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Learn more about SDCC’s New Year, New Skills creative program

Music

JESS GARLAND is a Dallas-based singer-songwriter, recording and performing artist. She is a multi-instrumentalist who combines harp and guitar loops to evoke her unique brand of celestial avant-garde pop with ethereal jazz tones. Jess is also the President and Founding Director of Swan Strings and has recently been appointed Executive Director at Girls Rock Dallas.

BANDAN KORO AFRICAN DRUM & DANCE studies and shares experiences associated with African culture and history through the medium of dance, music, and specialized presentations for African and African Diaspora related music, dance, and culture.

Movement

BECKLES DANCING COMPANY provides a platform where performers and audiences of all ages are inspired to celebrate the techniques, creative powers and fusion of dance movement.

Spoken Word

THE ART INSPIRED HEALING COLLECTIVE is a community-based organization that is committed to promoting compassion, mindfulness, meditation, and healing for the people of Dallas. They view healing and self-care as a revolutionary act, one, which can help all individuals lead a more productive and healthy life. The spoken word segment was led by King Shakur and Jonathan ‘GNO’ White.

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From the City of Dallas Arts & Culture website:

“City Manager T.C. Broadnax appointed Martine Elyse Philippe as the Director of the Office of Arts & Culture, effective December 5, 2022.

With over 15 years of experience in arts administration, Martine comes to Dallas having served as the National Community Art Manager for A Window Between Worlds based in Los Angeles, CA and as the Chair for District 12 Arts Task Force for the Atlanta City Council. In her role with AWBW she is the national creative strategist for the development of art- based leadership and resources to transform trauma and create community-based methods of change and social justice through art.

Martine’s art administration experience spans across city government and the non-profit sector. As a trained dancer, she began her arts administration career with the City of Atlanta whereby she developed dance curriculum and then went on to become the Cultural Affairs Project Coordinator for the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. She has served in several executive roles, such as the Executive Director of Atlanta’s Resource for Entertainment & Arts.

Martine has a Master of Arts in Education Leadership from Argosy University and a BA in African American Studies from the University of Georgia. Martine is devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every facet of art and culture. She has a desire to utilize the breadth of her experiences to make a tremendous impact in the City of Dallas.”

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1st Class: Saturday, February 25 | 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

2nd Class: Saturday, March 4 | 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location: South Dallas Cultural Center

This workshop is free with registration. Participants must be 16 years of age or older and commit to both classes to complete the workshop.

“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I think about life.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. His father was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and his mother was born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents.

Born and raised in New York, Basquiat first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO (shorthand for “same old shit”), an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s, he was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. Basquiat’s art focused on “suggestive dichotomies”, such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.

Basquiat primarily used texts as reference sources. A few of the books he used were Gray’s Anatomy, Henry Dreyfuss’ Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci published by Reynal & Company, and Burchard Brentjes’ African Rock Art, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson. From late 1982 to 1985, his work featured multi-panel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and imagery. The years 1984 to 1985 were also the period of the Basquiat–Warhol collaborations. The crown, Basquiat’s signature artistic motif, both acknowledged and challenged the history of Western art. “Jean-Michel’s crown has three peaks, for his three royal lineages: the poet, the musician, the great boxing champion,” said artist Francesco Clemente.

Basquiat died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988, but his work has steadily increased in value. In 2017, a 1982 painting depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets named Untitled sold for $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased. (Source)

Learn more about Jean-Michel Basquiat:

• The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat
• Video: Growing Up With Jean-Michel Basquiat | I Was There
• Article: The Enigma of the Man Behind the $110 Million Painting
• Video: Getting to Know – Jean Michel Basquiat

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Swan Strings founder and multi-instrumentalist Jess Garland has a mission to bring concerts to communities where she provides free music education. All of Swan Strings music instructors are Dallas legends in the music and arts community. Swan Strings currently provides seven music lessons (6 in person and one virtual) in guitar and ukulele. The program partners with Southwest Adventist Junior Academy in Cedar Crest, Raul Quintanilla STEAM Academy in Kessler, and Artstillery in West Dallas. In 2023, Swan Strings will return with classes at Pan-African Connection, South Dallas Cultural Center, and Arts Mission Oak Cliff with the new board of director member Zach Galindo from Lake Highlands School of Music. Founded in 2019, Swan String is a 501c3 nonprofit organization with a mission to provide free music education, community concerts, and sound therapy services to North Texas individuals without access.

