Join us for an evening of urban griot storytelling.

Explore the Word paintings and Alphabet Sculptures from selective and new poems of performance poet Kamau Daáood. Kamau will be supported by the melodic soundscapes and improvisations of pianist and keyboard artist Mark de Clive-Lowe.

Kamau Daáood is a native of Los Angeles, where he co-founded The World Stage Performance Gallery, a non-profit arts institution, with drummer Billy Higgins. His early development began as a young member of the Watts Writers Workshop and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in the late 1960s. Kamau is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daáood (City Lights Publishers, 2005) and Notes D’un Griot De Los Angeles (Le Castor Astral publisher, 2012), a bi-lingual translation. Kamau recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park (M.A.M.A. Records, 1997). He has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp (1984); the PBS documentary Race is the Place (Paradigm Productions, 2005); and Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. by Jeannette Lindsay (DVD, 2008). Daáood is featured on the 2022 CD release of Healing Suite by The Gathering, a multigenerational music project started by Jesse Sharps, an early bandleader of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra.

Equal parts jazz musician, live remixer and beat music producer, Japanese-New Zealander pianist, composer and electronic jazz pioneer Mark de Clive-Lowe melds his love for improvisation-heavy jazz with electronica and sample culture, weaving in stories of Japanese ancestry, culture and mythology. He has been LA-based since 2008, following his formative decade at the heart of London’s underground music community and his collaborators have included the likes of taiko and shinobue specialist Kaoru Watanabe, tabla master Zakir Hussain and drummer extraordinaire Eric Harland. De Clive-Lowe is Founding Artist in Residence for Initiatives of Change’s La Ceiba Festival and a recipient of the JUSFC’s 2021 U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship. His most recent project MOTHERLAND was released into the world as an NFT collection featuring a 40-minute film: an audio-visual, meditative tone-poem with de Clive-Lowe sound tracking nature footage shot in Japan with music inspired by his deep-dive into family roots and his own relationship with Japan. Having released twenty albums, along with hundreds of collaborations and remixes, de Clive-Lowe is an artist in a class of his own—blurring the lines between jazz and electronica and using his vast palette to share stories of the past and present.

“Way before jazz hybridity became a worldwide phenomenon, de Clive-Lowe was busy designing its blueprint.” - Jazziz

”(the) avant-garde soulful Pianist/DJ/Producer delivers his lifetime of journeys to different musical ports in a concise package, seamlessly… transporting not just in genre but in emotion and spirit.“ - Huffington Post