Community Spotlight – Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club

In Shadow and Light: A Look Into Jazz Choreography

Posted on September 16, 2019September 16, 2019 by bluesyjune

Jazz Choreographer Pat Taylor discusses her performance company experiences and their relation to shadow, light, and representing marginalized people.

Not long ago I was reminiscing with members of my dance company, JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble, about a piece we premiered ten or so years ago titled “Celestial Blues.” The original music and lyrics of the same name were written and recorded by Gary Bartz in 1971, followed some years later by a popular version arranged by Andy Bey. We danced to a less funkily futuristic arrangement by our frequent collaborator, jazz vocalist Dwight Trible.

We must get closer to the essence of life

But be aware that it takes courage and strife

Expand your mind, don’t let it wither and die

You’ll find that it lifts your spirits high to the sky

So meditate

C’mon let’s contemplate

Talk to the heavenly bodies

Of the universe, of the universe….

…I’ve got to be free, my spirit’s telling me

– Gary Bartz

The dancers and I laughed about all the behind the scenes mishaps and the road to the finished work, and they shared with me for the first time that for most of the performances they could not see much of anything on stage due to the lighting design being so dark. They could feel each other’s energy, hear the breath, but didn’t concretely know where another dancer was until they stepped from the near darkness into the light. Most of the time they danced through a shadowy landscape, confidently, but with an edge of uncertainty.

What they described to me sounded like a void. And admittedly my intention was for the dancers to become the ‘heavenly bodies’ inhabiting this space as described in the lyrics. They confirmed that they had indeed felt suspended in that moment.

As I later thought about this particular exchange and our further conversations about other works of mine that move in and out of darkness: Sankofa (2008), Transitions (2012), Ooh Child (2013), By the Rivers of Babylon (2014), Slippin’ Into Darkness (2016), and others… I began to realize that I have been drawn for some time to a particular use of darkness, the interplay between shadow and light and the invisibility it provides as both a dramatic effect and in support of the stories I feel compelled to tell through my jazz dance expression. At first glance this presented as something that was happening innately, without me being fully aware of what might lie behind the artistic choices I was making. Over time I have come to understand that I am intrigued by something more than just a lighting design effect. This feeling of slipping in and out of the darkness has always felt like natural storytelling choices to me as I explored the nature of jazz. Creating a sense of being there – yet not there, appearing and disappearing, gone – but not really, present and absent at the same time – maybe even differing levels of presence, being fully seen or not, and feeling suspended in time and place, is something that stirs my imagination. This shadowy metaphor for the experiences of African Americans, indeed the experiences of any marginalized group, is powerful.

TRANSITIONS (2012) – Excerpts from Pat Taylor on Vimeo.

The unnamed protagonist in novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man states as a matter of course, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (3). A black man in a white world, he navigates through life as a shadow, trying on and discarding personas while blues and jazz music shadow his journey. He listens to a recording of Louis Armstrong singing “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?” He sees his invisibility not only as a curse and an insult, but often as an advantage as well. He recognizes his invisibility as “a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact” (3). Others see him as they desire to, and he is not allowed to define himself within that gaze. W.E.B. DuBois calls this inability of blacks to see ourselves directly a double-consciousness wherein “one ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body…” (2) – a constant awareness of the juxtaposition of how we view ourselves and how the world sees us.

I am recognizing a sense of displacement as well within my use of shadow and light in my choreographic work. Exploring displacement feeds into my growing conversation around “home” (external and internal) and jazz music as a response to a feeling of dislocation. I experience the music as a means of rooting – and a defining of place through a distinct language and self determined means of communicating a distinct existence and experience. In turn, I approach my choreography as the “movement in the music,” the physical embodiment of the sound and the social, cultural, historical and political implications embedded therein.

Slippin' Into Darkness _Photo-Mesiyah McGinnis — “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble. Photo: Mesiyah McGinnis.

