June 2021
Welcome 2 America Virtual Celebration, IASPM-US Research Seminar, 78-88: Prince Conference, Pop Con 2021, Soulhead, BBC Manchester Radio, Star Tribune, & a couple of my purple friends' endeavors.
Save The Date: Saturday, August 21, 2021! Organizing a Welcome 2 America Virtual Celebration (#W2AVC)
I’m excited to announce one of two, one-day Prince events for this summer that I’m curating. This is NOT a symposium! This is a virtual celebration for the release of Prince’s Welcome 2 America, the first complete, unreleased album from Prince’s vault. This event is in the spirit of last year’s Sign O’ The Times Super Deluxe Celebration (#SOTTSDC).
We are super excited! We hope you are, too! If so, join us for a day of conversations about the album and the tour on Saturday, August 21, 2021, beginning at noon EDT using the #W2AVC hashtag!
You can read more details at https://w2avc.polishedsolid.com. You can register for FREE at https://w2avc.eventbrite.com.
#W2AVC is a polished solid production, curated by De Angela L. Duff.
Moderated & Designed Flyers for IASPM-US Research Seminar, “Say It Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies” (June 2021)
On June 7, 2021, I moderated a one-hour, virtual, IASPM-US Research Seminar, “Say It Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies.” The seminar featured presentations by Drs. Brittnay L. Proctor, Matthew D. Morrison, Elliott H. Powell, Kimberly R. Mack, and Daphne A. Brooks about their respective research / book projects in Black music studies, followed by a Q&A.
I also designed the event flyers for various social media platforms.
Here are a couple of the flyers I designed in reverence to the original James Brown “Say It Loud” promotional buttons.
Presented Conjuring the Prince Mystique & Moderated the UTCM panel at 78-88: Prince Conference (June 2021)
On 3 June 2021, I presented on Day 1 of the virtual 78-88: Prince, The First Decade: An Interdisciplinary Conference, 3 - 5 June 2021, organized by Dr. Kirsty Fairclough, Dr. Mike Alleyne, and Kristen Zschomler. My talk was entitled “Conjuring the Prince Mystique.”
I also moderated the incredible Under The Cherry Moon panel with brilliant presentations by Keith Corson, Dr. Karen Turman, and Dr. Sherry Wien, also on 3 June 2021.
All of the talks were recorded. Be on the lookout for them, once the organizers post them. I went ahead and uploaded my presentation for the purpose of my own archives.
Originally, this conference was supposed to be in person in MPLS in June 2020. I miss MPLS! Thank U again, Kirsty & Mike, for bringing us together, once again!
Presented Controversy: The Blueprint of Prince’s Musical Transformation and Disruption at Pop Con 2021 (April 2021)
C. Liegh McInnis, Kamilah Cummings & I presented a panel, Prince: Disrupting Notions of Blackness, at Pop Con 2021, The 2021 Pop Convergence: A Virtual Pop Conference, on Fri April 23! Our panel was moderated by Michaelangelo Matos.
De Angela presented "Controversy: The Blueprint of Prince’s Musical Transformation and Disruption." Kamilah Cummings presented “Purple, Lace, & Race: Prince and the Art of Protest.” C. Liegh McInnis presented “The Art of Double Disruption: How Prince Worked in the Tradition of Jean Toomer and Richard Wright to Rebel Simultaneously against White Supremacy and Black Self-Limitation.”
Our Panel Description:
Prince’s legacy as a Pop music icon is undisputed. His influence on popular culture is endless. In addition to being one of the greatest entertainers of all time, he was a groundbreaking songwriter, musician, arranger, composer, producer, and entrepreneur. Prince was also the ultimate disruptor. In a career that spanned five decades, Prince challenged systems, spaces, and sounds. In the process, he disrupted widely held notions about what it meant to be a black artist, activist, and, ultimately, a black person in a society that remains at odds with its own concepts of blackness, freedom, and equality. Through analysis of his music, lyrics, and individual acts of protest, this panel seeks to expand the discussion of Prince’s legacy by examining his role as a disruptor.
My Presentation Abstract:
In the 15 November 1981 Baltimore Sun article, "Whites Are Missing Good Rock By Blacks," Geoffrey Himes proclaimed, "As young and talented as Prince is, he has a better opportunity to demolish the rules about black rock 'n' rollers than anyone else." Not only did he accomplish this three years later at the pinnacle of his commercial success with 1984's Purple Rain film and its accompanying soundtrack, but Prince would also go on to create a genre of music labeled the "Minneapolis Sound." However, by 1988's critical masterpiece Sign O' The Times, Prince was his own genre, often copied, but never duplicated.
While Sign O' The Times would encapsulate everything Prince was as a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer, the linchpin of Prince's discography is 1981's Controversy. The album is the perfect amalgamation of Prince as a disruptor. Although its predecessor 1981's Dirty Mind would shock fans and critics alike with Prince's sexual explicitness and sociopolitical awareness, while adopting punk's aesthetics and ideologies, Controversy is where all the themes that Prince would revisit throughout the rest of his career–race, sex, gender, politics, spirituality, duality, and love—and a bricolage of musical genres–rock, pop, soul, r&b, new wave, and rockabilly—were woven together in a quilt of his authentic voice and sonic palette.
