Arika: Episode 4 - Freedom is a Constant Struggle

[barry esson]

Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
18-21 Apr, Tramway Glasgow
http://www.arika.org.uk

“New Black Music is this: Find the self, then kill it.” Amiri Baraka.

Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now? Taken together, are they an attempt to create an alternate sociality: an ensemblic, collective, non-individualistic performance of blackness? Is this the performance of freedom - as encounter, rupture, collision, and passionate response; as a necessarily political, necessarily aesthetic, necessarily erotic black social life? And how can we relate, artistically and socially to those art forms and politics today, here in Glasgow?

Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle is our attempt to think about that through performances and discussions with of some of the great American jazz artists and writers, critics and poets, their European counterparts, and with people in Glasgow who might have something to say in return.

Involving:
Amiri Baraka, Ray Brassier, Daniel Carter, Henry Grimes, Mattin, Fred Moten, Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, No-Total - Or staying within the tale, William Parker, M. NourbeSe Philip, Howard Slater, Sonia Sanchez, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tilbury.