O.N.E. Mile, V2

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TWO GENERATIONS OF DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHY

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ONE MILE PROJECT TEAM
Anya Sirota, Bryce Detroit, Halima Cassells, Jean Louis Farges
DESIGN DIRECTOR
Jean Louis Farges
FASHION EDITOR
Halima Cassells
MUSIC CURATOR
Bryce Detroit
EDITOR
Anya Sirota
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Linda Cassells, Lorena Fogueiredo, James Lesko, Carl Wilson,
Anya Sirota, Halima Cassells, Samantha Okolita, Samba Jones,
CaldodeCultivo, Masimba Hwati, Jean Louis Farges, Bryce Detroit,
Carleton Gholz, Paul Chandler, Bashair Pasha
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jean Louis Farges, Hubert Watkins, Desmond Love, Doug Coombe
ARTWORK
Ian Donaldson, Carl Wilson, Masimba Hwati, Sam Okolita,
Jonathan Watkins, YT Oh, Linnea Cook, Jay Dragon
TRANSCRIPTIONS
Bashair Pasha, Arvinder Singh
COVER
Efe Bes photographed by Jean Louis Farges
ASSISTANT COPY EDITOR
Bashair Pasha
GENERAL INQUIRIES + CREATIVE SERVICES
info@onemile.org
copyright © ONE Mile
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EDITORS’ NOTE
Welcome to issue 2 of ONE Mile Magazine
Over the last year ONE Mile became increasingly interested in the question of
“how do people make things, sounds, spaces, and ideas in the North End and in
Detroit at large” – a question that we began to address in the inaugural issue of
the ONE Mile Magazine, in which we focused on a small sample of design, art,
music, and culture locally rooted in Detroit’s epic North End. At the same time,
we became more and more aware that so many amazing people were doing
exceptional, self-initiated, experimental, political, impactful, intrepid, collective
and vital projects and activities... We wanted to tell all their stories.
The second issue of the ONE Mile Magazine takes a closer look at the question
of making: how people are making, what people are making, why people are
making, to what ends, and with what means, against what challenges. In exposing
the motivations and processes that guide Detroit’s grass roots makers – salient
portraits of a neighborhood, its residents, and by and large, the city begin to take
shape. The people who have shared their experiences and work are inspirations
to us, and we are very pleased to communicate their narratives throughout
Detroit and beyond.
We, at ONE Mile, have been staying busy making things ourselves. Since
launching our project two years ago, we’ve released a Magazine, salvaged a
garage, built a Mothership, introduced a fellowship program for local artists,
and converted a barbershop into a community gathering spot. We’ve provided
support to the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm and their ambitious project to
create an economically sustainable cultural landscape in the North End. We’ve
helped launch the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution and its offshoot programs.
We’ve hosted dozens of events featuring local artists and performers, building a
powerful network of engaged and active individuals. Thanks to everyone who has
taken part in this incredible experiment, and to those encountering ONE Mile for
the first time, we look forward to crossing paths.
Editorial team
summer 2016

CON
FEATURED VISIONARIES
N’neka Jackson: Astral Accessory ArtistT
18
Efe Bes: Detroit’s Synchronal Intergalactic PolythythmacistY
30
Yolanda Green: At the Apex
42
Carl Wilson: My Portion of Territory
68
Jonnie Ujama Page: Drawing Dark Objects
130
VERSE
Za’Nyia Kelly: Illuminate
124
Bryce Detroit:
#DETROITAFRIKAN
136

TENTS
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Lorena Figueiredol: Wild Things
74
Dr. Carleton S. Gholz: Jazz Archaeology
82
Akoaki: Pink or Gold?
100
GOING GLOBAL
Documenting Detroit
94
Masimba Hwati: A Time to Project
and Pro-Act New Images, Sounds and
Narratives? Black Detroit
114
NEW ECONOMY
Paul Chandler: Welcome to Detroit
92
Halima Cassells: Free Market
98
Ann Carter: AfroJam
110

FEATURED
VISIONARIES
Over the past years, Detroit has captured everyone’s imagination. First, as
a paradigmatically Modern city gone bust: surviving an automobile industry
bailout, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, and a virtual dissolution
of its democratic system of governance. More recently, Detroit has emerged
as a turnaround city: its radically devalued real estate and seemingly limitless
neo-rural landscapes rebranded as a test bed for speculative redevelopment
and urban experimentation. The revivalist turn, though vital to the normalization
of a distopic, economically challenged urban scenario, has drawn its fair share
of criticism. With blight remediation and private revitalization reaching a fever
pitch, critics and residents alike worry that Detroit’s distinct Afro-diasporic
cultural heritage, its counter-histories, and obscured working class narratives
might be white washed, or worse, altogether erased.
Against this mutable and precarious contemporary scenario, ONE Mile brings
together its Featured Visionaries series: intimate stories behind Detroit’s creative
leaders, their thoughts, perceptions, provocations, and strategies. As a collection,
these personal narratives inspire us, revealing a city that is culturally endowed,
vanguard, and anything but a blank slate.
Hound me, Fox you: A Guide to Counter Foxiness, a design
project exploring the politics of aesthetic and the migrant crisis.
By YT Oh, Jay Dragon and Linnea Cook.
learn more at renardie.wix.com/counter-fox &
pitcrit.com/hound-me-fox-you-a-guide-to-counter-foxiness/
17

N’NEKA JACKSON
ASTRAL ACCESSORY ARTIST
interview Halima Cassells & Bashair Pasha
photography Jean Louis Farges
18

Nneka Jackson’s custom creations are both regal
and empowering, bringing together mythical flash
with whimsical futurism. Her embellished aggregates,
taking the form of hybridized crowns, wings, masks,
and other astonishing corporal ornaments, are
inspired by legends, butterflies, intangible legacies
and above all a deep awareness of beauty. We met
up with Nneka at the appropriately regal Fisher
Building to talk about real and projected function of
ornament.
HC: Where did your inspiration come from and how did you get
started?
NJ: Oh, that’s an easy question. I’ve actually been creating since
I was a little girl, but it was more so making things for myself. It
wasn’t until I started wearing my things out that people started
to notice. And it would be like “oh my god, where did you get
that?” And, then my daughter was born, and that was really
magnified everything. And I would make handmade pieces, so
she was a newborn wearing jewelry, and the nurses in there would
just go crazy.
BP: Did you start out making jewelry?
NJ: No, I actually draw, sculpt, and I sew. I make all sorts of stuff.
It just progressed so much that most of what I do now is like
accessories and wings and things like that. And crowns.
HC: Love your crowns!
NJ: Thank you!
HC: So what’s new? what are you working on like right now?
NJ: Most of what I do is kind of different. I try to keep my work
separate from what other people are doing. I use a lot of
inspirations like McQueen, I love his work. So, I want to get back
into working on some more wings, some more crowns. Way more
elaborate. So, I’m just coming up with ideas now.
HC: What other big names do you follow? You mentioned
McQueen?
NJ: I love Lanvin, I love so many. I love fashion in general. I’ll
watch some of the shows, like Paris or London. I was actually
invited to London Fashion Week several years ago, but that’s
not the kind of thing that you can half-step. You have to come
in that with everything perfect, but I didn’t do that show. I will
eventually... But I will watch the fashion in other countries to
see what they’re doing. And colors! Colors are really important
to me. I’ll take a trip to Barnes and Noble just to look at all the
magazines from all over the world, to see what fashion is doing.
BP: Is that what you’re interested in- fashion?
NJ: Well, because I do jewelry, the accessories match the fashion.
I want to see what colors are in style. That’s how I keep up with
what’s going on in different seasons. Because, generally, when
you’re speaking of fashion, what they show on the runway is for
the upcoming season. So, that’s how I keep up with what’s going
on, and try to make sure that what I’m doing fits in.
21

