The Ujamaa Hour (At The Crossroads of Listening, Language, & Liberation) - Season 3, Episode 6
Channel: Mike Tekh Strode
Date: 2020-06-17

MOVEMENT MONDAY: Tune in on Monday (5/11) at 7:30 pm CST as we interview Ayinde Jean-Baptiste of DrumLanguage & DuSable City. Ayinde is a Brooklyn-born poet, keeper of memory, and occasional journalist who traces his lineage through Chicago, the Caribbean, & West Africa. Between 2013 and 2015, he guided DrumLanguage, an experi(m)ent[i]al trance-mission that incorporated archival sound, field recording, original oral history, & black dialogue, drawing from Afro-diasporic expression to divine glimpses of new futures.

His forthcoming project: DuSable City, is a live radio experience, drawing on the DrumLanguage aesthetic to build space for intergenerational exchange that centers, contests & continues historical narratives of blackness in Greater Chicago, mapping connections to more liberation for BIPOC communities anywhere.

On this episode, we explore what this global listening tour has taught Ayinde about the ways that we keep and construct memory; dig into the crates of what inspires his cultural and artistic process; and ponder what oral history can tell us about how communities at the margins have constructed economies that truly address their desire for self-determination.

On the recap, we relive a truly great moment in hosting a Virtual Time Salon; share what Coop 4 Lib has been studying during the current climate of mutual aid & community resilience; and preach to the converted about the value of building non-monetary skills & service exchanges in the middle of a crisis by way of dispatch from Chiapas . Tune in.

*Initially broadcast May 11, 2020 via Facebook Live to Kola Nut Collaborative at 7:30 pm