Through photographic portraits, the images of Kindred Cool recreates the friendship of Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray by composing trios of individuals who also are bonded by jazz - each photograph will consist of three jazz- significant people. “It was important for me to show the diversity of what I like to call the 'jazz society - not only musicians who create the music, but those individuals who engage the music and perpetuate the culture through an array of ways: writing, visual art, dance. I also wanted to highlight people who are inspired by the music," explains Barrayn, who received the inaugural Clarence Atkins Fellowship from the Jazz Journalist Association. The images are large-scale, color and black and white photographic prints.
The subjects of Kindred Cool are a motley crew of jazz educators, vocal and instrumentalists, musicians, aficionados, journalists, publicists, band leaders and institution heads. “With Ralph Ellison having a love for photography, I wanted some of the images have the sensibility of a photograph Ellison would have captured," shares Barrayn. “I also wanted to photograph musicians who he might have appreciated." Some names to be included in Kindred Cool are pianist, Ellis Marsalis; hip hop artist, Ladybug Mecca; pianist, Brian Jackson; pianist, Randy Weston; trombonist, Dick Griffin; jazz-poet Louis Reyes Rivera; photographer, Gerald Cyrus; WBGO jazz radio personality, Sheila Anderson; producer, DJ Spooky; jazz pianist, Vijay Iyer; percussionist, Will Calhoun; singer and actress, Rhonda Ross; Columbia University jazz studies professor, Farah Jasmine Griffin; among many others of the 'jazz society.'
The Kindred Cool exhibition is inspired by the friendship between three of America's most prolific culture shapers: Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray and painter Romare Bearden. Individually, these three intellectuals have influenced the zeitgeist of their respected disciplines - visual art, literary fiction and the art of the essay. Bearden, Ellison and Murray possessed a decades-long friendship that was well documented in scholarly writings, essay collections and witnessed throughout fine art circles. “Certainly, they were friends sharing many commonalities," explains Barrayn, “their love for jazz, however, was palpable. The values associated with jazz were manifested in their art, philosophy and modus operandi." Bearden, Ellison and Murray were certified jazzmen, riffing off one another's ideas of Americaness, Blackness, craft and process. Bearden's affinity for the music was internalized and manifested through masterfully crafted paintings and collages. He was also a song writer at one point. The cadence of Ellison's and Murray's sentences loudly echoes the sensibilities of a clever solo. Their major bond was American classical music: jazz.
“I've known the works of these giants individually. However, I was introduced to the friendship between Bearden, Ellison and Murray through Horace Porter's book Jazz Country: Ralph Ellison in America," recalls Barrayn, who discovered the book as a student while at NYU in 2002. “I've always been moved by jazz, particularly as it relates to the Black experience in America. I wanted to make a contribution to the ever-continuing conversation on jazz."
Photographed mostly in New York City, the images of Kindred Cool were also produced in New Orleans at important jazz locations like Frenchman Street in New Orleans and Minton's Playhouse in Harlem.
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn's work received national attention when her images were included in the Deborah Willis edited photo-anthology, “BLACK: A Celebration of a Culture," co-published by the Smithsonian institution. Barrayn's work has been exhibited at The African American Museum Philadelphia, InterMedia Arts in Minneapolis, Danny Simmons' Corridor Gallery, Art Gotham Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, DC, just to name a few. Her journalism has taken her abroad to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and her writing has appeared in Essence, The Source, Uptown, Complex,Studio: The Magazine of the Studio Museum in Harlem among other publications. She has curated exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Public Library.
KINDRED COOL Portraits inspired by the jazz friendship of Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
Photography by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
On View: August 3 - September 14, 2008
Opening Reception: August 3, 2008 - 3pm
Museum of Contemporary African Disaporan Arts (MoCADA) 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 www. MOCADA.org
For more information on the and Kindred Cool exhibition call (646) 573-2422 or email [email protected]
For more information contact All About Jazz.
