THE BLACK BROOKLYN RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE AND CONCERT

Saturday, October 23, 11am-7pm 
Brooklyn College 

Conference: 11am-5pm, Woody Tanger Audtitorium Concert: 6-7pm, Levenson Recital Hall 
2900 Campus Rd. & Hilel Pl. (Flatbush)

A day-long celebration of Black Arts in Brooklyn, from Carnival Music and African drumming to jazz, hip hop, and post-modern dance. Our distinguished group of artists, critics, and activists explored the music, dance, and ceremonial practices that have made Brooklyn a global center of Black culture over the past fifty years. Free! 

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS PANELS
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
11:00AM
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

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

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

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

4:00PM
The New Hybridity in Music and Dance with Professor Kyra Gaunt (Baruch College, CUNY), drummer Neil Clarke, 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, Jose Ortiz, the Dynasty Rockers, and others

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

ARTIST BIOS

Frisner Augustin was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he studied ritual drumming in the temples of Vodou. In 1972 he emigrated to New York, where he established himself as a master drummer in Vodou rituals, as a performer for Haitian community festivals, and as a drum instructor. In 1981 Mr. Augustin took over the direction of the company La Troupe Makandal. His recordings with the Troupe (A Trip to Voodoo, Erzili, and The Drums of Vodou) feature his settings of traditional Afro-Haitian dances. He has recorded as well for jazz artist Kip Hanrahan and for the soundtrack of the film Beloved. Because of his dedication, he received a People's Hall of Fame award from the cultural center City Lore, and a Certificate of Achievement from the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. In 1999 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a National Heritage Fellowship, this nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.Keenly aware of the negative stereotyping of Vodou, Maestro Augustin uses his drum to recast the mystery of the religion from a positive perspective.

Kenyatta Beasley grew up on New Orleans' West Bank. His father was a regular on the NOLA music scene, and his he was always by his side. At 9, Kenyatta was hand picked to portray Louis Armstrong in a touring performance of Satchmo: America's Musical Legend (1986), and in 1991 enrolled in the esteemed New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. After graduation, Kenyatta traded The Big Easy for The Big Apple and attended the Mannes School of Music, where he received his BA in Jazz Composition and Performance. He lives in the Brooklyn, where he has accepted the proverbial torch that's been passed down through decades of great musicians.

Dale Byam is an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College. Her work has developed primarily in the field of theater for development in Africa and the diaspora. In recent times she has been focusing her attention on the African transnation and the demise of Afro indigenous art forms in the Caribbean. She is attempting to document the transformations in Afro indigenous performance in the Americas and to draw some conclusions on the directions these forms have taken since the post emancipation era.

Baraka de Soleil is a winner of the prestigious Katherine Dunham Choreography/AUDELCO for excellence in Black Theatre, performance artist/choreographer/curator. He has been involved in the experimental movement, music and performance art scene throughout the country and internationally for the past 15 years. He has served as a teaching artist for various institutions throughout the country, including Brooklyn Academy of Music and Phyllis Rose Dance company. His contemporary Afro-Modern dance technique combines traditions from the African Diaspora with post-modern aesthetics to create an energetic and exciting kinesthetic environment. His artistry reflects moving images excavated from the multilayered traditions of the African Diaspora, immersed in an urban contemporary reality.

Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, ethnomusicologist, and edupreneur voicing the unspoken through song, scholarship and social media. After working at University of Virginia and NYU, she joined the faculty of Baruch College-CUNY as an Associate Professor in 2005. She teaches courses on hip-hop-as-music, cultural anthropology, and racism. In 2007 her book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (NYU Press) won the Merriam Prize for the most outstanding book from the Society for Ethnomusicology. In 2009, her work was published in Michael Eric Dyson's edited volume Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic (2009) and she became one of the 40 inaugural TED Fellows to join the prestigious community at the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference. Her current educational project is a global oral history collected through anti-racism workshops where people's earliest memories of learning about race are shared, collected and later geotagged to map the collective impact of how we learn about difference. Follow her on Twitter @kyraocity.

Herman Hall is a Grenadian-American who lives and works in Brooklyn, and is the publisher of the popular Caribbean publication Everybody's Magazine.

Fred Ho is a one-of-a-kind revolutionary Chinese American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, political activist and leader of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and the Monkey Orchestra. For two decades, he has innovated an Afro Asian New American Multicultural Music imbedded in the swingest, most soulful and transgressive forms of African American music with the musical influences of Asia and the Pacific Rim. As Larry Birnbaum writes in Down Beat "Fred Ho's style is a genre onto itself, a pioneering fusion of free-jazz and traditional Chinese music that manages to combine truculence and delicacy with such natural ease that it sounds positively organic." As a musical leader, Fred Ho founded the Afro Asian Music Ensemble in 1982; the Monkey Orchestra in 1990; co-founded the Brooklyn Sax Quartet with David Bindmanin 1997; and recently started Caliente! Circle Around the Sun (featuring Ho's solo baritone saxophone with poets Magdalena Gomez and Raul Salinas). Fred Ho currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Keith Loftis, originally from Dallas, Keith is no stranger to the smoking sounds of the NYC Jazz Scene. He has performed with such groups as the Benny Carter Big Band, The Frank Foster Loud Minority Big Band, The Four Tops and Temptations, and was on tour with the late Ray Charles. He has also served on the Woodwind Faculty at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and has held the position of Adjunct Professor at the prestigious Steinhardt School of Education. In addition to teaching, Keith also enjoys performing on Independent films . Most recently he can be heard performing on "Black Out" , A film depicting the chain of events that unfolded during the blackout of 2003. He received his Masters of Music from New York University (Steinhardt School of Education) and his Bachelor's of Music from The New School for Social Research/Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. He has been the recipient of the IAJE's prestigious award for Outstanding Musician and Soloist. His passion for performing and teaching make him one of the fastest growing players.

The New Cookers, named after Freddie Hubbard's seminal 1965 Blue Note album Night of the Cookers, keep the hard bop flame burning brightly while making it unmistakably their own. Hear them perform standards and originals alike at this unique performance.

Joseph G. Schloss is Lecturer in Music at Tufts University. He received the Society for Ethnomusicology's Charles Seeger Prize in 2000, and his writing has appeared in URB, The Seattle Weekly, The Flavor and the anthology Classic Material. He lives in Brooklyn.

Keynote Greg Tate is an American author who has spent the last two decades formulating a critical language that has redefined African-American cultural theory and writing. An essayist and long time staff writer for The Village Voice, Tate has published widely, with writings on art, music, and culture. The impact of Tate's writing lies in the seminal productive tensions he navigates between post-structural theory and black cultural nationalism; academia and street culture. Tate has been inspired by black innovators such as Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, George Clinton and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Tate has defied fixed notions about what constitutes authentic black culture, and has inscribed a new radical trajectory that is simultaneously rebellious yet intelligently written. He is also a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition and the conductor and music director of Burnt Sugar, a band that fuses jazz, rock, funk, and African music in a lyrical, exploratory and improvisational manner.