March 4th For Standing Rock NYC
Some scenes from yesterday’s march through Midtown Manhattan in support of Standing Rock. I spoke in front of the main branch of the NYPL on Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street about multiple pipelines afflicting Turtle Island, the Ramapough Lunaape Split Rock Sweetwater Prayer Camp & the role of my fellow musicians in this resistance. I was also later interviewed by BuzzFeed on the approach to Columbus Circle. Video to follow. Despite the cold, we had a pretty good turnout & the freewheelin’ jazz band held us down, dancing at the rear of the column. ‘Twas another great day to be indigenous & help spread awareness – A’ho*
(All photographs by Kandia Crazy Horse unless indicated)
(Eagle Woman o’er my right shoulder & Kandia Crazy Horse w/ her handmade sign @ NYPL Fifth Avenue & 42nd St before the speakers & march)
Flashback Friday: Kandia Crazy Horse x Jonathan Demme @ Saddle Up Saturdays
The Myth of the (Black) West: Jonathan Demme & I screening/discussing “Run Of The Arrow” & its director Samuel Fuller, the African & Native presence in the genre of westerns, the Civil War, the New South, Going Native, the legacies of frontier fakery extended to current “Mountain Men” type “reality” television & western individuals like Rachel Dolezal (who most forget forged a “Little Tipi-on-the-Prairie” narrative prior to deciding to become a black woman) + more last weekend in Pleasantville, NY @ the Jacob Burns Film Center. I was honored to partake in the first post-screening program & hope to perhaps return to delve into acid westerns before the end of the series.
(photos courtesy of Jacob Burns Film Center)
#SaddleUpSaturdays #HarlemOnThePrairie #FlashbackFriday
Reflecting on the West & complex visions of America at this inauguration time, while a coalition of black & indigenous activists are massing elsewhere in my Uptown NYC area @ the Harriet Tubman monument. Perhaps fittingly, I am featured today on Swirl Nation, a blog focused on multiracial & multiethnic lives in this land: Kandia Crazy Horse on SwirlNation
With what’s goin’ down on the social & political scenes, I also reflect on my past as a professional journalist & mourn the New Year loss of two of my former colleagues @ NYC’s once-bohemian, alternative newsweekly The Village Voice. I just learned of reporter Wayne Barrett’s (a notable Donald Trump chronicler) passing this afternoon & have still been trying to reckon with the legacy of Nat Hentoff as a famed jazz critic who partly inspired my joining the field of rock criticism. We shall be missing such voices in the media even more during the new presidency in America. May Nat & Wayne rest in peace. – A’ho*
Jazz Critic / my former Village Voice colleague Nat Hentoff
NYT on my former Village Voice newsroom colleague Wayne Barrett
Kandia Crazy Horse x Prince x David Bowie @ BlackStar Rising & The Purple Reign
Hope y’all enjoyed the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday; I spent mine meditating on the post-60s emanations of The Dream — as well as its limits as manifest in the oeuvres of Black Atlantic & Heartland rockstars David Bowie & Prince. I am finally at liberty to invite y’all to join us in New Haven @ the end of the month for the “Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign” rock conference. Courtesy of an invite from my longtime dear friend of the Black Rock scene, former Princeton professor turned Yale scholar Dr. Daphne Brooks, I shall be presenting on Prince & activism @ Yale University; my evening program on 25 January also features Solange (Knowles) as keynote speaker & former SPIN magazine editor Alan Light.
The program also includes Sheila E., Kimbra, Questlove & others + a closing concert by TV On The Radio. More info & registration instructions linked: KANDIA CRAZY HORSE presentation @ YALE UNIVERSITY for Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign 1/25
Looking forward to my rebirth in the purifying waters of Lake Minnetonka: HARTFORD COURANT on BLACKSTAR RISING & THE PURPLE REIGN
Hawk Medicine in Hudson Canyon
We three Native American sisters & NYC artists, representing three Nations & both the Upper and Deep South, had a lovely, impromptu gathering down by the riverside of Hamilton Heights yesterday before the rains swept along the Hudson River. Surrounded by several circling & swooping hawks, we began a powerful conjure straight out of Hudson Canyon — look forward to us being involved with the recently-discovered Lenape burial mounds at 125th Street in Harlem, among other projects – A’ho* #KandiaCrazyHorse #TessReese #KimberlyRobison / #Karline #HawkMedicine
(Kandia Crazy Horse on the Hudson River, view of the Palisades, by Tess Reese, Choctaw)
(Karline x Kandia x Tess, by Kandia Crazy Horse)
(Stormy Sunday in Hudson Canyon by Kandia Crazy Horse)
Project Americana: The American Slave Coast: Live in Amsterdam News
Here’s the first press for our #ProjectAmericana undertaking tonight in Manhattan at Symphony Space — from Harlem’s own Amsterdam News THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST: LIVE in NYC
Enjoy your TGIF & see y’all out tonight! A’ho, #KandiaCrazyHorse
(Kandia Crazy Horse & DJ Soul Punk aka Teddy K in East Harlem with effigy of Frida Kahlo, #fbf)
Throwback Thursday: Kandia Crazy Horse x Nona Hendryx x Lezlie Harrison
A portrait of We Three – Bold Soul Sisters @ #ProjectAmericana rehearsal last night in Gramercy (Photo by Ned Sublette). We look forward to seeing you out at our performance — The American Slave Coast: Live – at Symphony Space in Manhattan this Friday night!
Kandia Crazy Horse live in Project Americana @ Symphony Space NYC on October 28
Thanks to my dear friends Ned Sublette & Constance Sublette, I will be performing later this month at an event related to their weighty tome about the domestic, Southeastern slave trade in America during the antebellum era: THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST
Their book has won the 2016 American Book Award, and we are delighted to help illuminate the dark history about the networks of trading Virginia Africans into the Deep South, the roles of American Presidents Thomas Jefferson & Andrew Jackson aka “Sharp Knife” (known by we of Indian Country as a bane to Native Americans yet most are hardly aware of his ownership of enslaved Africans) in slave trading, and also bringing forth the narratives of the Africans brought to U.S. shores themselves — amongst my portion of performance, I shall be reading a “Letter From Virginia,” to represent ye olde home state.
This event of Project Americana will be at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre of Symphony Space in Manhattan, 28 October @ 8pm. Right now, a limited amount of $10 tickets are available online: PROJECT AMERICANA – THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST: LIVE
Hope to see y’all out! Here’s the gallery of outlaw artists who I will be performing with:
(Kandia Crazy Horse by Camara Dia Holloway)
(Nona Hendryx (of Labelle))
Carl Hancock Rux
Constance Sublette
New Orleans bandleader/composer Donald Harrison
Jonathan Demme
Lezlie Harrison
Ned Sublette by Constance Sublette
kandiacrazyhorse.com 