Interestingly enough, there was a time that I felt my strongest sense of home within myself while being physically outside of the United States. I lived, taught, choreographed and performed in Scandinavia –Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland specifically –but also worked and traveled across Europe for seven years. I grew up in a household where jazz, in particular, and blues served as the musical backdrop to daily life, yet it was while I was away that I truly felt the tremendous respect afforded these music traditions around the world. Viewing home from a great distance, I reconnected to the sound and the stories that I had known as a child, and embraced the lineage, language and legacy of jazz.

During that time I found myself moving more freely in who I was and what I was doing artistically. These years were my most liberating and some of my most meaningful times of self-discovery. I journeyed during this period in a very gutsy, risk taking way. My self-censoring was at a minimum. The burden of double-consciousness was at least eased. I felt out of the shadows and fully revealed, most of all to myself. I was free to improvise. I began to shape my philosophical approach to teaching and choreographing jazz dance that was intrinsically tied to the music and a paralleling of the times.

SLIPPIN’ INTO DARKNESS (2016) – Excerpt from Pat Taylor on Vimeo.

The collage art of Romare Bearden was a major inspiration for my first choreographies when I returned to Los Angeles and founded JazzAntiqua in 1993. I have always loved Bearden’s work, and as I found myself drawn more deeply to it, I particularly connected with the colors, rhythm and layering within his collage pieces. My eye and imagination traveled through his art, guided by the ways in which he used space. I equated what I felt with the conversational nature of jazz improvisation and the storytelling of the blues. It connected with how I was newly envisioning my choreography as unearthing the stories within the music as I was hearing, seeing and feeling them. Bearden listened to and was passionate about jazz throughout his life. At times he would express his artistic approach in musical sentiments, “You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody” (Schwartzman 196).

In his influential work on blues and jazz music, Blues People, The Negro Experience in White America and the Music That Developed From It, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) sees “the beginning of blues as one beginning of American Negroes” (xii). A beginning that originates in America’s Deep South, with roots in West African musical traditions, and a lineage of work songs, field hollers, ring shouts, sorrow songs and spirituals borne out of slavery. It’s a birth that political and social activist, educator and author Angela Y. Davis sees as “the legacy of emancipation” (qtd in Hay 443), drawing upon, I believe, the accepted notion of blues music becoming more formally known during the late 1800s in the decades following the Emancipation Proclamation. Maybe even more importantly, it is the experience of freedom arrived at through a continuing claiming of self by speaking one’s own truth via a distinct language of expression. In African American culture that uniquely arrived at self-defining and raised consciousness is often through music, dance and other art forms. It is where we most often feel a true sense of freedom.

I am drawn to the cyclical feel of the blues, the way that its repeated AAB, 12-bar theme creates an echo-like, call and response that harkens back to work songs and African roots.

My man don’t love me

Treats me oh so mean

My man he don’t love me

Treats me oh so mean

He’s the lowest man

That I’ve ever seen

– Billie Holiday, “Fine and Mellow”

There is the strong groove that the steady bass line provides, and this in itself creates a rooted feeling. The blue notes (or “worried” or “bent” notes) within the melody give a greater expressiveness and that slightly off-kilter, bittersweet blues sound and feeling. I find these characteristics, even more so over form/structure, to be what blues music is truly about – powerful, evocative storytelling at its simplest and most poignant. Often melancholic and harsh reality, at times playful, sexual and irreverent, equally love story and lament, the blues can also offer a glimmer of hope. It is a visceral and cathartic “let your hair down” form of communication – a discernible voice amidst the shadows.

Three O'Clock Blues _ Photo -Malcolm Ali — “Three O’Clock Blues,” JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble. Photo: Malcom Ali.

Ellison writes: “The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically” (Living With Music 103).

The blues is ‘The Great Hole of History’ in Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play; the flattened, single dimensioned silhouettes of Kara Walker’s large scale tableaux; the motifs of imprisonment and salvation in James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the “hymns to the secular regions of the soul” as choreographer Alvin Ailey describes his Blues Suite (Dunning 115); what Du Bois calls “a faith in the ultimate justice of things” (162).

