Quantum
Unique
Evolving
Essence of
Nubian
Sistas Black and Brown womXnhood and Divineness
UPCOMING EVENT
AUG 14
90 MIN LIVE STREAM FESTIVAL
4 PM EST
2 pm MST
1pm PST
9 PM UK
10 PM EU
Click here for to convert to your time zone
Virtual Doors Open @ 11:30pm EST
Show Starts @ 12pm EST
Post Show Panel @ 1pm EST
Nubian QUEENX
A Multi-Generational, Interdisciplinary performance based series of music, spoken word, sound design, beats and bits, dance, theater, hip hop, rock, r&b, traditional, and avant-garde
A musical meditation on affirmation of radical Healing of past life experiences and traumas and answering questions in order to move forward.
Nubian QUEENX
Liza Jessie Peterson/USA
Liza is an artivist, an actress, playwright, poet, author and youth advocate who has been steadfast in her commitment to incarcerated populations professionally and artistically for over two decades. Her one woman show: The Peculiar Patriot has garnered rave reviews from The NY Times, Boston Globe and 5 stars in Time Out NY. Liza has also created Down The Rabbit Hole as well as more plays. Liza is the author of, All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island. Liza has also been featured in films including Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Ava Suvernay’s Emmy Winning Documentary The 13th (Netflix).
https://www.facebook.com/liza.j.peterson
Nubian QUEENX
Be Steadwell/USA
Be Steadwell is a singer songwriter from Washington DC. A blend of soul, acapella and folk-Be calls her music QUEER POP. In her live performances, she utilizes looping, vocal layering and beat boxing to compose her songs on stage. Be's original music features earnest lyricism and Affirming LGBTQ content. Be combined her love of music with narrative film at Oberlin College and Howard University. Her film Vow of Silence featured in film festivals around the world, including Black Star, HBO's OutFest, etc.
https://www.instagram.com/besteadwell
https://twitter.com/besteadwell
https://www.facebook.com/bsteadwell/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3u5pK1PzrhvlC0shYIJ1Tl?si=Q4KkL8OIQoykhgTHoLjJyw
Nubian QUEENX
Nona Hendryx/USA
In the spirit of two fisted political singer songwriters such as, Nina Simone, and Joni Mitchell, Nona Hendryx tackles social issues, love and politics with a smoky vocal tessitura somewhere between funk and the end of the stratosphere. Hendryx’s legendary career spans six decades of sound and style revolution. Fans know her as a founding member of the girl group, Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles, (with Sarah Dash, Cindy Birdsong and Patti LaBelle,) inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame. The group morphed into the Rock & Funk Glam Diva's 'Labelle' with the #1 record, Lady Marmalade. Nona Hendryx emerged as the chief songwriter of socially conscious and illuminating message songs. Nona’s career includes an impressive lineup of collaborators (George Clinton, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Bono), top ten hits and a Grammy nomination (Rock This Houses with The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards on guitar).
Nubian QUEENX
Divinity Roxx/USA
Divinity is a bass player / songstress and Music Director who started her career touring with the legendary Victor Wooten. Divinity became the bass player and music director for Beyonce. Divinity has appeared on countless TV including The Grammy’s, Saturday Night Live, Good Morning America as well as performing at The White House for President Obama. Divinity mashes funk, rock and hip hop and has a career fronting her own band.
http://facebook.com/divinityroxx
https://www.instagram.com/diviroxx/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Jp4e4JHGZN1bmRxovEZSI?si=PmCYO4gYTBOzQB1sUZtB5Q
Nubian QUEENX
Sophia Ramos/USA
Sophia Ramos is a NY staple of rock goodness. She was named VH1’s Best Undiscovered Artist and has collaborated with artists including Jason Newstead of Metallica, Jennifer Hudson, Rod Stewart and Jefferson Starship among more. She sings in both English and Spanish and lights up every stage.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7xmWDToWl9RN1pqSsYSRFf?si=v898bX6mRXyphj-i7f_Shg
Special guest readings by:
In partnership with:
Angela Davis
Joy Harjo
Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice. She is the author of ten books, including Women, Race and Class; Blues Women and Black Feminisms: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday; Are Prisons Obsolete?; The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues; and most recently, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without carceral systems and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019.
The author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children's books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave, her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writers’ Award, a Rasmuson US Artist Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.
JASS (justassociates.org) believes that women who are most affected by the political, economic, environmental and health crises reverberating across the world are on the frontlines of change. While they rarely have a seat at the decision-making table, they are organizing their communities, developing solutions and promoting justice—often at great risk for going against the grain. As a global women-led human rights network of activists, popular educators and scholars in 31 countries, JASS works to ensure women leaders are more confident, better organized, louder and safer as they take on some of the most critical human rights issues of our time.
FEATURED REGIONAL ARTISTS BY JUST ASSOCIATES
MESOAMERICA
Sara Curruchich/Guatemala
Sara Curruchich es la primera cantautora indígena guatemalteca en llevar sus cantos en kaqchikel -su idioma materno- y español a nivel internacional. Su voz y su mensaje de amor, conciencia, respeto y defensa por la vida en todas sus formas, la han convertido en portadora de luz y esperanza para muchas mujeres y hombres.
