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Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
/
From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
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* * * *
Listen
To The People
THE NEO-GRIOT NEW ORLEANS
PROJECT
from
Kalamu ya Salaam
We will go to the shelters and far-flung
communities where significant numbers of exiled New Orleanians
are now residing. We will collect their stories—not simply
their memories of escaping our flooded city, but also a social
profile of who they are, what their day-to-day lives were, what
were their hopes and dreams, their challenges and struggles.
Too often when major historic events take place, those who live
at the margins of the mainstream are ignored. We know what the
presidents and generals did, we know what the business leaders
and major cultural figures thought, but do we know anything
about the poor, the disenfranchised, the people of the Dome, the
overpass, as well as those who left the city on Sunday and as of
Tuesday night had no city to return to?
During the Great Depression the WPA collected the stories of
people who had experienced slavery. Today we will collect the
stories of people who survived a defining moment in American and
World History.
We are neo-griots. Griot refers to the traditional West African
historians/story-tellers/musicians. Neo refers to digital
technology. Our goal is to write, to record, to photograph and
video the stories of survival, and to share these stories with
the world via the internet.
The project will be led by Kalama ya Salaam, a New Orleans
native, internationally recognized as a cultural historian and
creative writer. Among his many accomplishments, he was the
Executive Director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Foundation from 1983 to 1987, and was serving as the co-director
of Students at the Center, a creative writing program in the New
Orleans public schools. Salaam taught writing and digital video.
As the editor of the Black Collegian magazine (1970 - 1983),
Salaam published over a hundred interviews. He was also a member
of the Free Southern Theatre, which toured the Deep South. For
the last ten years, Salaam has been leading the Neo-Griot
Workshop, a weekly gathering of New Orleans writers of color.
In 1998 Salaam founded E-Drum, a daily listserv built around the
interests of Black writers and diverse supporters of Black
literature worldwide. In June of 2005, Salaam and his son, Mtume
ya Salaam, began Breath of Life (kalamu.com/bol ), a website
conversation about Black music.
Salaam is uniquely prepared to lead this project. Moreover, he
has identified New Orleans writers and artists who are prepared
to enter the field and interface with the thousands of New
Orleanians in exile.
The objective is:
1. to put the words and images of the people on the internet via
a New Orleans Project website.
2. to teach the respondents how to access the internet, so that
they can continue sharing their views after the neo-griots
leave.
3. to archive the resulting information so that it can be
researched and accessed worldwide.
We invite your support of our project.
Kalama
kalamu.salaam@gmail.com posted 7 September 2005 |
