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my new album – out now! with april concerts

Jace Clayton - Julius Eastman Memory Depot cover art

My new album — the first under my own name — was released last week! The Julius Eastman Memory Depot. There’s been a wave of great, thoughtful press: an action-packed feature on my work in The Guardian, a 7.8 Pitchfork review, a spot on NPR, and lots more. If you’d like to buy the album, Bandcamp offers downloads & physical CDs for the best price/money-to-artist ratio, or you can use iTunes | Amazon etc. This WQXR album-of-the-week profile is an excellent introduction to the project.

I’m doing 5 performances of The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner this April, accompanied by a dream team of talent: pianists David Friend and Emily Manzo, vocalist Arooj Aftab, and special guest Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Arooj wrote the closing song with me, and it gives you a taste of the additional scenes included in the live performance version. These shows are not to be missed! Two grand pianos and electronics makes for lovely sonics, the musicians are top-notch… plus my actorly debut?! April dates below:

April 5 + 6 – world debut! Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.
April 21 – MoMA PS1, New York City.
April 25 + 26, Liquid Music series, St.Paul Chamber Orchestra space, St. Paul Minnesota. w/ additional pianists deVon Gray and Bryan Nichols.

OTHER EVENTS THIS MONTH!!!

Tues April 2 – I’ll be speaking on ‘Rights, Rogues, Refugees’ panel at FFFFFAT LAB’s Gold show @ Eyebeam. I intend to explain my ideas of NON-LINEAR LEGAL POWER via cumbia sonidera, stop & frisk, and copyright’s cold watch
Wed April 3 – talk at intermedia class @ U. of Cincinnati/DAAP 1:30-3:30pm. JEMD/Sufi Plug Ins. Open to public!
Fri April 5 – unofficial JEMD afterparty in Cincinnati
Fri April 12 – DJ /rupture at Zemos98 Festival in Sevilla, Spain !!!
Wed April 17 – Keynote talk at Brooklyn College’s Caribbean Studies Conference.
Fri April 18 – ‘Migrant Locals’ all-star panel at EMP Conference, NYC, moderated by Wayne Marshall

NYC + CINCINNATI EVENTS

today at 7pm I am moderating a talk on global hiphop in times of social change at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, speaking with Amkoullel, Deeb, El General (the Tunisian one), and Shadia Mansour.

tomorrow, Friday March 8, I’ll be at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, DJing the opening party of their ‘ON! Handcrafted Digital Playgrounds’ exhibit. My first time playing in the city, so come on through!

Early April I’m returning to the Contemporary Arts Center with pianists David Friend, Emily Manzo, and vocalist Arooj Aftab, to debut the Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner performance! More on the JEMD tour soon; here’s a nice preview feature from Cincinnati City Beat newspaper.

Saturday, March 16th, I’m doing a special all-cumbia set @ Littlefield, with L.A.’s premier roots latin rabblerousing band, Very Be Careful! I’ll have Talacha on the mic sonidero style, too. Info.

ITALIAN DATES & A REPURPOSED SKYSCRAPER

Everybody likes Italian dates, right? Well I got some:

adv-arti8

First: on Wednesday May 16, I’m giving an artist talk in conversation with Simone Bertuzzi at the Triennale Museum in Milan. Right after that, Soundways Records boss Miles Cleret will spin some records, and I’ll close the night with a DJ set. This event is free, and the DJing portion of the evening takes place in the design museum’s backyard garden. It’s nice.

And on Thursday May 17, I’m heading to Venice, where I’ll be performing at the Teatro Fondamente Nuevo. Details. This will be my first time in Venezia, so come say hello!

Now this –

Image

I just returned from Macao here in Milan — it’s a 32-story skyscraper. 10 days ago a crew squatted it, intending to transform the building (which had been shuttered for 15 years) into a ground-up contemporary art & culture center. This morning they got evicted by local police, which simply meant that everyone left building but the crowd on the street outside the Macao kept on growing… Fascinating moments over here. This Vogue Italia blog post provides background coverage and photos.