BP: In the progression of your work, how did you eventually come
to making accessories?
It’s changed so much because I’m self taught. It would’ve been
different if I had gone top a university where they had a timelinelike
“Okay, this is what you’ll do this year, this is what you’ll do
next year”. For me, it’s what catches my eye, what I see in my
dreams. Things that I like to make, like I may see something I like
and say, “I want to try that,” and so that’s how I actually got into
it. Because, in the beginning, I was drawing, I was sculpting, I was
sewing little things, but then it was, “can I do that”? Then it was,
“I can do that! Okay, so let me try something else.” So that’s I
how moved onto different things. It’s basically just trial and error.
HK: Where did you get that confidence?
NJ: Oh my goodness, my grandmother. My grandmother was
the rock of my family. She was where our creativity comes from.
My mother was also an artist, though she’s a nurse. That’s were
it originated from. My grandmother was the type of woman,
because she was a teacher, she had to come p with these
brilliant ideas to get these children engaged, and she brought
those ideas home to us. We never knew what we were going to
come home to. There was one time she decided to paint the
house mint green and chocolate brown. Imagine what that
looked like! And her reason was, “it’s only paint -- if you don’t like
it, paint over it”. I’m the same way. It’s only paint, it’s only beads,
it’s only fabric. If I don’t like it, start over. And sometimes, there
are some pieces that I absolutely hate and everyone else loves.
I look at it and I’m like, this could be a little different, I could’ve
done that a little bit different. But what is perfect, know? Perfect,
in my world, it doesn’t exist. And even my children have that
same mentality. I’ve always stuck out like a sore thumb, because,
I’m so eclectic. Normal is not me, what is considered normal is
just not me. So, I’ve always taught my children be you. Even if
you stick out, that’s okay. We’re not all meant to be copycats of
everyone else. And that’s how they are… They all have different
personalities. It’s wonderful.
NJ: You mentioned you were asked to do London Fashion Week?
NJ: Yes, and it was an amazing email to get, I’ll say that, because
I was formerly on a Project Runway’s spinoff show about
accessories. Many moons ago, they had a casting in Chicago.
And I took the bus all the way to Chicago because you know,
it’s just right there down the street.... So I said, I’ll never know
how good I can be unless I try, And so, when I got there I was so
nervous. I was among some any amazing accessory designers,
and there were three rounds. I told myself, I’m not going to cry,
because I’m a crier. So I got through the first round, I was so
excited. At that time I had just gotten on Facebook, and I’m
updating everyone in Detroit, like maybe, I got through the first
round. Second round, I made it through. Final round is when
you go before the panel of judges that are going to be on the
show. So I had my portfolio and I had some of my pieces with
me. And when I handed them my pieces, they didn’t want to
give them back. They said the saw me on runways in Paris, they
saw me travelling around the world. They couldn’t believe that,
first of all, I was this designer that was from Detroit, Michigan.
They could not believe that. And so, we had seven days to make
a video. I wanted them to see the beauty here, to understand
why I am the way I am. I’m from Michigan, and from Detroit,
Michigan. My grandmother taught at Highland Parkfor well over
twenty years, my mother graduated from there, and she was born
there. And when I made this video I went all over, I wanted to
show them the beauty here: the Children’s museum, the African
American Museum, and I showed them Belle Isle. I just wanted
them to understand what you see I the media is not what Detroit
is. It’s such a melting pot, people don’t understand that. I’ve
been fortunate to live in other places in the United States, and
I’ve never seen a community like the one here. My circle is so
large that I mingle with poets, I mingle with painters, I mingle
with architects, I mingle with electricians, I mingle with so many
people who are able to influence my work. I don’t see being able
to get that any place else. It’s amazing, and I want the world to
constantly know of the amazingness that is here.
BP: How did the video turn out?
The video was amazing. I didn’t get one the show, but the
video came out amazing. I still watch it from time to time to
see the growth. Not only in myself, but also in my work. But to
hear someone validate my work, whoever that may be. There
are people who can be your friends, who will say “I love it,”
because they love you. But here’s someone who never met me,
and they literally did not want to give me my pieces back, they
were holding on to them saying “this is amazing, how did you do
this?” and I’m crying, because I was determined not to cry. It was
amazing to get to that point, to have them validate my work that
way.
22

And to then, get that invitation
to do Fashion Week. I don’t regret
that decision. Because it was
either focus all my energy on
doing that show in London, or
miss my son’s high school graduation.
Or, to just wait. I know
the opportunity will come back
around. It’s a one in a lifetime
thing, to see your child graduate
high school. And even more so
for me, because a lot of people
don’t know. I became a parent at
13. So, there are always all of these stigmas placed on you when
you have a child that young. You’ll never graduate high school,
you’ll never go to college, you’ll never have a family, and you’ll
never start a business. And all of these things that were placed
on me as things I would never do, it was like, I don’t fit into a box.
So it’s fine that you have all these ideas of who you think I am,
but let me show you who I am. So, when people meet my children,
they’re completely blown away because it’s not what they
expect. Because, society says what my children should be. Let my
children show you who they are.
I don’t regret not going, because I was able to be in the front
row to see my son graduate. And I was hoarse after we left,
I was so excited, He got a full ride scholarship, he also plays
instruments. I’ve been able to pass on my artistic abilities onto
my children, as well as music. I’ve always been a firm believer
in the importance of music and art in children, in addition to
the academics, because it does something to their minds where
they’re able to understand concepts better. They see the world
completely differently. I didn’t have that. And my boys got full
ride scholarships to go to school. My second oldest did not take
his scholarship. Because initially he wanted to go into nursing,
and Wayne State had an amazing nursing program. He said, as a
male I have more of a chance to get scholarships because I’m a
minority. So he had a plan, I couldn’t disagree with that. But I’ve
always wanted them to see the world, and know that the world is
much bigger than their backyard. We were a military family for a
long time, so my children have gotten to travel and see how big
the US is. But they haven’t seen the world. So I’ve always pushed
them, like “I’m here. I’m always going to be here. Come back and
Come back and visit on Christmas and Thanksgiving, but see the
world.”
JLF: If you could have a magic
wish to change or preserve on
thing in Detroit, what would it be?
NJ: There are so many things I
would change: one of the first
ones is education. When I was
a child, I wouldn’t be who I was
without some of the phenomenal
teachers I had in my life that
were there to push me, that were
there to challenge me. That were
there to say “I’m proud of you.”
It’s not the same now, because they cut the budgets so much so
the children just test all the time, basically. So I would definitely
change a lot of things in terms of education. And art is no longer
as important as math, for example. I have children who have no
art classes in school. Because there are no art teachers to teach
them. They won’t hire the art teachers to teach art, they’ll hire
them to be substitutes, to teach English. I have a best friend who
spent 12 years in college, to be able to teach k-12, and while she
was teaching, they had her teaching Social Studies and English.
She had a cart she could push around to teach art for fifteen,
twenty minutes. And trying to teach art appreciation to kids in
the eighth grade who’ve never had an art class before, ever… it’s
really tough.
I’ve seen this city change over the years. When I was little it
was completely different. It’s funny flipping through pictures
and seeing places where I grew up that no longer exist. My high
school is being torn down as we speak. They started tearing
down my high school two weeks ago. The city of Highland
Park no longer has a high school. It no longer has one. And my
mother graduated from the city of Highland Park. People don’t
understand that the city of Highland Park was built because of
the Model T factory that was there. It was actually built for the
workers to have some place to live close to the factory. They had
their own water treatment facility, their own college. My mom got
her first nursing degree form Highland Park. And to see it now, I
would definitely change that. There’s so many things I would like
to change, but that’s one of the main ones.
George Mckenney photographed by Jenny Risher
23

above: Kristina Theglamtech photographed by Timothy Paule; the
model styled her own hair; MUA by Khrissy
facing page: Kevlar photographed by Maria Popivanova;
wardrobe by Kristina Theglamtech
25

JLF: And there was robust arts education in the city when you
were growing up?
NJ: Yes, education and music. I can’t say just art. Music and art
go hand in hand in a way that I can’t explain. It’s a feeling that
you get, when you hear a piece of music. I’m not going to cry
today.
HC: It’s okay.
NJ: I used to play with my
sister, we were violinist. I was
first violin and so was she.
And my sister passed away
at the age of 17 when I was
15. She caught a virus called
Gulliam Bare’ Syndrome and
complications from sickle cell
disease. She went into crisis,
and it killed her in seven
days… and for a while it hurt
to play. The music was gone.
But I would hear certain
songs that we used to play
together, and it would bring
all of those memories back.
JL: So do you think that music is part of inspiration in the work
you do.
NJ: Of course, there’s a lot of times I’ll be listening to music
when I’m creating. So it’s a definite, co-relation with my work.
Because even the shows that I do, the music that I sew along
with the fashion. For me, when I do my accessories, it’s more
so wearable art than anything. And, I want you to leave my
shows feeling something. No matter what that feeling is, I want
you to remember my show. I’ve been able to do that over the
years. When I do a show, people remember it. They remember it,
they remember something from it: my wings, a certain piece of
jewelry, they remember. Music helps with that memory, because
just hearing that music brings back the show. And with this
community here, we’re surrounded by musicians, all different
genres of musicians.
BP: What kind of music do you use in your shows?
NJ: Oh, everything. From classical to rock to house music. I
love house music. I love, love, love it. R&B! The other issue is,
everyone wants everything to fit into a box. There are all these
subgenres of music. Like neo-soul and I listen to everything,
whatever catches my ear and whatever catches my heart. I even
love Indian music. I cannot wait to go to India. You have no idea.
The Taj Mahal, I have to see
the Taj Mahal. And I have to
go to Mumbai because I’m
in love with Bollywood. Like,
absolutely in love, I drive
people insane.
BP: So tell us a little bit about
the crowns you make.
NJ: How that started is, I
believe we all wear invisible
crowns. And it helps with our
royalty as women. Because
sometimes it becomes hard to
hold your head up, because
sometime the world wants you
to lower your head. And I said, how can I make those invisible
crowns real? And that’s how I started. So now my crowns are not
invisible. I actually started one today.
JLF: Everyone is talking, from all over Europe and the US, about
how Detroit is the center of art, the center of contemporary
culture, the center of everything. Do you feel like you have made
any new connections? Have you experience any benefit from
what everyone is saying about Detroit-the-It-City? Do you feel
like there is more support of your work now than maybe five or
ten years ago?
NJ: I will say there is more support of artists here. But I want
to point out, it’s not new. We’ve been here, we’ve been doing
everything that we’re doing now, all this time. The world is just
finding out we exist, but we’ve existed for a long time. But there is
more support. And as more people come from different countries
and are exposed to what happens here, they’re able to take it
26