In my interdisciplinary approach to exploring how jazz/blues aesthetics manifest across artistic disciplines, I am profoundly compelled by the work of visual artist Kerry James Marshall. I have greatly admired Marshall for many years, and seeing his work up close at the 2017 retrospective exhibit Mastry (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) was life changing. I felt absolutely engulfed in a singular and pure articulation and point of view. What strikes me so to my core is the sheer blackness of his work, literally and figuratively, and the way in which he honors his subjects. The depth and richness of the black skin of those who populate the moments that Marshall captures emit a level of intensity that creates a heightened awareness for me as I experience his work. The work is unforgiving and unashamedly black. Uncompromising in its presentation, the paintings are counter-narratives, stories that defy the invisibility of blacks in America.

Marshall draws “…upon the rich layering of language, music and art characteristic of black expression. Like a jazz composer superimposing multiple rhythms and harmonies…” (Mertes). In a 2016 New York Times interview, Marshall shares, “I was searching for something that seemed to me like an authentic black aesthetic, one that had an equivalency with postwar blues” (Kennedy). His emphatic intent to “make the invisible visible” (Roelstraete 48) is palpable. As have many others, he too references the influence of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man on his work, speaking the blues with reverence, insight, and yes, joy.

The blues is form, tradition, personal expression and cultural reflection. As Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith is quoted as saying, “It’s a long old road, but I know I’m gonna find the end.”

“Ooh Child,” JazzAntiqua Dance Ensemble. Photo: Tim Aigler.

In my passion and vision for jazz expression through movement, the concluding words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the opening address at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival resound so deeply. These words I often incorporate into JazzAntiqua performances.

Jazz speaks for life.

The blues tell the stories of life’s difficulties.

And if you think for a moment, you will realize

that they take the hardest realities of life and

put them into music,

only to come out with some new hope or sense

of triumph.

This is triumphant music!

OOH CHILD (2013) from Pat Taylor on Vimeo.

Works Cited

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks, Dover Publications, 1994.

Dunning, Jessica. Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc, 1996.

Ellison, Ralph. “Richard Wright’s Blues.” Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings. Edited by Robert O’Meally, Modern Library, 2001, pp.101-119

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York, New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print.

Hay, Fred J. “Reviewed Work: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis.” Appalachian Journal, vol. 25, no. 4, 1998, pp. 442–45.

Jones, LeRoi. Blues People. W. Morrow, 1963.

Kennedy, Randy. “Kerry James Marshall, Boldly Repainting Art History.” New York Times, 9 Sept. 2016.

Mertes, Lorie. “Kerry James Marshall One True Thing Meditations on Black Aesthetics February 6 – April 25, 2004.” Miami Art Museum.

Roelstraete, Dieter. “Visible Man: Kerry James Marshall, Realist.” Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2016.

Schwartzman, Myron, Bearden, Romare. Romare Bearden, His Life & Art. H.N. Abrams, 1990.

Pat Taylor _ Photo-Joe Lambie — Choreographer Pat Taylor is the founding artistic director of Los Angeles-based JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble, established in 1993 to celebrate the jazz tradition as a vital thread in the cultural fabric of African American history and heritage and a defining element of the American experience. Her work has been presented at the Hollywood Bowl/Playboy Jazz Festival, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Mission Theatre (San Francisco), Southern Theatre (Minneapolis), Glashuset (Stockholm, Sweden), CIAEI Theatre (Brazil), among many other venues. Recognitions include a Brody Arts Fund Choreography Fellowship, and grant awards from the Center for Cultural Innovation, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and California Arts Council. Taylor’s community centered initiatives include: Roots & Rhythm Dance Jam Project, The Movement in the Music® – mini-jazz dance conferences, and the Community Salon – a quarterly gathering for intergenerational conversation and exchange of ideas. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (jazz aesthetics emphasis) from Goddard College. Photo: Joe Lambie

Continuing Blues and Jazz Legacies: Barbara Morrison and Signifyin’ Blues

Posted on June 24, 2019June 23, 2019 by bluesyjune

Southern California has a wealth of music royalty, but the undisputed Queen of Jazz and Blues is Barbara Morrison. She isn’t just the Queen because of her three Grammy nominations or her experience singing alongside greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Etta James, Ray Charles, Dr. John, and Keb’ Mo, to name a few. Barbara Morrison is the Queen of Jazz and Blues because she cares for her music and arts family in Los Angeles and beyond.