MEXICAN DRUG BALLADS & MARATHON TIME

Last week’s radio show with USC professor Josh Kun was a real treat – and it’s now streaming. An hour of real talk on the current state of narcocorridos – Mexican drug ballads – prefaced by two new heaters from Tijuana’s blooming indie scene. Listen close:

WFMU is in the middle of its yearly fundraising marathon! Our independent, advertising-free FM radio station is almost entirely listener supported (which is incredible, in today’s rapidly consolidating and corporatizing mediascape), all on-air DJs are 100% volunteer (aka I don’t get paid), and now’s the time when we asking for your help… For more reasons on what this fundraiser is all about, you can listen back to my show this week with co-host Therese, or simply tune in to WFMU 91.1FM NYC.

Or go straight into altruism mode by donating and telling your peoples what’s what:

As always, thanks for listening. FILE UNDER: Generosity.

GATHER ROUND YE OLDE LAPTOP

Last night’s radio show is now streaming. You can listen to it on your computer or cellphone!

WFMU – independent, listener-supported, FM radio with incredible live internet streams and endless archives – is nearing the end of our first silent fundraiser. If you like Mudd Up! radio and feel like sharing the love, please consider a donation – all the on-air DJs volunteer their time (as do our amazing guests). All funds raised go to keeping WFMU afloat and free.

As always, you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued about a week after FM broadcast: , Mudd Up! RSS. Also useful: WFMU’s free iPhone app. We also have a version for Android (search for “WFMU” in the marketplace).

tracklist

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MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: NYC EDITION – SAMUEL DELANY

Times square red times square blue

The Mudd Up Book Clubb marches to Manhattan with a tender, challenging work by one of the most important authors around: Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. The book takes Delany’s 30+ years in the porn theaters and gay bars of Times Sq. on the eve of its mid-1990s Disneyification as a grounding point for an extended examination of public space, interclass contact, polymorphous intimate pleasures, the regulation of bodies and behavior, and lots more. Sex & urbanism in Delany’s hands — you can’t go wrong!

The humanity that animates his intelligence is inspiring, as is the deft ease with which Delany flows from frank, considered anecdotes about former lovers & friends to more sociologically-minded writing. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is built from two long essays, which are themselves quite different: the longer one more personal, the 2nd one more theoretical — it includes a powerful section on contact vs networking that is more relevant now than ever, and uses a two-column layout to play with marginality in a direct way and further shake things up.

This is the Clubb’s first nonfiction selection (not to mention our first selection by a black author), and it will give you a lot to think about. The New York Public Library stocks a handful of copies, including a nonlending one up at the Schomburg. The Manhattan location for this Clubb edition is secret, but suffice to say it’s awesome and will be familiar to those who’ve seen Delany doc The Polymath. The tentative date is November 15th 13th. If you are interested, please join the mailing list.

dfisheye

If you only know Delany from his sci-fi or fantasy, then you are in for a real treat! If you don’t know Delany at all, then perhaps short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah or its earlier incarnation, Driftglass, is a good place to start – “The Star Pit” is one of those rare stories that haunts me to no end. (I wouldn’t recommend starting with Dhalgren, only because I know a handful of people who couldn’t get into it and then didn’t investigate Delany any further.)

But Samuel R. Delany’s work has many, many entrances…

OK. Let’s keep those pages turning! For more online reading about this selection, Steve Shaviro wrote an excellent review of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue — indeed, all Steve’s Delany writings are great.

Stay muddy.

VENUS X LIVE AND DIRECT

Next Monday, September 10th, I’ll be hosting a very special guest on my WFMU radio show: Venus X of Ghe20 Goth1k! Tune in from 8-9pm to hear Venus discuss shaking up NYC’s party scene with the groundbreaking Ghe2o Goth1k parties, her unique DJ/production approach, and — if we’re lucky — what it’s like schooling Shakira on dance music. I would embed this crazy edit Venus did last week, fusing old skool drum&bass to Islamic chanting, but Soundcloud isn’t happy at the moment, so here’s A$AP Rocky’s Peso — featuring a cameo by Venus. Harlem’s finest takin’ over:

And this Monday night’s radio is now streaming! I was (and remain) under the weather and the music reflects that — soft, strange, a bit dreamy:

Tracklist:

Continue reading VENUS X LIVE AND DIRECT