to other places in the world. Then they’re able to understand
what’s going on here. But, it’s not new. Not by any means. A lot
of people think that it’s new, because they’re newly exposed to
it. But I’ve been who I am for years, and I’m old. It’s important
to understand that the magic that’s here has been here for so
long, it’s not new. So when you see the slogans that say the new
Detroit, that’s not new. It’s real old.
BP: So walk us through a day, or a week in your line of work.
Yeah, you can’t really do it in a day. When you own your business,
especially a business where you’re producing art, you don’t just
do your work and go home. A day for me can consist of making
several pieces or reaching out on social media, because you
have to run social media. I will say that that IT HAS BEEN AN
AMAZING THING for my business, word of mouth, has been a
wonderful thing. If you’re really good at what you do and you’re
good at taking care of the people who support you, they’ll
continue to support you and tell other people about what you’re
doing. Sometimes people don’t understand because you make
these things, you’ve got to be marketing, you’ve got to make
them, you got to get supplies, so I don’t sleep much.
In addition to that, being a parent, I really don’t sleep much.
Because I always wanted to be the parent that’s there. When
they have a recital, I’m there. When they have a parent teacher
conference, I’m there. When the school has a play, and they need
someone to make stuff, that’s me. So it could be I have several
customers that I have to see, throughout the week, it could just
be getting orders, or posting photos of work that I’m doing. I
try to keep photographic records of the things that I’ve done,
particularly on social media... So of course sometimes over the
course of a week it runs together. It’s like, I’ll start it on Monday
and I’ll look up and it’s Friday, and I’ll be like, oh my God, where
did my week go? So, it just all depends on what I have to do.
the wings. My daughter says they’re all hers anyway. It could be
a little bit of any of those things, in any given week. And if I have
a show coming up, magnify that by twenty. Because you have
rehearsals to go to, and different things like that.
BP: What projects are you working on right now?
NJ: I did a couple pieces that are going to be in a magazine soon.
I’m working on a lot of tribal pieces. I love tribal stuff. I love stuff
from other countries. I did a show called “My Hair, My Story,
My Glory”, which is basically a story from the African American
perspective: where our hair came from, where our hairstyles
came from. I did costumes for that show as well as accessories.
It was a really amazing show. We did three different shows over
the last couple years where we’ve shown three different periods
in history, to tell the story of where we came from. And they’re
actually talking about doing another one. I would like to see that
show travel, because a lot of us don’t know why we wear our hair
the way we do.
BP : Thanks so much for meeting us.
NJ: You are so welcome. Thank you so much to ONE Mile for your
support. A lot of times you don’t get as much support or respect
as an artist than if you were, say, a doctor. It’s amazing to have
organizations like ONE Mile to support you. I really appreciate
that.
BP: How can people find you?
NJ: I’m on Facebook, N’neka Jackson on Facebook, I’m on
instagram @bflyy7 and I have a website now, nneka.com, you can
actually see a variety of pieces of my work.
When I’m working on wings in particular, it usually takes three
weeks to make one pair. So a lot of sewing is going on, because
I don’t use feathers, I use material. I hand cut it to look like
feathers. Playing around with the fact that feathers are heavy,
I don’t know how birds fly. It was easier to be able to cut fabric,
because it makes it more comfortable for the wearer, so a lot
of time I’ve had trial and error on my children, who get to wear
Leah Li photographed by Tyrone Holmes;
Mua: Faces by Rochelle Darlene;
hair by Kristina Theglamtech
27

28

above: Diane Taylor photographed by Leisha Self; MUA by
Taylor Ashford; hair collection by Valley Girl Hair;
hair stylist @exquisitecookie; wardrobe by @spoiledforever
facing page: Ashley Monique photographer by Tyrone Holmes;
Mua : Faces by Rochelle Darlene; hair by Kristina Theglamtech

EFE BES
DETROIT’S SYNCHRONAL INTERGALACTIC POLYRHYTHMACIST
interview Bryce Detroit & Jean Louis Farges
photography Desmond Love
31

When Efe drums, time stops. Or more
precisely it folds on itself. Using a 15
drums assemblage, Efe transports us
-- channeling deep ancestral beats and
creating vanguard, prescient grooves.
It happens all at once, and all sorts of
transcendent pulsation are suddenly
activated. Bryce Detroit and Jean Louis Farges, co-founders
of the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, met up with Efe at
ONE Mile Garage, where he and his shape shifting group iBm
(Intelligent Buti Muzic) practice and perform regularly. Taking
a break from his intense practice and performance schedule,
Efe shared his thoughts about ancestral sounds, emergent
genres, and putting the drum in the forefront of sonoric, cultural
experimentation.
Bryce Detroit: What do you want people to understand? What is
iBm? What do you want folks to understand?
Efe Bes: iBm (Intelligent Buti Muzic) is necessary to take music
from where it’s at to where it needs to be, in order for Africa to
be a factor in the music, as far as African people. The way to do
that is by putting the drummers in the forefront, and the rest of
the band would be able to necessarily expand their music. Right
now, most musicians are playing, they try to create different
things, but they’re not using the drum as their guideline, or their
leader. Some other instrument is leading, and there is no way a
European instrument can lead me. It can’t happen. Because the
tones aren’t designed for that. The tones are designed to mostly
quiet down African music. All the European instruments are twice
as loud as their African counterparts and that’s what it’s for. So
iBM will by design necessarily take music to another place where
it hasn’t been taken.
“People say it all
comes from Africa,
and it does!”
BD: Okay, so one thing, me having
known you for some years now, I know
that the music and culture you create,
you do that on purpose and on a
level it can be looked at as a direct
response to an absence of something
in the environment. So can you please
speak to the inspiration, like what is the motivating factor that
had you even enter this realm? As Efe Bes and doing what are
you doing and why?
EB: Inspiration is my ancestors and the absence of my ancestors
in the whole “research”, “rebirth”, or whatever terminology you
use to describe what black people here in America are doing.
The ancestors and the material culture is missing. People say
it all comes from Africa. It does. So it has to be in the music. It
has to be something visual. It has to be something auditory…
There is not a drummer on this planet that can command that
kind of attention because people don’t look to drummers for
“inspiration”. They look to saxophone players, guitar players,
trumpet players, and piano players. They don’t look to drummers
for their inspiration. But the drum is something that when applied
properly, you can’t refute it. From children to elders, everybody
is going to move to it. So that’s basically my inspiration: that
void that was created by wiping out our culture. It’s a huge void.
There is so much room for musicians, storytellers, artists doing
something similar but in truth, until it’s deemed relevant by the
majority, people are going to stay away from it. This is the first
thing they ask when I tell people I want to play in front of their
business: “What kind of instruments you got? What are you
playing?” So I generally take the kora in— and I don’t even play
the kora. But once they give me the okay, it doesn’t matter. I play
my drums, and they love it.
32

34

I hear that drum, it corresponds to another drum and the next
drum… So people say how do you figure out which drum to play.
And I say you don’t have to figure it out because it is what it is;
the sound is there, you know. It’s basically a three-drum system.
In groove, it’s three, so three-six-nine-twelve, you know.
And that is another focus to get people to understand that the
drum IS an instrument that you can actually be used to do what
other instruments are doing, you know. The American trap set
drums are just that: the drummer is basically trapped with just
keeping time. I don’t get how...
BD: So, real quick, I want to ask a question about the
instruments a bit more. Your kit is impressive just by the size
of it. Also, just the way it looks compared to what would be
considered, traditional African drum setup, it just looks totally
different. Talk about how was your kit comprised? What are
the implications of the kit that is put together the way yours is,
because there are got to be some implications that relate to that
kit and conventional African drumming.
EB: The kit that I have actually came about out of necessity. I
didn’t start out wanting to be a solo drummer. But out of the
rejection from the African city community, I gravitated more to
the bass drum because when I went to the African Centre of
Performances, I didn’t really hear the bass drum. I was listening
for it, but I couldn’t hear it; I kept hearing the djembe. So I said,
“Well I am going to get drums that communicate with people”—
whether they want to hear it or not and base it on something
you can’t deny. That’s why hip-hop is so successful, and that’s
why I use hip-hop as a part of iBm and that’s why I stress to the
musicians to be heavy on the bass. And they aren’t really getting
it because they have never been really told that… As far as the
JLF: Alright, could you talk a little bit more about your personally
as an artist? You spoke about the drum and how you use the
drum. You uplift the performance and the importance of the
drum is an instrument, too. In that way, your way of looking at
the drums brought to mind the question of melodies, which is
for sure a distinct thing in your sound. What is the relationship
between melody and drums... because for some, drum as a
melody is an oxymoron.
EB: I remember someone telling me that you don’t need a
microphone because drums don’t play melodies. And I said,
“mine do”. She said, “I don’t know... you aren’t playing it tonight”,
or something like that. So the next time she heard me playing
my drum, she really said, “I never thought I would be dancing
on the streets like this”. But the melody aspect is what I see is
really missing from the drummers’ approach to the music. The
average drummer doesn’t even tune his drum before playing the
average kit. I’ve watched very few tuning their drums because
they are not focused on playing melodies, they are focused on
playing a particular part of the song, and that’s not my intention.
I have to focus on it just like every other musician so that if all
the musicians drop out, you still hear some music coming from
the drums. That’s what I try to stress to all the musicians, the
bass player included: if I drop out, we should be able to still keep
it going because you should have a melody in your instrument.
Melody is something that I learned from DJ’ing. That’s the way
I actually learn the songs. If I’m playing my favorite things, I’m
hearing the melody and I am going to recreate it. Once we get