I have been very fortunate to spend time with Barbara as I have helped organize Signifyin’ Blues, which raises money for the CA Jazz & Blues Museum and the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center. Both inspire kids of all ages with regular music and arts programs throughout the year. A typical day for Barbara includes a lot for a woman turning 70 in a few months!

47324570_355945098499189_3646497744782098432_o — Barbara Morrison performing at Signifyin’ Blues in 2018.

When I get to the museum on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, she is in a hurry bringing out the recycling from the back of the museum to a homeless man she sees and knows by name. He will exchange the cans for some money to get by. She is also telling her guitarist not to leave yet, whispering to me it’s because “he owes me money!” Barbara played a small club with him the night before. According to her manager, Tim Morganfield—Muddy Waters’ cousin—she has been playing a show every night for about a month.

Barbara is excited to see the fliers for Signifyin’ Blues 2019, which I brought to her. She enthusiastically hands one to a visitor whose mother was friends with Barbara in the LA music scene decades ago. Adding to the commotion, there are also kids running around who have just finished up a music lesson at the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center next door. Before her evening performance(s), it’s pretty typical to find Barbara doing just this: speeding around the small neighborhood of Leimert Park, blasting over curbs and swerving between unsuspecting pedestrians in her turbo-powered wheelchair. Barbara has places to be and things to do, so join her or get out of the way!

Barbara learned to sing in church and began singing on the radio when she was just five years old, the same year and age when Stevie Wonder debuted. When she was 23, she moved from Michigan to Los Angeles to sing with jazz, be-bop and blues sax legend, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. Johnny Otis soon caught wind of her and launched her career into hyperdrive the same way he did with Big Mama Thornton, Etta James, Esther Phillips and many others decades before. Since then, Barbara has traveled the world many times over, and still does, but she has been based in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park for many decades. She not only calls it home, but also cultivates a home for local painters, poets, musicians, and other artists at her museum and performing arts center.

If you don’t introduce yourself to Barbara, she will introduce herself to you. She’ll ask, “Do you recognize anyone famous?” Visitors will laugh and say something like “I saw you in such and such a year at the Hollywood Bowl with so-and-so!” Barbara might impromptu start singing a song she sang that night decades ago, or just make up a song about you on the spot. She is also a rolling jazz-and-blues-music encyclopedia. If you ask her about previous residents of Leimert Park like Ray Charles, the Temptations or, Ella Fitzgerald, she won’t just tell you about Ella, she will tell you about her personal interactions with her. Now I’m one level of separation from the legendary voice on that scratchy vinyl I got from my grandpa when he passed away!

Barbara is equally excited about modern music as she is about music from the past. Good music is good music to Barbara, and it doesn’t matter when it was made or what genre it is. She loves to talk about Kendrick Lamar and her good buddy, Kamasi Washington, who performs next door when he’s not on tour playing the biggest festivals in the world—like Coachella—with his orchestra. When Kamasi released the critically acclaimed “Heaven & Earth” last year, it was Barbara’s CA Jazz & Blues Museum that held the record release party.

Teaching kids how to tell their story through art is why Barbara puts all of her extra time and energy into the museum and performing arts center. As I’ve watched her work ethic and love for the community, I see that she is truly an ambassador of the arts and worth supporting. This is why Signifyin’ Blues exists. We, the organizing team of Signifyin’ Blues, believe in her mission and love her passion, and will continue to support her labor of love by raising money for the California Jazz and Blues Museum and Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center so Barbara and her team can continue to inspire kids of all ages to engage in creating music and art for many, many years to come.

If you would like to learn more about the charity event, Barbara Morrison, and the California Jazz and Blues Museum, please visit www.Signifyinblues.com and www.BarbaraMorrison.com.

The Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club would like to thank Jeremy Carberry and Signifyin’ Blues for giving us an exclusive look into a day in the life of Barbara Morrison.

About the Author: Jeremy Carberry is an audio engineer, dancer, and an organizer of Signifyin’ Blues in Los Angeles.

