 “It's not fantasy. It's imagining...What does it look like to live with a community of people I get along with and don't necessarily get along with.” Musician, teacher, community member, and caster of musical spells, Esperanza Spalding, joins Helga mere weeks before her most recent Grammy win to talk about sustainability, what it means to be a part of a community and how to find the “the yum” in things.  Esperanza Spalding is a bassist, vocalist and composer who, “like most organisms growing in response to their environment… is emerging into something else she does not yet understand…” She is also the 62nd Grammy Award Winner for Best Jazz Vocal for her 2019 album “12 Little Spells” which is out now. 

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Esperanza Spalding

 “I studied dance and it turned out that I communicate more with words.” Poet and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation President, Elizabeth Alexander joins Helga to share her thoughts on what it means to live a life alongside words, how we maintain relationships with one another, and what the world looks like after loss.  Elizabeth Alexander – poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and cultural advocate – is president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has held distinguished professorships at a number of Universities across the country and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009. She is author or co-author of fourteen books, including American Sublime, and The Light of the World. Find out more about her work here. 

Elizabeth Alexander

 “I think you're going to encounter moments of faith and moments of fear in any path that you're on.”  Guitarist Clay Ross and Charlton Singleton are 2/5th of the Gullah band, Ranky Tanky. As they bring that music and its history forward into the present day, most recently on the Grammy stage, they wrestle with what it means to the communities they come from and what the art form can be in the future.   Gullah band, Ranky Tanky, are the 62nd Grammy Award Winners for Best Regional Roots Album, for the album Good Time - out now.

Ranky Tanky

 “I think there's something about being an outsider to New York that helped me create a lot of what the sum of City Bakeries parts were.” Pastry Chef, Maury Rubin, is the owner of well-known New York establishment, City Bakery. He joins us just a few months after it shuttered to talk about his unexpected foray into pastry, how he made a place for himself in New York, and what this next season of life might bring.  Maury Rubin is a pastry chef and owner of now closed, City Bakery. He is also the founder of Wonderbon Chocolate Co.

Maury Rubin

 “I think transitional moments in our lives... it's very important to put them together like a string of beads for yourself, so you'll remember and know where they are, if you can.” Musician and activist Judy Collins shares the story of her decades long career in music. Alongside loss and addiction she maintains a clarity of voice, of passion and of vision as a conduit for the music.  Award-winning Judy Collins has long inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. She is as creatively vigorous as ever, writing, touring worldwide, and nurturing fresh talent and continues to create music of hope and healing that lights up the world and speaks to the heart.Find her music and performance schedule here. 

Judy Collins

 “I'm literally saying to myself that I'm proud of me. That I'm proud that I have the determination, that I had the natural drive to want to do something about something. That's a revolutionary.” Activist, entrepreneur, and former model Bethann Hardison recounts moments from her unconventional life. She shares personal stories from the streets of Bed Stuy to the runways of Paris and how she sought to hold the “powers that be” in fashion accountable for their actions.  Bethann Hardison is active in the fashion industry and continues to speak out around issues of diversity.

Bethann Hardison

 “I think my work is really who I am. And I think, you know, I grew up with freedom, freedom, freedom. So I paint a lot of freedom.”   Visual artist and colorist, Stanley Whitney talks about his life as an artist and as a person. He uncovers what it means to be a black abstract painter, firmly rooted in the United States. Stanley Whitney is a painter based in New York City and Parma, Italy. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Canada, and the Guggenheim Museum. View Stanley Whitney's work online here.

Stanley Whitney

 “I know that most of us across all of the divisions and differences we could name, don't want to live this way.” Krista Tippett talks about her life as a mother, daughter, lover and leader and the ways that all of those roles converge in her work as host of the podcast, On Being. Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a New York Times bestselling author, and a National Humanities Medalist who grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. She attended Brown University and was the 2019 Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at Stanford University.  President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.” This past January, On Being Studios launched a new podcast with Pádraig ó Tauma. To find out more about her work, head here.

Krista Tippett

Artist, performer and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga. In Season 3, she continues to draw the listener into her profound and intimate conversations with creative people, famous and lesser known. Musicians, visual artists, writers, and chefs join her to share the steps they’ve taken along their paths. Where they started, where they are and where they’re going next. These inspiring conversations expand our world and our imaginations as we explore what we think we know about each other. Season III kicks off on April 14th with broadcaster and bestselling author Krista Tippett.