37

Jean Louis Farges: Do you find that when people hear you, they
intuitively feel the melody or hear the melody? Like for me, before
coming in contact with you, yes I was aware of tuning the drum,
but it was always in context of just being in being in support of
a melody or harmony. So with your kit, it is real clear how each
drum has its own pitch. Do you find that people immediately
come in contact with that when they hear your sound?
EB: What I have noticed is that if I pay attention as a musician
storyteller, watching the people more. I do that when I am
playing drums so that way I can pick up what people are feeling.
If I’m playing something, and I see the people aren’t feeling it,
I’ll switch it up. I am not playing for me, and that’s what the
storyteller musicians need to get out of performances. They
aren’t playing for them, and that’s where the big drawback is. Big
cats will say, “I’ll play it for myself”. That is okay if you’re getting
paid to do that and if you have followers and that’s what they
accept, that’s okay. But that’s not how you are going to get this
music to the masses. That’s what every other band is doing—
African music, Cuban drumming, they are doing it. But they are
doing it for a specific group of people. They aren’t doing it for
everybody. That has never been my intention. People will say,
“Your music sounds like house”, and they think they are putting
me down. But that is my intent.
BD: So what is iBm? Since you say you don’t make music for
yourself you make it for the people. So what is iBm doing for the
people?
EB: It connects the people who don’t really give a damn about
Africa to Africa, by default. Because if you like iBm, you like
African music. You just may not be aware of that, but there is no
way you can say that what I am doing isn’t African. Somebody
can try and say it, but they cannot prove it. The first drummer
didn’t have a damn DJ, and every drumming that has come up
[since], came up by somebody creating it. I am equipped to
create a form of music as anybody, and what gives you that
information is having all the actual material culture, because you
can’t pick a material culture and take something from it. If you’re
in tune, you pick up the energy if you pay attention, and that’s
what’s being communicated in the drums.
BD: Alright, so one thing that anybody who listened to Efe for ten
minutes knows is that Efe says exactly what is in Efe’s heart and
in Efe’s mind and for conventional audiences, it is like difficult,
you know what I am saying like, complex systems sometimes.
Everybody knows that Efe got something to say at any given time,
and it’s usually some shit like yo, you know what I mean, only Efe
say that. If you had a podium, what would you wanna tell the
masses at any given time?
EB: The message that I have is if you don’t embrace your culture,
nobody will embrace you. And the easiest way to embrace your
culture is through your music, through your creations. If it’s not
evident in your creations, you can talk about embracing it, but
you have not internalized it. And that’s the thing that’s keeping
us together, the African people… You know, I have to speak
up for the African Diasporic people. White people don’t have
to say that. It’s, by default, who they are speaking for. If you
don’t believe it, go to any of these meetings and see if anybody
is bringing up African culture. That needs to be put at the
forefront for us to be relevant at these meetings. When people do
entertainment, you have to embrace your culture, that’s the main
thing. And when people say, “what is the culture?”, the culture
is animism, prior to Islam, and Christianity… That is what the
culture is. People say there are a lot of different cultures. That’s
39

somebody who is reading books. They don’t understand that if
you look at all these people, you are going to see the same types
of mass, statues, beads, textiles. Everybody is into spirituality,
into divinity, something beyond what they can grasp, and when
you have people with more knowledge about the material world,
you have a problem. You have serious problems.
JLF: Do you see the music you created as a reflection of the city
of Detroit?
EB: It’s definitely a part of the city of Detroit, because a lot of my
musical influences are picked up in the city of Detroit. For almost
sixty years, I’ve been inundated with music from Detroit. I listen
to it, I dance to it, I have it on my hard drive. So it has to come
out, and it does in some kind of fashion. But what’s really missing
in this city is that nobody wants to speak openly about what
my music is, because to speak openly about my music is to say
that what was being done prior was not connecting to the whole
community, and not just focusing on the few that understand
a certain type of music or dance. I mean yesterday there were
people from around here who never seen me play before and one
guy said, “I gotta come watch you play again man, I gotta come
back and watch you play”. He was shaking his head, and he
didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something.
That’s one of my biggest inspirations right there. Celeste, my
manager. She listens to my music and says it’s not alright. But
I’m just understanding the psychology, I know I understand. And
it’s not even intentional. When you ask people to hear drums,
you are asking them something different. Nobody has ever been
forced to listen to the drums. Since you’ve been living, have you
listened to a drummer for an hour or so in America?
JLF: No.
EB: Yeah, it’s a different thing… peoples’ ears aren’t tuned to
that. They’re not expecting it. As a matter of fact, if you tell
somebody to listen to a drum for an hour, they will be like okay
I will see you when you come back.... ONE Mile has given me
this opportunity that no body in the city has given me outside of
Dabls and Rockys. Those are the three places: ONE Mile, Dabls
and Rocky’s. But ONE Mile is the first place that has given me
an indoor venue to have my gratitude and to do what I do and
make me a necessary thing. I mean anybody who looks at the
state of us, in this city or any city and thinks we got a full hold
on entertainment. They trippin’, they trippin’. But I can go open
up any major act that has ever been, in the world anywhere, with
or without my band, because I understand what people wanna
hear. I can play faster than what you can hear. But nobody
will hear that shit. I see drummers and hear drummers doing
a lot of times, but you can’t hear no melody. All you can see is
their hands, and you’re like damn, wow, but after its over with,
what did it do? It showcased the person’s talent. But it did not
do anything. It may have inspired some other child to get that
because that child wants an approval. That’s why I tell people if
you don’t like it get your ears checked. I know what I am doing.
I don’t care about the applause. I even got a sign on my drums
that says tips are more necessary than hand claps. And we need
to stop teaching our children that, you know, you should do well
and doing well means getting a bunch of hand claps.
catch Efe Bes regularly at the ONE Mile
Garage and the Detroit African Bead Museum;
follow events on DAMI and ONE Mile FB for
exact dates and performance times.
40

39

YOLANDA
GREEN
ENTREPRENEUR, COMMUNITY ADVOCATE
interview Bryce Detroit
photography Jean Louis Farges
43

44

“What does the Apex Bar mean to you today?”
“ It’s a legacy of ownership.
For me, it’s about ownership,
perseverance, and
determination, because I
watched my mother and
father...”
says Yolanda Green
Bryce Detroit: Maintaining this cultural institutional -- the Apex
Bar -- for all of the years... through the economic downturn and
the current climate of gentrification and undervaluing, you’ve
kept this legendary venue alive and in tact. It’s a powerful thing
to have black women ownership of a world impacting cultural
institution: there’s an economic piece to your story, there’s a
cultural piece to your story, and there’s a family piece. I am
really interested in all angles of the story because the Apex is a
part of the Detroit music economy and the Detroit music legacy.
Conserving the space, not just preserving it: keeping places like
the Apex active, keeping them sustainable so that everybody
involved is growing community benefits -- it is so important and
so challenging. Right now, you, United Sound with Danielle and
Shanita are really conserving, holding on to major pieces of our
black world legacy in music. I want to uplift it and acknowledge
it, and express how important it is to all of us, from a musician
from a producer from a music economy standpoint from a black
man’s standpoint, it’s very important to all of us to have these
institutions so that we can still be furthering our culture and our
economy in the ways that we used to.
Yolanda Green: So for me, I remember being in the Apex, I
remember the Sugar Hill, and I remember Phelps Lounge. Those
establishments were very active when I was a child. My father
actually didn’t acquire the Apex Saloon until I was about 16.
You’re talking thirty-five years ago, is when my father actually
acquired it. Initially he was in business with four gentlemen. But
they all died off unfortunately, so he ended up being the sole
proprietor of the bar.
My father pretty much ran the Apex until 1995. He passed away
in 1995 and at that time my mother took it over. But prior to my
mom taking it over, I guess some of the memories I have are a
lot of parties. I remember blues and some jazz bands coming in
and performing there. Does Sassy Wilson ring a bell? She used
to live right there on Hague; she had a blues band and would
come in from time to time know matter who was there. She used
to bring her live band here and they would play for us. She would
also, every year, have her birthday party here and have a live
45

concert. I have to be honest with you, the history of all of those
individuals would come through there... but of course that was
way before my time. My mom or my dad might remember.
We have a lot of family that’s there for me. Prior to my father
having a bar, my mom and I didn’t frequent bars. That’s just not
what we did. Of course, when my father took it over, we decided
we wanted to have events. Why take it outside? Why not bring
the business to our own establishment? We’ve had anything
from baby showers to parties to wedding receptions. We’ve
had all those different things from our family and people in the
community. At one point in time the upstairs used to be, I guess
I’ll say, operational. They used to use that space and play cards
and stuff on that side.
BD: So when Oakland had Phelps, Sugar Hill and Apex…
YG: And Bob’s Bar.
BD: Where was Bob’s Bar?
YG: Bob’s Bar was at Cameron and Clay. So you know where the
BP is?
BD: Yep.
YG: There is a church that sits right there on Cameron, right on
that corner there. Right now it’s nothing.
Bryce: What kind of music did they play there?
YG: I’ve I only been to Bob’s Bar once. But I will tell you from
what I’ve seen, that bar used to be a little bit more visited than
the other bars for me. Phelps was the lounge where the stars
came in and they would have concerts and things. When Bob’s
went out, it became Apex and Sugar Hill. Then when I guess
Sugar Hill went away, and it became the Apex.
BD: Sugar Hill. I’ve heard about Sugar Hill. What did you know
about Sugar Hill?
YG: Competition, that’s all I know. It was competition! It was
across the street. The only thing that I know is the gentleman that
owned it, he and my dad knew each other for years...
BD: Were people coming to the avenue more at that time for the
“bar-ness” of it, or was it still like this music vibe of the whole
strip?
YG: Oh, I think it was music. I really do think it was music
because it was being fanned down from the Phelps. There was a
lot of traffic flowing in. And think it was definitely music.
48

