Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is the founding artistic director and chief visioning partner of Urban Bush Women, a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. Designated a Master of Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, she received the Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award and honorary degrees from both Tufts University and Rutgers University.

Lineage Podcast

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

Steffani Jemison is a celebrated visual artist whose work is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum (where she was featured in the 2019 Biennial), Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Modern Art, amongst others. She holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Columbia University.  A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, she currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Steffani Jemison

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Tyehimba Jess is the author of leadbelly and Olio. A Cave Canem and NYU alumni, Jess is a Professor of English at the College of Staten Island.

Tyehimba Jess, Part Two

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Tyehimba Jess is the author of leadbelly and Olio. A Cave Canem and NYU alumni, Jess is a Professor of English at the College of Staten Island. This is the first of our two part conversation. 

Tyehimba Jess

On this episode, Lineage host Shani Jamila is the guest and the mic is in the capable hands of Jodine Dorce, who’s one of those rare, amazing people who’s a powerhouse both onstage and behind the scenes. She is the the host of the world-renowned Apollo Theater’s Music Cafe, she recently launched a new quarantine web series called The Silver Lining, and she produced an entire ESSENCE Festival. This episode was recorded live at the Ace Hotel, where Shani was a 2019 Artist in Residence. 

Jodine Dorce + Shani Jamila

Jerome Lagarrigue is a New York based painter who was raised in Paris. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he is featured in two documentary films, Heavyweight Paint and Jerome Lagarrigue: Portrait of an Artist. His work has been supported by residencies including Villa Medici in Rome. Jerome is represented by Galerie Olivier Waltman (Paris/Miami) and Dolby Chadwick gallery in San Francisco.

Jerome Lagarrigue

This episode of Lineage was recorded live at the Brooklyn Museum to commemorate the close of the seminal Soul of A Nation exhibition. Host Shani Jamila spoke with Ming Smith, a legendary photographer whose work was featured in the show, and Russell Frederick, an acclaimed documentary photographer known for his portraits of Bed Stuy. Both of them are members of Kamoinge, an intergenerational collective of Black photographers. We talk about what brought them to their work, the goals of their practice and the rich tradition of image makers that inspire them. 

Ming Smith + Russell Frederick

Otto Neals is a painter, sculptor and printmaker who was born in South Carolina in 1930. Neals has been a member of the Weusi Artist Collective since the 1960s. His  work can be found in collections including the Smithsonian, Howard University, The Studio Museum, Ghana National Museum, Columbia Museum, & the private collections of Congressman John Lewis, Harry Belafonte and Oprah Winfrey. 

Otto Neals

Okwui Okpokwasili received a B.A. (1996) from Yale University. Her performance work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the 10th Annual Berlin Biennale, and Jacob’s Pillow, among other institutions. She has held residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Rauschenberg Foundation Captiva Residency, and New York Live Arts, where she was a Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist. She is a MacArthur Genius Fellow and a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

Okwui Okpokwasili

Derrick Adams is a Baltimore-born, Brooklyn, New York-based artist whose critically admired work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations.  Adams received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation’s Studio Program.  His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Derrick Adams

 Rashida is an accomplished performance artist, choreographer and curator. A United States Artists awardee, Bumbray is one of the inaugural social practice artists in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundation.  

Rashida Bumbray

 Adepero is an actress, director and writer. She is known for her leading role in Pariah (2011), as well as supporting roles in 12 Years A Slave (2013), The Big Short (2015) and When They See Us (2019). Her theatre credits include Danai Gurira's play Eclipsed; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; and Fela!, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones.  

Adepero Oduye

Stay tuned for Season One of Shani Jamila’s new podcast Lineage, which will feature live shows and in-depth interviews with special guests. Check out the trailer for a sneak peek into what’s to come!

Lineage Trailer

Artist to Artist, Neighbor to Neighbor. Conversations About Home, Hosted by Shani Jamila.

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Lineage Podcast

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