In this talk, the deconstruction of Controversy reveals that the album as a whole would ultimately anchor the trajectory of Prince's career, while also serving as the blueprint of constant transformation and disruption for the rest of it.
In response to our Pop Con 2021 joint panel, Adam Reid Sexton wrote one of my favorite comments of all time! Thank you, Adam!💜
It was such a pleasure to be on a panel presenting with Kamilah and C. Liegh! As Tonya Giddens says, “Iron sharpens Iron!” These two push me to be a better scholar because they ALWAYS bring it!
Five Years Later: Members of The Prince Community Reflect by Miles Marshall Lewis on soulhead.com (April 2021)
It was an honor and a pleasure to be featured in the article, “Five Years Later: Members of The Prince Community Reflect,” by Miles Marshall Lewis on soulhead.com!
Troy Gua (pop conceptualist, creator of Le Petit Prince art project), KaNisa Williams aka Darling Nisi (creator-host of the Muse 2 the Pharaoh podcast), Tonya Giddens (creator of the Purple Paisley Brunch), Michael A. Gonzales (cultural critic), and Priana Aplin (superstar Prince fam) were also featured.
Interviewed by Karen Gabay about Prince: Five Years Later, for The People on BBC Manchester Radio (April 2021)
On 18 April 2021, I was interviewed by Karen Gabay for The People on BBC Manchester Radio about Prince, five years later. Thank you, Karen Gabay, for the invitation!
Featured in “Prince: Five Years Later” by Jon Bream for Minneapolis’ Star Tribune (April 2021)
MASSIVE THANKS to my friend for picking me up several copies. You know who you are!
I was beyond thrilled to be featured in this article, “Prince: Five Years Later,” written by the one and only Jon Bream in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune on 18 April 2021. Jon Bream covered Prince's career from the very beginning. He's been writing about Prince for almost 40 years. I've read so many Jon Bream articles over the DECADES that it's totally surreal to see my name in one. His book was the very first Prince book that I purchased in real-time. So to say that this was a big deal is an understatement.
There are a couple of corrections I need to make to the article. While I have spent a lot of my own money on my Prince symposia and other events, I personally haven’t spent $10K. If you’ve ever put on an in-person event, you should understand how costly they can get. I ask several, generous NYU sponsors for money in order to make these events happen. I am EXTREMELY grateful for their continued support. I couldn’t do these symposia without them. Otherwise, I would definitely have to start charging.
While I want to keep these events FREE as long as I can, they are not cheap, not even the virtual ones. They come with a lot of sacrifices, particularly from the speakers. The biggest sacrifice being their time. They spend hours upon hours, having to field A LOT of email or slack messages, texts, or phone calls, crafting their presentations, showing up for the tech checks (even though despite tech checks, tech issues still arise), getting themselves ready and finally participating! Again, I am EXTREMELY grateful for their continued support. There would be no symposia and other events without the speakers.
I listened to Dirty Mind on the floor of my Aunt's house, not my grandmothers’. However, even more important than that, it was a vinyl record, as opposed to a cassette :)
Even though I did purchase 1999 on cassette, twice, I played the first cassette so much that the tape shredded. However, I eventually got the vinyl. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson, but I also bought a cassette of Graffiti Bridge, which I still possess as I am an archivist as Steven G. Fullwood would want me to say.
If you watch this 6 minute video which was filmed in MPLS at the Guthrie Theater in 2016 about my record collecting habits for the EYEO Festival, hopefully, you'll understand my love of vinyl and why that distinction is important to me.
This talk is not very representative of my normal delivery as this was super stressful. I don't know if you know about the ignite (aka Pecha Kucha) talk format but the slides advance automatically: 20 slides, 15 seconds each... So I was trying to make sure I said everything I wanted to say before I ran out of time. I'm much calmer and measured when giving “normal” talks.
Words fail to express how grateful I am for Jon Bream’s Prince coverage over the years and even now! A mere, “Thank you so very much, Jon Bream!” will have to suffice!
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P.S. Please Consider Supporting My Purple Friends w/ Their Purple Endeavors
Prince and the Parade and Sign O' The Times Era Studio Sessions: 1985 and 1986
This is my absolute, favorite book series about Prince, as it illustrates how hardworking and prolific Prince was. In fact, if I could only have one book about Prince, this would be the one.
The cover on this one, photography by and designed by Reverend, is stunning!
Hopefully, Duane will continue the series with 1987 and 1988. More light and love needs to be given to The Black Album, Lovesexy, and if the gods align, The Batman Soundtrack.
I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy or two to read and share with your purple friends. I want to make sure that a third book is written. This will only happen if this one sells. Duane’s scholarship is super important to Prince’s legacy!
Thank you, Duane, for writing two stellar books! I know how hard you work on them to make sure that they are as accurate as humanly possible. I look forward to the third!
The Purple Paisley Brunch Presents…
As I mentioned at the end of the Under The Cherry Moon (UTCM) Panel at the 78-88: Prince conference…
IF you need or want Mo' UTCM after #Prince7888, U shouldn't miss the upcoming UTCM @PPaisleyBrunch celebrating the 35th Anniversary of Under Cherry Moon & Parade on Friday, July 2, 2021, virtual & in-person. NOW ON SALE! https://thepurplepaisleybrunch.com #PPBUTCM35
The Purple Paisley Brunch always puts on fantastic events! Please support them!