Jess Garland is a Dallas-based singer-songwriter, recording and performing artist. She is a multi-instrumentalist who combines harp and guitar loops to evoke her unique brand of celestial avant-garde pop with ethereal jazz tones. Jess was recently announced in the 22-23 season of the Elevator Project at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Jess most recently performed and presented a talk for TEDx titled, Facing The Music: Finding Your Purpose in October 2022. In 2021, Garland was awarded the Local Legend award in Nashville, TN from Wild Turkey’s Creative Director, Matthew McConaughey for keeping music alive in Dallas. Jess is also the President and Founding Director of Swan Strings and has recently been appointed Executive Director at Girls Rock Dallas.

Learn more about SDCC Music Lounges

Date: Saturdays – Jan. 21, Jan. 28, and Feb. 4

Time: 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location: South Dallas Cultural Center

All three classes are free with registration, but walk-ins are welcome after registration closes. Participants must be 16 years of age and older.

Michael D’Andre Childs

Michael D’Andre Childs is an accomplished Producer, Director, Music Director, Choreographer, Actor and Entrepreneur. After receiving his degree in Musical Theater, he has developed a professional reputation working with students across the United States.

 

Recently Michael produced, and directed the world premiere of Into the Jungle- a Live fashion, and performance event with Dallas Future Fashion Designers. He has also served as Music Director for Broadway Dallas (formerly known as Dallas Summer Musicals). He is currently Directing a production of the Wedding Singer Musical at Upright Theatre Co. where he was previously nominated for Best Director for The Last 5 Years. Previous productions include: Shrek the Musical at KD Conservatory, Seussical at Artisan Center Theater, Elf Jr. at Shine Performing Arts, and Blues in the Night at Jubilee Theatre among others. Michael is very proud of his work as a teaching artist with the Dallas Community Arts Program where he can help the next generation connect with their gifts.

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The DMMA is a 5019(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 1985. As an affiliate of the historic National Association of Negro Musicians, DMMA promotes the profession of music among local African American musicians, works to preserve the legacy of distinctively African American music such as the Negro Spiritual, and nurtures musical talent by awarding annual scholarships.

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“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

James Baldwin; As Much Truth As One Can Bear – 1962 New York Times review

James Arthur Baldwin was an American author from New York City and has acclaimed works across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. In addition to writing, Baldwin was a well-known public speaker during the civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1953, Baldwin published his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. He was only seventeen when he first started writing the piece and published it in Paris. His first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, appeared two years later and continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry, fictions, and essays. Some of his other popular novels included Giovanni’s Room, The Fire Next Time, Another Country, and If Beale Street Could Talk, which adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 2018. In 2016, an unfinished manuscript by Baldwin called Remember This House was expanded and adapted for cinema as the documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.

Baldwin’s work focuses on personal questions and dilemmas amid difficult social and psychological issues. Common themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class were main narratives in his works and some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth century America, such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. Baldwin’s protagonists are often but not exclusively African American, and gay and bisexual men were frequently featured in his literature. These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social and self-acceptance.

Baldwin left the United States at the age of 24 and settled in Paris to see himself and his writing outside of an African-American context and escape the American prejudice again Black people. He wanted not to be read as “merely a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer.” Baldwin spent nine years living in Paris, mostly in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with various excursions to Switzerland, Spain, and back to the United States in 1957. He eventually settled back to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France in 1970, were he lived and worked for the rest of his life until his death in 1987. (Source)

Learn more about James Baldwin:

• Article: 13 James Baldwin Quotes
• Video: I Am Not Your Negro
• Article: Native son – an interview with James Baldwin; Archive, 1962
• Article: As Much As I Can Bear

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