Flux Projects presents, with Poetic Theater Productions and Rhyme Like a Girl in conjunction with Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives, Flux Projects’s upcoming work with Charmaine Minniefield, 

SHOUT: A Global Women’s Cypher with Toni Blackman

This global cypher connects Black women artists from across the world in the spirit of the Ring Shout, a traditional African-American worship and gathering practice whose origins in West African ritual and ceremony predate slavery.

In her work, visual artist Charmaine Minniefield connects the traditional practice of the Ring Shout with contemporary forms of Black creative expression, including dance, music, and spoken word. As for Blackman’s participation in the project, Minniefield describes it as follows:

“Toni Blackman is not only the first US Hip Hop Ambassador but she is also a highly respected artist and social entrepreneur. Deeply rooted in cultural tradition, the connection between her work with the Cypher and my work with the Ring Shout makes absolute sense. The practice of gathering in the circle and improvising gives birth to a collective prayer whether its Hip Hop or the long-standing Black religious practice of the Ring Shout. This series of events will explore how both are coding much like messages of resistance within Freedom Quilts, which reaffirm Blackness, Ase (Power), and therefore Freedom.”

Music by DJ Likwuid

Presented in conjunction with the 2020 Hip Hop Appreciation Week, May 17 – 23

Remembrance as Resistance and its related programming is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Black Arts (NBAF).