The City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) present live performances from 2022 COLA Artist Fellows Najite Agindotan, Jibz Cameron, Shonda Buchanan and Suchi Branfman at Grand Performances.
COLA's Individual Artist Fellowship by the DCA allows accomplished artists to create new work with increased freedom to innovate and experiment in the disciplines of design, visual arts, literary arts, and performing arts.
Jibz Cameron
Jibz Cameron is a performer, visual artist and actor. Her multi-media performance work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag has spanned over 15 years and has been presented at arts venues such as The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, The Kitchen, BAM, Centre Pompidou among others. She has been heralded by the New York Times as “the funniest and most pitch perfect performance seen in years” and “outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative” by The New Yorker. She has written and produced numerous performance pieces, dozens of video works and 2 albums of original music. Jibz produces and hosts Weirdo Night, a monthly comedy and performance event in Los Angeles. She is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, a 2020 Creative Capital Grant awardee and a 2021 United States Artist Award recipient. Her film Weirdo Night, directed by Mariah Garnett (a movie version of the live show) is a 2021 Sundance Film Festival selection. She also makes paintings and drawings. She lives in Los Angeles.
Website: Dynastyhandbag.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynastyhandbag/
Najite Agindotan
For over 3 decades, NAJITE & OLOKUN PROPHECY ["N.O.P."] has kept authentic afrobeat and African jazz alive from its home base in Los Angeles. Led by Nigerian master percussionist Najite Agindotan, this roaring ensemble embraces the restless genius of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the harmonic innovation of Horace Tapscott and the rhythmic soul of the African Diaspora.
Band leader Najite Agindotan was born in Lagos, Nigeria where, under his father’s direction, he became fully immersed in the musical traditions of his homeland. In his youth he became a protege of Fela Kuti. Aside from learning and mastering the arts of traditional West African drum and dance, Najite spent much of his time in Fela's Kalakuta compound. He performed as a guest artist and was eventually taken as a godson by the late activist and afrobeat originator.
After traveling to the US and playing percussion for such jazz legends as Horace Tapscott and Billy Higgins, Najite formed his own group in 1983, and has since helped to keep the pulse of African music beating strongly on the west coast of the US.
Many of Southern California's best instrumentalists have lent their talent to N.O.P. over the years--Phil Ranelin, Nate Morgan, Bobby Bryant, Jerri Jheto, the late, great Kpakpo Addo of Ghana's Uhuru Dance Band.--and the current band represents a cross-generational accumulation of their spirit and wisdom.
From saxophonist Jim Thompson (a long time band member for the late, great Bobby Womack) to keyboardist Onome Agindotan (one of Najite's eminently talented sons), the members of N.O.P. have shared a belief in the power of music to raise human consciousness, unify people, and of course to make them want to dance.
Website: https://www.olokunprophecy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/olokunprophecy/
Shonda Buchanan
COLA Fellow Shonda Buchanan, author of Black Indian, will be presenting poems from a new body of work entitled, Artificial Earth, Circa Los Angeles, 1771-1848: Poems. This collection owes a great debt to the first historians like William M. Mason of the Southern California Genealogical Society, and a handful of others, who unearthed the first knowledge of the mixed race heritage and ethnicities of the original settlers of Los Angeles, Indios/Indians, Africans/Negros, Mullatos and Spaniards. Those first 22 families were paid to trek the 1000 miles from Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico by Spain for its own “grand design,” and settled in what is now known as downtown Los Angeles’ Olvera Street District, near the Indigenous nations already there, or neighboring the area, the Chumash and the Kitz Nation, also referred to as Gabrieleño/Tongva tribes and other Indigenous peoples. On September 4, 1781, the spot where they settled was officially labeled, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, or The Town (or House or City) of the Queen of the Angels. Although the exact original title is disputed, the name was later shortened to Los Angeles.
These poems are a humble attempt to bring these narratives to life, yet until all the documents and oral histories are unearthed, merged and decolonized, the true story of Los Angeles and its inhabitants, indeed America, will remain untold.
Website: https://shondabuchanan.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shondabuchanan/
Suchi Branfman
SUCHI BRANFMAN, choreographer/curator/performer/educator/activist, has toured, performed, and worked in communities from the war zones of Managua to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and from Kampala’s Luzira Prison to NYC’s Joyce Theatre. Her work strives to create an embodied terrain grounded in storytelling, dialogue, listening and action. Branfman is currently in year six of a ten-year choreographic residency at the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco, CA. She is Artistic Director of the multi-faceted Dancing Through Prison Walls project, producing and choreographing performance, film, and written works in deep collaboration with current and formerly incarcerated movers, including the recent project “Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic.” Her writings have been published in The Nation, The Dancer-Citizen, and Dance Education in Practice. Branfman serves on faculty at Scripps College and Cal Poly Pomona, co-directs Catalpa Residency DHS is a community gardener and a prison abolition activist. Her supporters have included the National Endowment for the Arts, California and New York State Arts Councils, And the Cultural Affairs Divisions of Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, and Santa Monica, amongst others. #carenotcages
Website: http://www.suchibranfman.com/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/suchi_k_b/