3/31/23: TESTIFY : A Centennial Reading for James Baldwin
Join us for a collective ritual reading performance celebrating the life and works of James Baldwin. RSVP/TIX: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/testify-a-ritual-reading-for-james-baldwin-tickets-1983460640168
On March 31st, you are invited to witness Testify, the fourth performance in a series of Ritual Readings celebrating the work of Black literary ancestors in the African diaspora. Testify celebrates the life and works of James Baldwin by gathering artists, scholars, activists, spiritual workers, and everyday people to create a shared space for grief, reflection, and ancestral veneration. Readers perform as a choir to create sound, music, and movement through an embodied engagement with the text, and the public is invited to bear witness and engage through deep listening, stillness, and call-and-response.
This reading is conducted by Courtney Desiree Morris and Martín Perna. Readers include Brett Cook, Odaymar Cuesta, Babatunji Johnson, Khalil Anthony Peebles, Brontez Purnell, Bryant Terry, Zekarias Musele Thompson, Henry Washington Jr., and Marvin K. White.
Testify is supported by Berkeley Civic Arts, E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF, and the UC Berkeley departments of Gender & Women's Studies, African American Studies, and English.
This happened....rocking with Togetherness Ensemble at Gray Area Mission SF
My plan was to have had this post up before this happened, but it was a crazy week. So it’s in past tense. On 10-26 I performed with the Togetherness Ensemble as part of an emergent composition in four movements. the first three movements featured eight different musicians and we all got together for the fourth. You had to be there. I met a lot of really wonderful people, most of whom for the very first time. It feels good to be part of a musical community again.
The Togetherness Ensemble is convened on occasion by Zekarias Musele Thompson to hold space for communal resonance through collective improvisation. Prompted by the historical and contemporary creative sensibilities of African and African diasporic peoples, and the possibilities of emergent composition as the scaffolding for recognizing ourselves as free.
The Togetherness Ensemble made its debut interpreting James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, during closing performance of Possible Dialogues: Vol 1 in July 2023 at the BAMPFA.
For this fifth iteration we will explore Togetherness in three parts with a new composition titled RE-EDUCATION. Inspired by the current moment, the ecstatic motions of Alice Coltrane’s 1972 epic Lord of Lords, as well as Floating Points' and Pharoah Sanders' 2021 collaboration, Promises.
RE-EDUCATION
Movement 1: A Curiosity
Movement 2: A Recognition
Movement 3: A Promise
with: Salimatu Amabebe, Matt Brownell, Gabriele Christian, Roco Córdova, B Dukes, Christopher Robin Duncan, Mary Graham, Cat Lauigan, Phillip Laurent, Amina Malika, Micah Morris, Maya Nixon, Jasmine Nyende, Martin Perna, Justin (Hongry) Robinson, Benjamin Rodgers, Joel St. Julien, Zekarias Musele Thompson, David Wilson, Josh Wismans, and Gaia WXYZ.