Why We Read

Posted on January 27, 2018 by bluesyjune

Our community is full of diverse people with diverse dance interests. So what possesses so many of our community members to read up on blues and jazz? We asked a number of our active readers in the community, and these are their responses.

Fenella Kennedy—Dance Scholar and Instructor, Columbus, Ohio

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I credit books with getting me through some of the worst patches of childhood and young adulthood, mostly because they taught me the ethics I needed to conduct myself with grace, strength, and kindness in an often cruel world. Unsurprisingly, I grew up to be an academic, making books and reading an intrinsic part of my life: while I prepared for PhD candidacy I easily read 3-4 books a week, and I still read for pleasure on top of that.

The danger of being an academic is that all your books can come to feel very much the same. Our institutions of higher education are very whitewashed spaces, and disciplinary practices can further shape your reading experience until every author feels like a slightly more educated or elitist version of you and your peers. I think it’s essential to read outside of your discipline, and outside of your culture, to keep your mind open to the validity of all the options out there for living, and to get into the habit of questioning your choices and norms.

When I read about blues and jazz I specifically read for insider voices, not for the ethnographic perspective. I want to love the people who made the music and danced the dances, especially when I see flashes of queerness, or rebellion against the norms, or voices that resonate with and move me. Getting a feel for the conventions of storytelling, humor, and self-presentation teaches me how I want to relate to blues music when I dance it. When I’m researching dances from notation and video it’s important that I approach the steps with a blues dancer’s attitude, not from the concert dance perspectives that I grew up in. I guess books are still teaching me who I want to be in all areas of my life.

Recommendations:

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson

Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom – Sarah Jane Cervenak

Ross Blythe—Dance Instructor, Chicago, Illinois

In my experience, our scene is unique in that we emphasize and encourage a level of scholarship I haven’t personally seen in other dance communities. I read books from the Blues and Jazz Dance book club list so I can get a better understanding of the history of blues music, dancing, and culture. Rather than just listening to a lecture, reading several books on a subject helps to provide a fuller understanding of a topic. Some of the books on the list read like a documentary. This happened, then this happened, then over here this trend sprouted. Others are more poetic, striving to convey a feeling and lyricism rather than dates and figures. The totality gives light to a history I wouldn’t have looked into otherwise. The link between music, dance, and culture becomes clearer when reading about the experiences of the community that did this before us, and helps me better frame our place in trying to continue on with these dances in our contemporary world.

Chelsea Adams—English Literature Scholar, Las Vegas, Nevada

As a child, I grew up with a bookshelf in nearly every room in the house, and every shelf was filled with books: history books, religious texts, fictional works, political arguments, biographies, and more. My parents encouraged me to read to learn about the world, and to ask questions when I had them. Perhaps because of such an environment growing up, I’ve always read for enjoyment as well as learning, and it should not be surprising that I took to reading books about not only topics that fascinated me intellectually, but also books about the activities in which I regularly engaged. As I lived in a rural area and worked with plants and livestock, the topics largely included books about animals, traits of different geographical regions, growing plants, and local history. And of course, I always had a love for fiction. By age 14, I was checking out a new book from the school library almost every other day.

When I went to college and decided to become an English major, I continued to take classes that exposed me to new cultures and topics. At the same time, I began dancing—first Ballroom dances, and then West Coast Swing and Blues idioms. As I read more and more African American literature, I noticed that blues music and dances were being regularly mentioned in the fiction works, and I realized that I didn’t know enough about those dances and the music to explain to my fellow classmates and teachers why what I was seeing was important when analyzing the literature. So I did what I’ve always done, and picked up books about what I’m doing to better understand it and explain it to others. And it became an area of professional research for me. Today, I’m still reading to better understand my world and the activities in which I participate.

Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj Kilrain—Local Dance Organizer and Instructor, San Diego, California

Music and dancing for me have always been about the story. Yes, it’s about self-expression. Yes, it’s about creativity, but the story being told through the music goes deeper than just one person’s interpretation. Growing up as a TCK (third-culture kid), my identity had always been tied to multiple cultures, and not necessarily the land of my birth or the land in which I resided. Attending an international school also showed me that there is so much more to a culture than what you see on the surface; each culture had their stories, and person had stories that reflected their experiences within and outside of their culture.