Helga Season III Trailer

Kimberly Drew, also known online as @museummammy, is a unrelenting, taste-making purveyor of art, fashion and culture. Her work has appeared in Glamour and W magazines, as well as Teen Vogue and The Fader. Across her varied platforms, from social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to her powerful blog, Black Contemporary Art, to her influencer Instagram account, Drew strives to shape a brighter future through inspiring art and advocacy. She joins host Helga Davis in this episode to discuss the importance of mental health, what it really means to work in the art world, and how drinking water helps her keep the beat. "You're inundated with so much information. But when given the privilege of time, it can be an opportunity for intense, expansive interaction." -Kimberly Drew Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

Art Maven Kimberly Drew

Teacher, author and speaker, David Kyuman Kim shares the concept of "radical love" in halls and on college campuses across the country as well as on his former podcast, Love-Driven Politics. In 2015, David presented a TEDx Talk on the topic at Connecticut College where he is also a Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies and the Peace and Conflict Coordinator. In this episode, David joins host Helga Davis to discuss the role of community and love in this nation during a critical time in our history. "People are eating a lot of things, but I think those things are eating them alive. Like anger, like enmity, like vitriol, like contempt. You eat those things and they eat you. You consume those things and they consume you. And to go to your neighbors, to as you say make an argument, you're not really making an argument. You're actually inviting them into a different way of life. And that's a powerful thing." -David Kyuman Kim Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

David Kyuman Kim

Author Jacqueline Woodson won the 2014 National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, and this past January began her two-year tenure as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature; her latest book Another Brooklyn was a New York Times best-seller. In this conversation, host Helga Davis sits down to talk with Woodson about family – the alternative one she was born into and the one she made for herself. Finding the ones with whom she can connect has been invaluable for her; here she shares how she made her community and how they have influenced her process. "For me the extended family is about having more parenting tools. [...] And then we have to make other decisions, we're a biracial family, right? We're a two-mom family, we're not going to send our kid to a school where they're the only kid of color, or the only kid in the class with two moms or two dads. So we had to, from a very early age, start investigating which schools are going to see my kid as wholly human." –Jacqueline Woodson Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

Jacqueline Woodson

Director, playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan is widely known for winning the Oscar for best original screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards for his film Manchester By the Sea, and as a co-writer on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. In this episode, host Helga Davis and Lonergan work through their shared upbringing at the Walden School in New York – exploring memories both charged and powerfully formative – while also exploring daily rituals and what it means to fuel one's creativity. "Without cultural appropriation there is no culture. Especially in this country. I know what it means, but I know that it's misapplied when it's taken to that [extreme] degree and it becomes meaningless. You can't name an artist, a writer, or anybody who puts anything out in any kind of creative capacity, who doesn't appropriate left and right from all kinds of cultures and influences." -Kenneth Lonergan Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

Kenneth Lonergan

Thelma Golden is the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, an appointee to President Obama's Committee for the Preservation of the White House, and the recipient of the 2016 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. In this conversation, the first of the second season of our Helga podcast, Golden discusses being taught canon revision with her father growing up, her first memories of seeing the world through art, and the rituals she need to get through the day. "I exist perpetually, but also for me, very beautifully, constantly in motion. And I love that and it's how I think of myself and see myself. So in order to be with myself, I need to find some stillness." -Thelma Golden Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

Studio Museum in Harlem's Thelma Golden

Hilton Als is an intellectual omnivore who roots his art and criticism in reality and a search for the truth. A writer, New Yorker theater critic, curator, photographer, director and professor, Als’s work gracefully slips between genres to comment on contemporary American politics, pop culture and the African-American experience and to place the current condition in a longer history. In this tenth and final episode of the first season of Helga, Als and Davis talk about what he learned living next to Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, and how to get comfortable owning your anger and art-making. "Don’t worry. Don’t be good. Be ruthless in making the most beautiful thing you can do." -Hilton Als Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on Facebook.

Hilton Als

Helga with host Helga Davis features probing conversations with creative and performing artists who have a unique, uncompromising voice and a stake in the matter of social change. Davis is an internationally touring vocalist and performance artist with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community; guests are those who put themselves out on the edge of their commitment, who dare to change their art form and their world.

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Helga

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