BD: So Phelps really was like an anchor institution?
YG: Yes, I really do think so because you had some really high
profile individuals that performed at the Phelps. I remember
being little, and I didn’t know who the people were at the time. I
remember the sign, it always had somebody different with the big
sign with the lights going around and, you know, there was talk
that this particular person was going to be here this weekend.
You would hear people say, “Are you going to the Phelps Lounge
this weekend?” So I think that it was the anchor.
Jean Louis Farges: And were people coming from the whole city?
Or was it really a local venue?
YG: People were coming everywhere in the city.
JLF: Even outside Detroit?
YG: I think so. I mean some of the community, yes! But I think the
people were coming from places outside the source.
BD: How packed would these streets be? What would it look like
as far as people walking? How many businesses were still there?
YG: Oh, we had a lot of businesses. The avenue was active
because you had businesses all the way from the boulevard down
to Highland Park, businesses. Do you know where Red’s Shoe
Shine is?
BD: Yeah.
YG: It’s down closer to Holbrook now. But it used to be closer
down to.
BD: Kenilworth, Leicester?
YG: What I am remembering is right there on Philadelphia there
was an auto mechanic shop. Right up from the auto mechanic
shop there was this family, they owned a Laundromat as well as
a party store. So all that was connected from Philadelphia to
Hague. Then across the street, there was a funeral home that
is still sitting there now. And across the street from the funeral
home, there was another store called Laura’s Party Store. And
then it was the Dairy Queen.
BD: That’s about to open back up.
YG: And after that it was just stores and traffic all the way
down. If you come back down where I am, the Shvitz Club that
is still there, that used to be popping. Then if you go behind the
Schvitz, that’s Mount Vernon. There was a store there; one of our
neighbors owned a party store there. Across the street there was
another little party store. There used to be a hardware store right
there on the corner. There was a barbershop, then houses, then
a little apartment complex, then church, then it was Sugar Hill,
then you’re over here at Apex. Coming back up the street, there
was a liquor store called Gasman’s. So there was a lot of stuff
looking down the street.
BD: Around what time did the first major signs of businesses and
people leaving and Oakland Avenue beginning to look…
YG: The crime? I think when Phelps Lounge closed.
BD: So that’s ’88 or ’89?
YG: When Phelps Lounge closed. I think it was sustaining the
area. People from everywhere were coming. It started there and
just one by one you started to see things go away. I have to be
honest with you, during that time that it was still thriving; I was
away at college. I was gone for two years from ‘82-‘84. So I came
back home and lived with my parents in the neighborhood and
I worked at Wayne State. That’s pretty much when it all started
going down. I remember that.
JLF: When did your dad take over the bar?
YG: thirty-five years ago, so 1981.
JLF: Did you know the owner before?
YG: I knew his name. I just knew his name. Actually before my
father had it, the actual owner wasn’t really active in business.
I think he was leasing property and letting somebody else run
it. He was just collecting the money. I guess what I would say
probably for my dad, the bar probably had a lot more meaning
for him than for my mom. I think for my mom -- my mom was
kind of put in the situation, left the bar and made a decision to
go in and learn the business and run it because she didn’t know
anything about it. My father died unexpectedly the Saturday
before thanksgiving 1995 and my mother started running the bar
from January of 1996 and she did that up until 2014. And this is

a lady who didn’t know anything about that industry, about that
type of business…
BD & JLF: Wow.
YG: And actually, I’d say she got in there and made it more
successful than my dad and cleaned it up too. Here’s the thing my
mom had and my dad didn’t have. My mom used to work in the
school system and she worked in the community’s school so all
of the neighborhood kids knew her. So any of the inappropriate
things they would have felt a little bit more comfortable doing
in front of my dad, they wouldn’t do those things in front of my
mom. My mom was like their mom. My mother was pretty hip
and was pretty on top of things and she told them that they’re
not going to bring their trash into her business, and they did
not. She wasn’t afraid. She did that for a long time. My mother
was 71 years old when she stopped running the bar. My dad was
more so a street person. What I mean by that, a street person
with integrity and loyalty was everything; he was a really good
person. If he saw you trying to help yourself, he would try to help
you. Here’s one of the less than pleasant things we found when
he passed away: He had a black book of all of these people
that owed him money. I know he probably think we don’t know
about it, but we know about it. He was that type of person. He
was from the North End he grew up right across from I-75 and
Chrysler there on the other side before factories and things were
over there. Those were houses over there. My grandmother and
grandfather lived across the bridge, and so the North End is
where both my mother and father grew up.
JLF: How did he try to help?
YG: So he knew what it was like to grow up in this neighborhood
and once he “made-it” he would try to help those in the
neighborhood he thought could use a break.
JLF: When your family bought the building, there was no
questioning in the neighborhood, like this is just natural and
people in the neighborhood had their own businesses.
YG: Right, and everybody knew everybody. And here’s the thing,
I’m going to tell you about, this is something. We grew up in that
neighborhood, that church that sits right down on the corner of
Melbourne. Actually that’s where I’m just coming from because
one of the ladies who we grew up with, 91 years old, they just had
her home going service today. But that church right there, that’s
where I got married, that’s where my mother was a member. My

father knew the bible and he knew the word. My father didn’t go
to church. but he was respectable in that community because the
pastor, who knew my father since he was younger, would always
stop by and say hello and sit down and talk to my dad. So yes,
everybody in the community knew my father and knew that we
owned the bar. It was well received.
JLF: Do you think there are places today like the Phelps Lounge,
neighborhoods where are of the businesses make up the
collective vibe of the urban fabric?
YG: I do no think there are businesses today like the Phelp’s
Lounge. We are all one community.
BD: How many businesses do you remember in ’81 being black
owned? Or whatever that means. What was the mix of business
owners that you recall?
YG: I know all the bars were. All the party stores were I would
probably say 75% black owners, maybe a little more. I’m just
thinking, all the places I’m telling you about, the store over there,
our neighbor’s store, Ms. Laura down the street, Red’s Shoe
Shine, Laundromat service with the store, all of those were black
owned businesses. All of those.
BD: As far as the business community, your parents owning a bar,
so that gives you opportunity to know everybody else who owns
stuff? How tight knit was the actual business owning community?
YG: Well here’s what I’ll tell you, back then it probably was very
tight because everybody knew everybody and people who owned
businesses in the community lived in the community and were
a part of the community. Everybody knew everybody. Like the
gentleman who owned the store on the corner of Mount Vernon
and Oakland, he was our neighbor; he lived five doors down from
us.
JLF: Was there any interest in the music industry to start to
buy some of the buildings or venues? Or was it part of the
neighborhood and even if an amazing musician played there
or lived in the neighborhood, it was never a point of interest for
investors outside of Detroit?
YG: I mean you guys got to see that even though there were black
businesses there. A lot of the community was an impoverished
neighborhood, it was an impoverished community. At one point
in time, it was close to what they call “black bottom”, okay. I felt
it was more about you being a business owner who was able to
assist and help your own people in your community. My father is
a great example. People who did not have money to do certain
things but he had the money so he said, “Here you go”. I think
we saw a lot of that at the stores. If you were a neighbor and
needed a loaf of bread, I’m not going to tell you that you can’t
have a loaf of bread or if you needed a package of lunch meat
or whatever to feed her kids because we were all in this together.
BD: How was the North End for you growing up?
YG: It probably was different for me than a lot of people. I’m
guess what I’ll tell you is; although we grew up poor, I didn’t know
that. If you could imagine that, I didn’t know that. I know that
people have problems and they argue and all that, I never saw
my mother and father do that. My mother and father didn’t do
that, they didn’t argue in front of us. And if there were money
problems or issues or things like that, they didn’t expose us kids
to that. We didn’t know. I’m sure there may have been times when
money was tight and maybe they didn’t have different things, but
it never made it to our level.
I’ll be honest, I told my mother when I got married, when things
weren’t going so well with my marriage, I told my mother that
I really appreciated the way that she raised me. But I felt
somewhat dysfunctional as an adult because a lot of the things
that people go through or went through, I didn’t go through. I
had a wonderful childhood. And I made sure that I let my mother
know that before she passed on. I had a tremendous childhood. I
don’t remember a bunch of heartaches.
I’ll give you an example, something as small as I love candy and
stuff like that. When we were younger my mother wouldn’t let us
eat candy. Our candy was a fruit bowl. If you wanted something
sweet, we always had grapes and watermelon and whatever
the fruit of the season was. We ate that, and she always made
sure that we had balanced meals so we weren’t always running
to McDonalds or running to the store to get sweet food and all
that kind of stuff. Everything was really wholesome because my
mother was really, really smart.
My mother dropped out of Cast Tech when she was a senior
because she got pregnant. She didn’t have her mother in her life,
53

