DJ Lynnée Denise to Curate CSULA Soul Music Justice Series

Visiting lecturer and DJ Scholar Lynnée Denise will join forces with the California State University Los Angeles Cross Cultural Center to bring highly engaging discussions about contemporary music in this political moment to the student body. Co-producer and Director of the Cross Cultural Center, Frederick Smith is directing resources brought about from direct action demonstrations by the university's Black Student Union. Frustrated students organized and demanded money from administration for relevant and diverse programming. Mr. Smith reached out to Lynnée Denise to create the series, moderate the events, and draw from her global network of scholars, activists, and artists to discuss connections between popular culture, social justice issues, and identity.

 

The Soul Music Justice Series will provided students with the opportunity to witness, and be part of a critical engagement of the way culture gets produced, bought, and sold to the masses. It also provides an opportunity for students to be exposed to the work and arts movement happening on an underground level. Guests include Joan Morgan, Bakari Kitawana, Dr. Melina Abdullah, Cast members  Emani Love and Lykyra Dawson from the Dream Hampton film Treasure and more.  

DJ Lynnée Denise Keynotes the UK Archives Matter Conference

June 2-3 DJ Lynnée Denise attended the Archives Matter Conference at Goldsmiths, University of London, hosted by the Centre for Feminst Research. Conference Coordinator Chandra Frank says the conference will help participants work towards different uses of archive, from a range of disciplines and perspectives. “We hope to explore, how the institutional archive can be made feminist, queered or decolonized, and in which ways we can build on transnational archives as well as establish our own archives,” Frank said. DJ Lynnée Denise was invited to be one of two keynote speakers. The first was Dr. Gloria Wekker. Dr. Wekker’s book White Innocence, which investigates colonialism as‘cultural archive’ was published by Duke in April 2016 https://www.dukeupress.edu/white-innocence and the conference was selected as a site to launch her new book.

DJ Lynnée Denise’s talk, "Thieves in the Temple: DJ Culture and the Prince Archives" encouraged the audience to think more critically about Prince's battle with the music industry. Lynnée was also selected to be a moderator for the panel “Black Performativity; Music, Sensation and Gesture.”

The conference was well organized and provided a wonderful opportunity for artists, scholars and activists alike to build transnational connections and to challenge the traditional and limited use of the archive.