Chicago at About Face Theater in 2010. He is also the co-executive producer of the documentary film, Making Sweet Tea.
More about Patrick and all dem Guests:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Patrick's website
http://www.epatrickjohnson.comPatrick's award winning film
https://sweetteafilm.comPatrick's newest book
https://www.dukeupress.edu/honeypot -
I am proud to offer this conversation with my Soul Brotha, Nick Slie. Here, Nick shares some of his Cajun family history as he speaks of being Spiritually rooted in his instincts and the ancestral connections therein. An artist that creates work that lives outside, Nick says "we are nature," so returning to being in the great mysteries and gentleness of outdoors returns him to his goal of being a better person. He speaks of harm done through lack of vulnerability, and not allowing people to show up and help and he talks about what doing his "sacred man work" that his Mom charged him with looks like. Nick does this work in formal and informal ways, such as a piece he is director of titled, "Esell: Ballad of a Land Man" - with Robert Martin - that looks at domination behavior and patriarchy: https://www.clearcreekcreative.net/ezell
Nick Slie is a New Orleans-born performer, producer and cultural organizer and the Co-Artistic Director of Mondo Bizarro. Since 2002, Nick has toured a wide array of imaginative projects to art centers, universities and outdoor locations in 38 states across the country and abroad. However, he is most proud of the work he does at home, in Southeast Lousiana, where the water kisses the land. Nick’s creative endeavors range from interdisciplinary solo performances to large-scale community festivals, from innovative digital storytelling projects to site-responsive productions. For more than a decade, he has been passionately engaged in rebuilding his hometown of New Orleans, collaborating across sectors on a vast array of local performance and arts-based civic engagement projects. From 2004- 2008, he served on the Executive Committee of Alternate ROOTS and is the former board chair for the Network of Ensemble Theaters. He currently serves on the board for Goat in the Road. Nick is thrilled to be currently directing Ezell: Ballad of a Land Man in addition to launching a new project with Mondo Bizarro called Invisible Rivers.
More at: http://mondobizarro.org
More about Nick and all dem Guests:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2Listen/subscribe and share:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com -
In this conversation Lisa speaks of growing up in a Louisiana based family with a long history of music and education traditions. She shares her Journey as someone with a life mission of creating synergy/serving connection . . . and the fruits of that, which include RedBone Press. One of the architects of the Fire & Ink writers festival for GLBT people of African decent, Lisa talks about the work and research that went into working with Joseph Beam's mother, Dorothy Beam, to re-print, Brother to Brother and In the Life. Always graceful, humble and fierce, Lisa lays down words of wisdom for people trying to be in their Yes in the face of no.
Lisa C. Moore is the founder and editor of RedBone Press which publishes award-winning work celebrating the culture of black lesbians and gay men and promoting understanding between black gays and lesbians and the black mainstream. Moore is the editor of does your mama know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories, co-editor of Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity, and co-editor, co-compiler and co-publisher (with Vintage Entity Press) of Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books. In addition to her work as a publisher, Moore is a reference archivist at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans.
More about Lisa and all dem Guests:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2More about RedBone Press:
http://redbonepress.com -
Alicia Bauman-Morales is an Oakland born Boricua tomboi, a queer woman, a dancer/organizer/performer/trouble maker. During our conversation Alicia brings the wealth of her Ancestry forward by calling the names of many in her blood lineage as she speaks of coming from fantastical storytellers, people committed to doing things on their own terms. Alicia shares a bit about her piece: huracán: storm medicine - a personal dance story, living altar and town hall about destruction, translation, and the transformative power of storms. And she names some of her influences, as she shares her Journey of learning how to nurture/and be in her body.
Alicia's performance practice is shaped by Oakland turf dance (she grew up in Oakland and her first studio was the sidewalk), tomboy physicality, house dance, martial arts, kitchen and backyard salsa, altar building, western modern forms and, recently, Step. She is or has been a proud collaborator/performer with Arthur Aviles Typical Theater, NWA Project, Renegade Performance Group, MBDance, Brown Girls Burlesque, Roots and River Productions and PISO Proyecto, and has shown work in four of the five boroughs of New York and Puerto Rico. She is a proud organizer with ACRE, Artists Co-Creating Real Equity.
Regarding organizing in solidarity with people in Puerto Rico right Alicia suggests, "direct support of our people in PR via donations of money and supplies, and by writing notes...and putting political pressure on politicians in the U.S" and check out: Colectivo Ilé https://colectivo-ile.org, a women's collective doing racial justice work and community sustainability through women's entrepreneurship.
During our conversation Alicia names some of her teachers and influences/including:
Amara Tabor-Smith http://www.deepwatersdance.com
Arthur Aviles http://www.baadbronx.org/arthur-aviles-typical-theater.html
jumatatu m. poe https://www.jumatatu.org
Luisah Teish https://www.yeyeluisahteish.com
Marc Bamuthi Joseph https://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/B305518More about Alicia at:
https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/season-2 -
"Who Yo People Is" jingle sanga, episode editor, season 2 producer - my daughter - Sonja Perryman is Guest Host for this episode!! Sonja interviews my wife/her other Mama - Omi Osun Joni L. Jones!!!
Omi talks about growing up in Chicago's Southside suburbs - the youngest in a Black middle class family/raised by folks that migrated from the South - and their protocols. She shares about what initially moved her towards her long term/ongoing connection to Yoruba spiritual practices; she names her gratitude to the Ancestors as a source of Inspiration that she leans into when she is afraid or overwhelmed by her work and goals. And after 40 years of teaching (28 of which was at University of Texas at Austin) Omi speaks about walking with herself post retirement/discovering and activating her work now . . . and her role models for how to be an academic without being connected to (one) institution/which include: Alexis Pauline Gumbs (https://www.alexispauline.com), Celeste Henry.
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’ work is committed to exploring strategies for promoting healthy communities through personal Joy. She is an artist/scholar/facilitator who employs Black Feminist aesthetics in her performance work, her pedagogy, and her consulting. She has performed at The New Black Fest (NYC), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and Links Hall (Chicago), and has served as a workplace facilitator with Thousand Currents (Oakland) and NoVo Foundation (NYC). Her scholarship has appeared in The Drama Review, Obsidian, and Theatre Journal as well as solo/black/woman and Blacktino Queer Performance. Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power for the Present Moment (Ohio State University Press). She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
https://www.theatricaljazzbookparty.com
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caaas/faculty/jij2555Guest Host: Sonja Perryman is a screenwriter, producer, performer, and facilitator, with an MPH from UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. She has a passion for telling female-driven, diverse stories that explore socially relevant issues in unexpected ways. Her work includes: Director of Research & Development at Wise Entertainment, where she also served as associate producer on Hulu’s six-time Emmy-nominated television show, East Los High; associate producer on Time 2 Surrender, an award-winning short film written, directed, and starring actor Elvis Nolasco and executive produced by Spike Lee; and season 2 staff writer for the Facebook Watch show, Five Points, executive produced by Kerry Washington. Sonja serves on the board of FYI Films, a non-profit that teaches filmmaking to incarcerated youth, and has been a guest lecturer and keynote speaker at institutions around the country. More at: https://www.whoyopeopleis.com/jingle
- Visa fler