My mother was a good mom. She made sure that we had
everything and when it came to her money, she was very good at
saving it. She’s one of the reasons why my father was able to grow
the business. My mother was really, really smart and held things
together.
BD: See that’s funny, that story touches me because my parents,
my father had a medical supply business on 6 Mile for 26 years
and he just retired out of it like 3 years ago. And my mom was
the one who would do so much for the business on the actual
administrative, money side. It’s this unique thing about black
women who get in business to support their husband’s and
the role they end up playing. So I feel you 100%.... You said
impoverished when speaking about the neighborhood. The
North End definitely has that characteristic today. How did
the community feel though? I know there were more people in
houses back then. As far as the look of the community, how did
it look back then because majority of the people were still in
the situation the majority of people are in today. They had jobs
though still.
YG: Yes, they had jobs. Back then people had a sense of
community, a sense of togetherness, a sense of unity. It was all
about trying to keep us together as a unit. The thing about it
is, I think people took pride in what they had. If I only had two
or three pair of pants, then I made sure I took the best care of
those two pair of pants that I had so I was always presentable
at all times. We were mannerable. We had morals and it didn’t
matter that we didn’t have a lot of money. I’ll be honest with
you, when I first realized I didn’t have a lot of money is when I
got into Renaissance High School. I graduated from Renaissance
High School and so at that time I was going way across town to
go to this creme de la creme school and a lot of those people’s
children had money. Their moms and fathers were doctors and
lawyers and things, and they had money. I was there because
I was smart. I didn’t have money, and that’s when I realized I
didn’t have money. But you know what, that didn’t really matter
because we had love in our house. It didn’t matter. My mom
raised us to be well rounded, to have a little bit of everything. You
don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. You want to be able
to taste a little bit of everything in life. That’s how my mom raised
us. Not having money was okay. We turned out fine.
JLF: Was there ever a discussion in the family about the morality
of running a bar?
YG: Here’s what I’ll tell you, which is very different from how
things are now. Back then, you were a kid and you were expected
to stay in a kids place. That was considered grown folks business.
Am I telling the truth?
BD: Yes, you’re telling the truth.
YG: They wouldn’t have that kind of discussion with us. If they
were having that conversation, we would go outside or we’d go
play with our toys. As a matter of fact I have to tell you this, I
know it’s very, very different in a Caucasian environment and
maybe it’s becoming different now because I think we are trying
to come to terms with it a little better. Up until recently in the
black community, we didn’t even want to talk about death.
We just let it happen and deal with the travesty as it happens.
That’s just what we did. Now I think the conversation is being
had. Where as before it’s like somebody died, you don’t know
if they had a life insurance policy or anything because nobody
talked about that. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with
a conversation that involved death. But the reality of it is, we
were doing ourselves a disservice by not having that conversation
because you needed to know: if there anything in place or what it
is you needed to do.
BD: Was it ever a thing for you and your friends to be like, “Yo,
something is happening at the Phelps, let’s sneak around the
Phelps”?
YG: No, we were too young. I just remember the bright lights and
the people’s names. So you knew something was going on at the
Phelps or somebody famous was coming because their name
was in lights. Sometimes you could see the buses out front and
you knew something was going to happen at the Phelps. It would
say for example, Jonny Walker coming February... That’s how you
would know that somebody was coming. They would be blinking
because it was trying to get everyone’s attention. I do remember
that.
JLF: Do you plan an instrument?
54

YG: I used to.
BD: What did you play?
YG: The trumpet and clarinet.
BD: Nice... Back in your day, did a lot of your friends say, “Yo, I
want to be an entertainer, I want to be a musician,” was that a
big conversation amongst yours. For our generation, that became
a heavy conversation. Everybody wanted to become an artist or
a musician all of a sudden.
YG: Okay Bryce, now you asked to tell a little something
about me. I didn’t have a lot of friends because I wasn’t very
approachable back then. I didn’t have a lot friend and I didn’t
talk to a lot people. I was always studious, did my homework
and did what I was supposed to do. I had an attitude problem
and I only talked to people if I needed something from someone
or if they had information. Otherwise, back then, I wouldn’t be
sitting at a table talking to you two. That was just my M.O. back
then. But you know what, I guess I can say this: I just left one of
my good friend’s mom’s house, who lives across the street from
my mother still, and her son is going to be 60 years old and he’s
always been inspired by the music. He still lives on the North
End with his mom, but he’s always been into the music. He plays
the bass and still goes to band practice and all of that. I guess I
would say, somewhere he got inspired by the music because he’s
always done it with a couple of other guys in the neighborhood.
I don’t particularly remember that being part of my era. I
remember him though. As a matter of fact, he still has his bass
sitting there right now. He said he is going to play always.
BD: Were you proud of the North End back then?
Yolanda: Then?! I still am!
BD: I meant it this way. When I was in high school, it was a big
east side, west side thing. Was there that kind of identification
within the neighborhood back then?
YG: Absolutely, it still is. And here’s what I’ll tell you what I found
out. Often times when I meet people for the first time, they have
some sort of connection to the North End. They do.
JLF: What does the Apex Bar mean to you today?
YG: It’s a legacy of ownership. For me, it’s about ownership,
perseverance and determination, because I watched my mother
and father do it. Good music, which is one of the reasons why I
go back and forth deciding whether I want to keep it or let it go.
I watched my mother and father do some good things in there,
and they turned somethings around. I watched my mother mentor
to some people in there. My mother kept a Holy Bible at that bar.
When you walked in, both entrances of the bar had a bible over
the entrances. For me, as far as music goes, I had a lot of good
times there, kind of watching some of the neighborhood people
transform. We had one gentleman who would transform into
James Brown and give us a little show. We had this lady there, her
name was Sweet Lucy, and she thought she was Josephine Baker
or somebody. They would just come in; there wasn’t anythingspecific
going on. We were maybe sitting in there and an event
would be going on. Out of the blue, a show would go on because
he was James Brown, and she was Josephine Baker. That was
pretty fun.
BD: Does it mean anything to you personally how many people in
Detroit, or at least two people in Detroit, and a lot of people in
the world have a value for the Apex?
YG: Oh, that means everything because here’s the thing. Even
when I’m thinking about selling it, I want the new owner to be one
that is going to give something back to the community. Say for
instance somebody buys it, and wants it to be a bar. I still want
it to be run decently and in order because that’s how my mother
ran her ship. I don’t want to just sell it to somebody and then a
year later... it’s run down. I want them to sustain it, and I want it
to be lucrative for them. I still want to be able to come in here
and maybe have a drink and remember the good times that we
had. So that I can say: “You know my mother and father are part
of this legacy here.” So it’s important, I didn’t want to sell it to
just anybody, because I could have sold it a long time ago.
JLF: We look at different spaces that we believe to be very
important for music history of the city, like the United Recording
Studio and they are struggling to keep the studio running. They
are being threatened by the Highway Department to be broken
down... We look at all these buildings and there are disappearing
slowly. There is a risk that there going to be very little trace of
55

any African American music history left in the city. We are trying
to figure how we can help and work so these places will still be
there in 20 years, 30 years... When you say the Apex needs to
have a respectful history....
YG: Somebody’s got to take it and do something good with it. It’s
in good shape and I just want somebody that cares about it.
BD: What has it been like, personal impact wise, to keep it open
for even folks like us to come along a be able to have a have a
community conversation or community programming at some
point?
YG: It’s been refreshing. It’s been nice. Actually when I let you
guys’ use the place, I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell any of my
family or anything but some people from the community came,
took pictures and put them on Facebook. My family comes like
“So you’ve been up there and didn’t tell us?” I kind of explained
what I was doing. I did that on purpose. I needed to see if you
could draw a crowd. Here’s what I’ll say, in order for it to be
a sustainable business and remain a bar you need to have a
following. You need people to come to the establishment. We
used to be able to get it from the community.
BD: So maybe our last question on the interview side. Knowing
from your own life that Oakland Avenue used to be popping
and this music economy supported all other sorts of businesses
in a direct way. If we can use music economy once again to get
Oakland Avenue popping…
YG: That would be great.
BD: What would be your dream for what that might look like?
YG: For me, I would just like it to be an area where people could
come together, have a good time and be safe. That’s what I want
it to look like. I don’t think there are a lot of places now where
you can get that kind of feeling... It would be beautiful to see
Oakland Avenue come back. I think that it would rejuvenate
the neighborhood. There has to be something there to draw the
people there and right now there is nothing. There has to be
something in the neighborhood to draw you together and music
can very well be it. I don’t think people don’t come because they
don’t care; there is nothing for them to come to.
I will tell you this though, a lot of the people of the neighborhood
are older people. Their children and grandchildren have moved
on. I look at the block my mom lived on, my nephew lives there
now there now. They lost a sense of ownership.There are only 5
of the original homeowners and they are older people. The other
people are just renters. To me, that makes a difference. There is
a difference between renting and buying property. When you’re
renting, the people don’t really care. When you’re buying, you’re
investing into the community. But who knows, the music is what
might rejuvenate that area. It needs something. It needs love.
***
56