Como cantautora, desde sus inicios en San Juan Comalapa, Sara Curruchich ha llevado su mensaje a muchos rincones de su país, presentándose en comunidades rurales, así como en teatros e importantes escenarios de Guatemala. También es gestora cultural e imparte talleres de música en distintas comunidades de Guatemala.
Su producción musical dialoga con diversos géneros como el rock, el folk y la música tradicional maya kaqchikel. Su voz ha sido reconocida no solo en el espacio del arte y la música, sino en diversas comunidades y espacios de discusión social y comunitaria, ya que tiene un alto compromiso con la memoria histórica. Se ha presentado en importantes escenarios de Suramérica, Centroamérica, Norteamérica y Europa.
MESOAMERICA
Rosa Chavez/Guatemala
My name is Rosa Chávez, I am a Mayan K’iche’ Kaqchiquel women, poet, artist and educator. For me, naming this identity is and important way of recognizing my ancestors, my past, but also my present. I have published five poetry books and I am part of the editorial committee of the feminist newspaper La Cuerda.
I migrated from my community to study legal and social sciences, degree which I didn’t complete, but instead I found literature and artistic manifestations, and did theater, community cultural management studies in the Escuela Superior de Arte (College of Art), filmmaking and audiovisual production in Casa Comal Central American Film School, and won a scholarship from the Sami Film Institute in Norway. I was part of Caja Lúdica during its first seven years, a group of young people that, for the first post-war years in Guatemala, used art and ludic methods for social transformation of neighborhoods, communities and peoples through training, political activism, community art and occupation of public spaces.
https://fipq.org/rosa-chavez-guatemala
CROSSREGIONAL
iskwē/First Nation/Canada
iskwē | ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ is, among many other things, an artist – a creator and communicator of music and of movement, of pictures, poetry and prose. And through it all, she’s a teller of stories that have impacted our past and will inform our future. acākosīk | ᐊᒐᑯᓯᐠ is the culmination of her creation and collaboration to this point. It’s a collection of seven sonic explorations that not only blur lines between sources and styles, but also between the actual and the ideal, the real and imagined.
Building on the foundation of potent, cross-cultural electro-pop established on her self-titled 2013 debut and the Juno-nominated, Polaris Music Prize Long-Listed 2017 follow-up The Fight Within, acākosīk incorporates more intense and urgent tinges of alternative, post-rock, and even industrial. The cohesive-yet-combustible result tips a cap to modern innovators like Florence + The Machine and FKA twigs while simultaneously borrowing sounds accumulated over centuries by iskwē’s cree and Métis ancestors.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Monique Wilson/Philippines
Monique Wilson is one of the Philippine’s veteran theatre and film actresses having acted professionally since the age of nine. At 18 she starred as the lead role in the original London West End production of Miss Saigon. In 1994, at 24 years old, she went back to the Philippines and founded the New Voice Company (NVC) theatre group, with a vision to awaken, inspire and transform Philippine audiences with socially provocative and innovative political theatre work.
She took up theatre at the University of the Philippines and at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). She has an MA in Theatre Education and Applied Theatre from the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Her MA dissertation was on Art and Activism, graduating with distinctions. She is one of the Founders of the Kalayaan (Freedom) College in the Philippines and has received numerous awards as an actress and activist, including the ALIW Award for Best actress for “Cabaret” the musical, and the URIAN best supporting actress for the film “Kapag Iginuhit Ang Hatol ng Puso”, the “Light of Culture” Lifetime Achievement Award by UNESCO and the Hildegarde Lifetime Achievement Award.
SOUTHERN AFRICA
Hope Masike/Zimbabwe
The respected, ancient sounds of the Mbira instrument from Zimbabwe; the modern musics of Africa, from Jazz to AfroPop and the colourful and artistic elegance of Africa put together equals Hope Masike. Hope Masike is one of Zimbabwe's music jewels to emerge from Zimbabwe. She takes pride in her culture and heritage, trending with such hashtags as #MyCultureRocks and holding numerous motivational and educational talks in schools across her country. Masike often challenges stigma against the African culture, championing it's documentation and freshly youthful presentation both through her music and otherwise.
Her music is a tasty hybrid of many music styles tied together by her signature sublime Mbira playing, sultry voice, and highly-charged performances. With an energetic youthful band (compising Mbira, bass, percussion, drums, second Mbira and guitar), Hope Masike's live performances move from the ancient Mbira classics to as modern a sound as EDM. She also performs solo sets that include Loop station, Mbira, Vocal, Dance and different percussion such as the Nigerian Udu.
SOUTHERN AFRICA
Lebo Mashile/South Africa
Lebo Mashile is a celebrated South African poet, author, performer, and producer. A sought-after speaker and social commentator, Mashile has shared her creative work in 28 countries to date.
She’s the author of the play Venus Vs Modernity: The Life of Saartjie Baartman (2019), the Noma Award winning collection In A Ribbon of Rhythm (2006), and Flying Above the Sky (2008). She has also produced the albums Lebo Mashile Live! (2006) and Moya (2017).
Her acting credits include the film Hotel Rwanda, stage adaptations of K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams and Pamela Nomvete’s Ngiyadansa, as well as Threads, a fusion of poetry and contemporary dance.
Mashile has spent 16 years working in television and media as a TV presenter, content creator, and voice over artist. She is currently one of the main voices over artists for CNN’s Inside Africa.
