JUNE IS BLACK MUSIC MONTH, JUNETEENTH, + PRIDE.
Join us for a special screenings and partnerships that recognize this month of creative culture and world building!
BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS 2023
Film screenings + reading list for Black Music Month
It's that time again for BCC's annual programming that recognizes Black Music Month and AfroDiasporic sonic contributions to the world.
As part of our annual Black Sonic Evolutions (BSE) program that recognizes Black Music Month in June, Black Cinema Collective will inaugurate a new series of music documentary screenings at Northwest Film Forum. Our film selections offer Black liberation histories and celebrate the artists who have given us enduring cultural soundtracks for powerful social and political change. This year we are screening FINDING FELA at Northwest Film Forum!
And, we are partnering with Loving Room: diaspora books + salon, whose founder Kristina Clark has created a powerful reading selection of books on BOOKSHOP.org as perfect companions for our program! This list includes music histories, critical cultural publications, and biographies of some of our iconic artists we celebrate during Black Music Month, including the father of AfroBeat, Fela Kuti.
ALL PROGRAM, TICKET, and BOOKSHOP list below!
LOVING ROOM: diaspora books + salon
for Black Music History Month
A reading list for Black Music History Month 2023 | Black Sonic Evolutions.
Finding Fela Screenings at Northwest Film Forum
June 16-18
Finding Fela tells the story of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s life, his music, his social and political importance.
Black musicians and singers throughout the African Diaspora have gifted us lyrical and sonic inspiration that have ignited independence movements, evolutionary civil and human rights, revolutionary protests and sit-ins, organizational + mutual aid, cultural belonging, ancestral memory, upliftment, and complex stories of love and sexuality.
Black Sonic Evolutions acts as celebratory learning, for us to broaden our knowledge of how African and Afrodiasporic cultures have influenced the world at large, through Reggae, Hip Hop, Country, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, Afrobeats, the roots of Rock n’ Roll, Funk, Punk, Trip Hop, and more.
Thanks to NWFF Artistic Director Rana San + team, and Kristina Clark at LOVING ROOM for helping to organize this program.
Curated by Berette S Macaulay
Media Design by jas Moultrie
Additional Funding support by Seattle Office of Arts & Culture C.A.R.E. Grant
about BLACK MUSIC MONTH
June is African American Music Appreciation Month! Created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, this month celebrates the African American musical influences that comprise an essential part of our nation’s treasured cultural heritage.
Formerly called National Black Music Month, this celebration of African American musical contributions is re-established annually by presidential proclamation. Though by no means exhaustive, we’ve prepared a primer that will guide you through some of the different genres that African Americans have created, inspired and fostered.
~ Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of African American History & Culture