WHAT’S WRONG WITH?
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN JAFFER KOLB + SAMBA JONES
images SAMBA JONES
Oft-mistaken for a carte blanche testbed for innovative practice
in the wake of much mediatized economic collapse, Detroit
attracts more than its share of participatory experiments. As
neighborhoods come together to problem-solve what to do
with vast tracts of land, crumbling infrastructure, and cultural
autonomy, architects and planners have looked for ways to
work in dialogue with residents to find new spaces and spatial
conditions to combat the city’s decline.
Yet the proliferation of such tactics have drawn equal measures
of criticism: allegations of parachute aid; cultural insensitivity,
and bad social politicking all seemingly unavoidable. Such
critiques have reached fever pitch, with “bottom-up” urbanism
nearly as toxic as “top-down” razing was at its apogee. A “winwin”
solution where architecture’s disciplinary methods intersect
with social need appears not just distant, but impossible, and
the climate increasingly encourages the tacit acceptance of
universal loss.
This scenario produces a nebulous aura of apology around
working in Detroit as many designers become increasingly selfaware
of issues around gentrification, race relations, and cultural
appropriation. The condition has become endemic to questions
around working in Detroit: designers are on the defensive, asking
(themselves and each other) not how can we help but rather
what’s wrong with helping? In the spirit of these tragic rhetorics,
a conversation between Samba Jone, Detroit-based designer,
and Jaffer Kolb, New York designer and Detroit tourist, both
of whom are trying to navigate methods for a critical design
practice in the midst of the city’s arrangement and litany of
small-scale design projects...
I. What’s wrong with murals?
SJ: To begin, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with murals.
Depending on taste, there are “good” murals and “bad” murals,
graphically precocious murals, classically kitschy murals. In
Detroit, like in so many economically strained urban scenarios,
you encounter an over-abundance of un-ironically optimistic
versions. They’re everywhere.
JK: Perhaps the better way to understand the problem is not
by criticizing the mural as a form, but to consider what murals
represent in this very particular context. What was once
considered a kind of democratic medium—a literal inscription
of an environment—has become an instrument; a metonym for
participatory aesthetics.
SJ: Yes, in some ways they now serve as signifiers and
philanthropic mechanisms to allocate small scale funding
packages to organizations and individuals in order to beautify
economically insolvent scenarios. But while we can talk about
what they represent, we can still frame the problem as one
about aesthetics: in many cases, murals no longer represent
the community as much as the aspiration or ethos of a giving
institution.
JK: Aesthetics, here seems like a slippery topic. The aesthetics
might be institutionally managed, but aren’t they community
driven. Their authors are still oftentimes residents. That said, is
there a signature “Detroit” style we can find in these projects
that would indicate a denial of the hand of the individual or
collective?
58

SJ: There’s no formal anthology that I can think of, but there
are some recurring themes and visual tropes: the narrativedriven
“graphic novel” approach, the Diego Rivera Heroicist
model, the Monument to Paint, Sci-Fi Romanticism, Mega-
Scale Memphis Style, Neo-Postwar Optimism, Urban Graphics
Hallmark Greeting Card, Trompe l’oeil, not to mention the most
prevalent variation - the Community Mosaic. Detroit’s murals,
in their sincerity, aesthetic guilelessness, and narrative charge,
seem virtually impervious to a certain kind of criticism related to
expertise. In many ways, these projects stand in for the specificity
of place and community, so a discussion of formal virtuosity gives
the impression of frivolousness or fussiness. But as ubiquitous
signifiers with the feel good missive that things are getting better,
murals tend to mask infrastructural and material degradation
that are still rather daunting.
JK: Murals, whether as aesthetic or form, are bound by their
surface: they mask whatever lies behind, which in this case is
oftentimes collapsing structure and degraded interiors. It seems
like this is an issue of camouflage—or maybe even duplicity
where surfaces overtake spaces as design’s principal onus.
SJ: What’s more perplexing about the mural is that it’s become
an instrumentalized urban marker; a demonstrative strategy
that suggests people can collectively pull themselves out of the
muck, that is if they work hard enough. In the face of extreme
need, those mostly well-intentioned efforts oftentimes cloak
economically insolvent urban scenarios as they promote a
seemingly innocuous, makeshift, and anti-authorial aesthetic
regime.
II. What’s wrong with beautification?
SJ: Observing Detroit’s outlying neighborhoods over the last
few years, I get the sense that residents appreciate small-scale
beautification projects because they represent investment and
jobs, especially for those eligible to pursue such contracts.
Ostensibly, that’s very reassuring. It’s a consolation to think that
things can be salvaged, that people care, that a neighborhood’s
projective sensibility can find expression.
JK: But that expression is complicated. Capitalism has
historically used aesthetics to hide its operations. In this case it
seems particularly menacing as it apparently gives more agency
to the human subject (ie community) as a method of masking its
interests and its intentions. That seems to be the greatest danger
of beautification: like the mural, it has to do with surface over
system, and also falls under rhetorics of “safety” (ie whitewashing
blighted areas to make them appear problem-free). Though
this is not to say that communities shouldn’t have nice things,
bringing us back to the problem of aesthetics. What does
beautification look like?
SJ: Given the context, philanthropic interests reluctant to get
involved in ‘taste’ culture are obliged to side with the visual
indiscernibility of social practice. So art, in the guise of low fi
tectonics, fragmentation, DIY gestalt, and other tendencies
related to an aesthetic of deskilling, is being tasked with
pacifying some very real anxieties while it pretends not to have
an aesthetic agenda at all. Maybe a way around this problem
in social practice is to self-consciously embrace constructed
aesthetics; to recognize that the way things look does matter.
Clearly, the binary opposition between the social and the
aesthetic is a bit debilitating.
JK: There’s also a strange condescension in the argument that
certain modes of beauty are inaccessible to certain audiences.
Instead of constantly trying to embrace a suitable image of
“democracy” as an apparent aesthetic or obscuring the visual
aspects of practice, we might create a hybrid of technical skill
and graphic figuration that translates images, patterns, textures,
colors, and forms into culturally recognizable yet perceptually
renewed idioms. TJK: Right, in this case the style is a funny mashup
of 1970s funk album art, car culture, and textile patterning.
Instead of defaulting to deskilling, or handing over a blank
surface for street artists, you are putting something out there
that looks like something. And it doesn’t look alienating—like
a sterile white box—or out of context. It looks like it belongs,
perhaps paradoxically given that it’s a spaceship, but certainly
not anyone can make it.
III. What’s wrong with rogue?
SJ: If by ‘rogue’ we mean cultural activity that is not institutionally
sanctioned, then going rogue seems to be a real thorn in the
current redevelopment plan. While murals, for example, belong
to an authorized approach to beautification, illegal forms of the
same pursuit may be criminalized or covered up ad hoc.
62

