Music as Retroactive Reparations

Show notes

This episode presents BRICKS (A 20-YEAR MUSIC TOUR OF REPARATIONS), and features playwright Charlene Jean, performer Mercy Kelly, and host Dr. Layla Zami. A conversation about decolonial spirituality, matriarchs, gentrification, Black time, and queer performance strategies, enriched with lively audio samples from the performance.

In conversation with

Charlene Jean

Charlene Jean is an experimental theatrical artist, performer, playwright, and producer. She is a playwright of BRICKS (A 20-YEAR MUSIC TOUR OF REPARATIONS. BRICKS is an always-changing script-template detailing the history-repeating shared injustice of "buried" towns, considers the spiritual / land-memory implication of gentrification, and reimagines the biblical story of Jericho as a communal work-strike to alleviate the shared suffering particularly of our Black ancestors and our Unhoused.

With this production, she is an awardee of the MAP Grant Fund in 2022/2023, a 2023/2024 Creative Capital WILD FUTURES finalist, 2023 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, and a semi-finalist of 2022-2024 National Black Theatre Playwriting. Her works, which also include KING AFUA and SHIT IN THE BLOOD: A BIOMYTHOGRAPHY OF RECIPES, have been presented at Weeksville Heritage Center, Harlem Film House, Mother New York, International Society of Curational Programming, and JACK Arts Radical Acts Festival. Next, Charlene will act as dramaturg for UGBA (Ungrateful Black Artist)’s show, Dark Skin Support Group, through the Public Theatre’s Emerging Writer’s Group. She will also enjoy a Musical Theatre lab at Manhattan School of Music, a Movement Research lab at Judson Memorial Church, a New Works series at the Brick Theatre, and a Hi-Arts CRITICAL BREAKS Residency, culminating in a live cast album recording of BRICKS, in which she will also perform.

Vimeo
Instagram @psalmsofchar
Twitter @psalmsofchar
Instagram @bricksthemusical
Video (BRICKS Work Sample) recorded at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, NY

Mercy Kelly

Mercy Kelly is a Brooklyn-based Black trans visual artist, model, performer, and advocate who isn’t here to be your teachable moment. In BRICKS, Mercy Kelly plays Cassandra, the Matriarch.Mercy’s work focuses on the beauty of fat, femme body performance as liberation. Mercy is passionate about expanding narratives and understandings of what it means to be trans, moving towards re-idealizing the notion of what it means to have a body. Mercy is interested in the ways we map desire, paying particular attention to how hue, color, size, and shape form our deepest longings.
Instagram @fatasskellypryce
Twitter @fatasskellyripa

Expressions
projects
US-American term referring to subsidized public housing built by the government, usually high-rise towers.

40 acres and a mule
A reference to the lack of reparations for African-American people until this day. The expression is derived from the short-lived historical order by Tecumseh Sherman to provide “40 acres and a mule” as a reparation to Black families in 1865.
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J’ouvert
From the Creole expression "jou ouvè", meaning opening day, designates the first day of Carnival celebrations in parts of the Caribbean. Referring here to the New York Carnival Parade initiated by Caribbean Communities, and celebrated annually in September as an empowerment festival for Black Communities in Brooklyn.
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A special note from Charlene Jean on citations in the episode

“How have we collectively chosen capitalism over community” is a question presented by Dayna Lynn Nuckolls/@PeoplesOracle, sidereal astrologer and mentor/Big Sis.

The “urgency…” quote is indeed by Toni Morrison.

Credits
Sounds
Excerpts from the performance BRICKS (Field recordings by Layla Zami, Weeksville Heritage Center, September 2022)
Project Director and Playwright: Charlene Jean
Music Director: Franklin Rankin
Musicians: Miles Wilkins (Piano), Franklin Rankin (guitar), Immanuel Williams (bass), Ahmad T. Johnson (drums)
Cast: Mercy Kelly, Claudia Logan, Ava McCoy, Jarvis Matthews, Tatianna Mott, Jahmar Ortiz, Sunny Selah, Subiya Mboya, Courtney Bryan Devon, Tweet
Photos
Mercy Kelly, Screenshot from the BRICKS performance video
Charlene Jean, Portrait

Podcast Info
Concept
Dr. Layla Zami, Postdoctoral Researcher in Performance Studies
Producer
Freie Universität Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts
(SFB 1512 Intervenierende Künste, TP B05)
Funded by
German Research Society (DFG)
In Cooperation with
FU Berlin, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft
Eufoniker Audioproduktion