Black Brooklyn Renaissance Conference and Concert

Brooklyn College
Saturday, October 23, 2010
11:00 AM-7:00 PM

Black Brooklyn Renaissance is a landmark, two year-long research, planning, and presentation initiative coordinated by the Brooklyn Arts Council. Through field research, a series of public performances and workshops, and a scholarly conference, we will bring to light and celebrate the many ways Black performing artists working in music, dance, and spoken word have contributed to the borough's significance as a center of Black culture in New York.

The Harlem Renaissance is the project's symbolic point of departure, in that the literary and jazz-infused Harlem era of the early-20th century finds a powerful counterpoint in Brooklyn of the mid- to late-20th century to the present. In this era, Brooklyn has evolved as a site of diverse Black cultures: African American, Afro-Caribbean, and West African diasporic. Brooklyn's Renaissance, initiated during the Civil Rights period and continuing in the age of Obama, is based in community arts and community rituals that mark distinct legacies as well as creative intersections. These are preserved and performed in a range of artistic styles such as West Indian steel pan and calypso, Afro-Caribbean ceremonial music and dance, West African drumming, West African traditional and contemporary dance, southern African-American gospel music and preaching, hip hop and free-style poetry, and jazz. The project will examine how migration, immigration, and political movements have galvanized these cultural expressions while drawing attention to the evolving interplay between Afro-Caribbean, southern African American, and African traditions.

PANELS
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library

11:00 AM
Historical Reflections on the Black Brooklyn Renaissance with jazz pianist Randy Weston and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, African percussionist Obara Wali Rahman Ndiaye, and Everybody's Magazine editor Herman Hall.

NOON
Greg Tate - Refractions from the Renaissance: An Exploded View of Brooklyn Culture, 1980-2010

1:00 PM
Scholars Round Table rsvp: isam@brooklyn.cuny.edu

2:30 PM
Ceremony and Festival Traditions with Professor Dale Byam (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Afro-Caribbean performing arts coordinator Michael Manswell, and gospel singer Ivan Jackson.

4:00 PM
The New Hybridity in Music and Dance with Professor Kyra Gaunt (Baruch College, CUNY), jazz composer Fred Ho, dancer/choreographer Baraka de Soleil, and hip hop scholar Joseph Schloss.

MUSIC PERFORMANCES

1:00 PM - Brooklyn College Library
Afro-Caribbean Drumming and Up-rocking Brooklyn Style with Frisner Augustin, José Ortiz, the Dynasty Rockers, and others

6:00 PM - Levenson Recital Hall
Brooklyn Jazz with the New Cookers, featuring Kenyatta Beasley (trumpet), Keith Loftis (sax), and Anthony Wonsey (piano).

Presented by the H.Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music and the Department of Africana Studies at Brooklyn College in conjunction with Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) and Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation as part of Black Brooklyn Renaissance: Black Arts + Culture, 1960-2010, sponsored by the MetLife Foundation. Support for The Black Brooklyn Renaissance Conference and Concert is provided by the New York Council for the Humanities, Astoria Federal Savings and Eleanor Archie.