That’s what blues and jazz are to me. I will always value stories told directly from the mouths of those within the culture, but I also recognise that – without deeper understanding of the contexts and background and experiences from which these stories are told – I can easily miss the nuances of these stories.

There are those who have dedicated their lives to gathering stories from people I may never get to meet. Reading provides me access to their work and to the stories I would never be able to hear from the mouths of those who have since passed. Reading also helps me connect the dots between the history and what is going on today in a way that helps me understand the greater context of the blues – beyond the music.

Aimee Eddins—Instructor and Community Organizer, Denver, Colorado

I participate in the Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club because it’s important to me to be acting in alignment to my values. I value supporting the work others do through my participation, continually being a learner, and acting in accordance with my values in a way that is visible to others. It takes a lot to create opportunities to learn, come together in community, and engage with challenging topics. When people put together opportunities for these things to happen, I like to support as much as I can by participating.

Communities are made more vibrant through participation from people in all stages of their journey and it’s important to me to continue to show up even as I grow in the relative privilege I carry in the scene. I also appreciate having access to a space where I am supported to continue to learn and where others are there to learn alongside me. I can learn on my own — and I do choose to read, research, and discover outside of the Book Club — and still I appreciate having a space to come to where there are others to dialogue with and learn from.

The Book Club is one place where I can deepen my understanding of oppression, music, and history that takes into account the experience of black people in the US. By participating in and sharing the Book Club, I have a greater capacity to influence those around me to investigate and engage with these topics as well.

Ruth Evelyn—International Dance Instructor, Boston, Massachusetts

I read fiction because it is a chance to open a door to another world and step in, immersing myself. I get to try on what it would be like to live in another person’s life, experiencing different interactions, living through otherwise unattainable experiences. I believe that reading books where the protagonist is very different from me is vital in my empathy development. Sometimes it means waking up in late-19th century New Orleans as a man. Sometimes it means I’m in England as an old woman.

When I read non-fiction I expand what I know about the world, expanding my ideas and possibilities. In Buzzy Jackson’s “A Bad Woman Feeling Good” I get to read about the impact Bessie Smith made not just with what she sang, but exactly how she sang it- how she shared her soul. It helps me think about art in different ways, and in turn to attempt to express it myself.

Overall, I read because it expands my worlds and my ways of thinking about life and the possibilities it holds, making it richer and much more full.

The Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club: Our Story

Posted on July 16, 2017November 30, 2017 by bluesyjune

It is a privilege to write the first post for the Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club website!

In 2014, I realized that I had been listening to blues music and doing blues dance for 10 years with a regrettably limited understanding of the culture that gave life to this art form—the African American experience in the United States. One of the best ways to learn about the history and culture of a people, even for someone that grew up in my same country, is to read the literature. I reached out to friends and colleagues with more education, and I was delighted to see how easily they recommended an extensive list of reading material for me.

Interestingly, I found that reading alone was less satisfying. Perhaps this is because this is a dance and music that I regularly share with my friends, community, and even dancers around the world. It led naturally to a desire to share my discoveries and inspirations with other blues and jazz enthusiasts.

A unique and exciting aspect of the blues community is that it is not limited to one city or geographic region. Dancers and blues and jazz music enthusiasts exist across the US and around the world. It is lucky that we are able to use the Internet as a platform to reach all of our worldwide community to share in our learning.

Another stroke of luck was meeting Chelsea June Adams, who is everything I could ask for in a book club leader. Chelsea is an English academic who specializes in 20th century American literature, and an African Americanist with a focus on the blues and blues idiom dance in literature. She has published on literature and social justice topics, taught literature, and taught blues dance. As you can imagine, she is far more qualified than I am to lead the discussion and engage our readers and community in the intriguing nuances and themes that flow through black literature and through blues music and culture.

I hope together we can read, learn, discuss, experience, and be inspired by a deep dive in to this rich, diverse, and fascinating culture that lives right here at home.

Happy reading, happy listening, happy dancing.

Best,

Sara Cherny