There is, you might know, a city-dispensed beige paint.
Apparently it’s available in a few different neutral shades. And
it gets applied to the surfaces of buildings without anyone’s
concent. The paint job is intented to unify, neutralize, and spruce
up the built environment. In the process, a great amount of
history, patina, and narrative gets obscured, contributing to the
evolving and deeply problematic depiction of the city as tabula
rasa.
V. What’s wrong with short and quick?
SJ: It’s a truism that contemporaneity is about speeding things
up: having quick ideas, getting rapid responses, and experiencing
immediate gratifications. Philanthropic institutions want a quick
fix, too. They typically ask for 18-month framework: a summer/
early fall launch, fall/winter for development, spring/summer
for big, bold events, and a few months to clean up the confetti.
The expectation, of course, is that measurable impact can be
created and assessed within that apportioned span, so that we
can safely shift our attention to the next cycle of funding.
JK: This narrative seems to be steeped in its own repetitions;
bound by its cycles. By repeating a scale of time it seems like
there may be a repetition in certain scales of work; and even in
certain aesthetics. It also suggests that working through longer
or more complex issues might be challenging, if not impossible.
What do you do if you want to work on something slower?
SJ: Operating in Detroit’s very idiosyncratic scenario, we often
have to weigh the risks of crafting fundable ‘short and quick’
proposals that may require additional competitive grants
to come to fruition, verses outing our protracted plans and
not securing funding at all. We tend to side with immediacy,
ephemerality, imagining that these short-term projects will
serve as catalysts for future investment. And we enjoy the brisk
exhilaration of it all.
JK: So in that case it might be best just to accept the rhythms
of funding cycles while pursuing longer projects—using one
to bolster the other. In a way, it’s actually quite nice to allow
architecture to work simultaneously across multiple time-lines,
with synchronizations between short, fast, and light projects that
sometimes align with longer term strategies. That said, it seems
like there is no way to insure that future development will line up
with your initial intentions or those of your constituency.
SJ: None at all. As a consequence, we see some sociallyminded
urban projects just terminate, or start to collect dust. In
other cases, some grass roots organizations piggyback on the
successes of design initiatives, and integrate the work into their
own projects. And ultimately, the most worrying aspect of these
short-term design interventions is that they lay the groundwork
for future private investment. Observing the work of the ONE
Mile project, for example, we’ve witnessed private developers bid
on properties that were rehabbed for public programming, and
this is within an urban scenario where speculation would have
been inconceivable a few years back.
VI. What’s wrong with trying?
JK: The thing that’s so frustrating with Detroit, and with this
notion of participation, is a known paradox: is it better not to
act or to act in a way that might be construed as irresponsible?
This is what I like about the discussion we are having today. You
point out that we need to claim more design intentionality and
even authorship. This seems exactly right. Not that we embrace
architectural ego, but that we assert the value of our own skill
and labor in designing, constructing and producing space. That
work then enters the public realm in ways that are unpredictable
and impossible to foresee. It becomes the property of the
collective insofar as the collective authors its use and value as
a community object, but not its material presence. In a way,
it’s worth trying so long as we know the instruments we’re trying
with and the limits of our expertise instead of using architecture
to predict, comment upon, or seek to organize social and civic
behavior.
SJ: Given the precariousness and dynamism of Detroit’s urban
and social situation, a purely speculative or representation
retreat seems like a missed opportunity. So we need to buck
up and accept the limitations of architecture’s cultural prowess
without too much lament. At the same time, I see what we do as
a material and discursive part of a broader and rather messy
network of urban activity, where the things we make aren’t
the end at all, but provocations for much more robust and
contingent participatory practices.
63

The ONE Mile garage beautified with beige city paint. Left: before.

MY PORTION OF TERRITORY
words & artwork Carl Wilson
I don’t want to come off sounding like a snob-ass intellectual.
That I’m sure was a wasted phrase because I have never been
accused of being an intellectual. If you know me you know I am
an angry populist, a believer in the proletariat, and all things
common, borderline, and lowbrow.
Into my life walks Erin Falker. Stanford educated, MFA,
proclaiming she wants to get her doctorate soon or she may die.
Erin was turned down for a role in The Cosby Show reboot. Some
say it was because she was too brown skinned, but I know it was
mostly because of Bill’s legal problems and the peculiar notion
that America is not keen on a TV show with a rapist in the role of
the best dad ever, go figure, but I digress.
About three years ago Erin and I were both contributing
to a local art institution that shall remain nameless. I was
contributing. She was making a real difference there. I was
thunderstruck by Erin’s vast knowledge of art and history. The
kid was born to curate. She put together the best exhibitions the
place had ever seen. We decided to work together outside of
that joint. We decided we would create our own institution/world
where we would know no boundaries. Silly rabbits.
We didn’t fit in Midtown (I didn’t go to CCS or WSU), We didn’t
fit Downtown (poor credit ratings), We didn’t fit on the Grand
River Creative Corridor (too many geniuses there already), and
Hamtramck was definitely out (We reject hipsters with an almost
religious zeal).
Erin and I really didn’t fit anywhere. The original odd couple
working together, grandfather and granddaughter. In the end we
created The Enclave Project for Contemporary Art. I wanted to
bring the work of uneducated, diverse, and rebellious figurative
artists to the spotlight, and Erin wanted to educate the masses
so they would know how to properly rebel. At least, that’s the way
I see it. Ask me next week and my vision may have cleared. Ask
her and she will compose a thesis and get back to you.
In Detroit when you talk about the arts and communities almost
inevitably the conversation is about one of a few places. Art in
Detroit seems to be concentrated into discrete districts whose
boundaries are fixed. Part of the reason this is so is because
artists are like molecules—we gravitate towards one another and
when conditions are favorable we stick together.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We are all seeking
the place that’s right for us. No one way of creating is better or
correct.
Fortunately, we met some great people who believed in what we
were doing and they found a small spot for us in the North End.
A diverse group representing the complex fabric of metropolitan
Detroit—Jerry Hebron, Oakland Avenue Urban Farms, Jean Louis
Farges, Anya Sirota, and Halima Cassels welcomed us with open
arms. Ann Reemsten- Ritchie backs up everything we do. Thank
you one and all.
We work now to cultivate our small portion of territory. Erin is
concentrating on the Wee Art School, and outdoor lecture series
featuring artists, critics, creatives, and historians. I am pouring
my heart and soul into the launch of CAMP, Community Art
Makers Project, a mentoring program featuring a small group of
artists sharing and building fundamental art skills in the kids and
adults of the North End neighborhood.
Detroit is much larger than Midtown and Downtown. I don’t really
care about hockey stadiums, five star restaurants, and million
dollar art galleries with their lily white clientele that too many of
us can’t afford to go to. Yeah, those places are pretty, and they’re
filled with pretty people in stylish clothes spending lots of money.
That looks good in brochures, but real Detroit, the Detroit that
survived when things were at their worst is also found right here,
in places like the North End. In Detroit’s interior neighborhoods
and communities. That my friend is my portion of territory.
68

Waiting for Change to Come, printworks

Burn, printworks

71
Geothe, printworks

Mom Always Liked You Best, printwork

WILD THINGS
words Lorena Figueiredo
images Hubert Watkins
“I like things that are there for you to see but you never see
them,” says 75-year-old Hubert Watkins, while sitting on the front
porch of his house on Smith St., just across Dolores Bennett
Park in Detroit’s North End. From his couch (an old bus seat),
he observes, day after day, kids playing basketball, young men
listening to rap music, trees changing leaves. But what interests
him most are the things that most people do not pay attention
to, the lives whose presence may easily remain unacknowledged:
squirrels and rabbits running around, pheasants taking a relaxing
stroll, seagulls overseeing the park, birds nesting, a peregrine
falcon making an appearance. He also admires tiny yellow and
pink flowers blossoming on the curbs or weeds that no one seems
to control which render life – at least his life – more interesting
and rich.
Hubert registers their presence, not only by looking and
remembering, but also by taking photos. After more than 20
years of this activity, he has a collection of thousands of pictures.
At the beginning, in the 1990s, it was less systematic. Back
then, he had just retired from his job, due to a repetitive strain
injury. “I worked for Ford, assembly line. As far as anybody is
concerned, that’s all I’ve ever done.” He then moved back to the
house on Smith St., where he was born, to take care of his elderly
parents. Being already interested in photography for decades,
he then started documenting life in the neighborhood: people,
houses, animals, plants. Around 5 years ago, Hubert started
losing his eyesight, and that was when his routine evolved into
a methodical photography project. Documenting became more
urgent than ever, and from then on he would always be sitting
outside with a camera by his side. Photography as a medium
turned into an enhanced way to see, because it allows one to
remember. It renders things visible. It turns occasional sights
into memories. It is also a work of mourning, about what we lose
as we age and what we lose when we ignore what surrounds us,
when we refuse to acknowledge movement besides our own.
Only recently wild animals became a more regular presence
in the North End, or, as Hubert puts it, the wild animals “have
migrated into the city.” Growing up there 60 years ago, he recalls
how dense the neighborhood was: “all these empty spaces
were houses,” and there were “neighborhood stores that you
could walk to... Not anymore.” Today, according to conservative
estimates of 2014 by Motor City Mapping, at least 20% of all
properties in the North End are very likely to be vacant. Land
vacancy is not by any means a “natural” phenomenon in innercity
Detroit. Rather, it is a consequence of a multi-layered
process of decline, caused by what has been broadly termed
‘white flight’, racial segregation, the deindustrialization crisis,
concentration of poverty and fiscal distress.
Many of the neighborhood’s abundent “vacant” lots are not
regularly mowed and are not designated and maintained as
green spaces by city planning. Due to the city’s diminished ability
to provide such public services, and for reasons not simply
associated with the resurgence of the “natural,” much of the
“vacant” land evolves into prairie-like landscapes, with tall grass,
weeds and broad variety of native plants. This vegetation gives
rise to the presence of animals such as pheasants and rabbits,
which in turn attract falcons and hawks. To Hubert, this is all
new. Even though there were green spaces in the neighborhood
75

back then, they were tamed landscapes, like backyard vegetable
gardens or well-kept front yards. He recalls that his father
planted a garden and raised chickens in their backyard. Still, to
see pheasants at that time, one would have to go to northern
Michigan’s countryside. “Now they’re right here and nobody pays
any attention to it.”
Hubert may very well be the sole wildlife photographer who
neither goes on complicated expedition trips nor rides a 4x4
truck in the woods. Staying in the same place is almost a value
statement: “You don’t have to go any further than your front
porch.” And he is not specifically talking about his front porch.
He is referring to almost anywhere in the North End, as long as
you sit there for long enough and are willing to see.
Hubert’s stoop is, according to the wildlife observer, not even
the most prolific spot to observe animals, mainly due to the
human and automobile activity in and around Dolores Bennett
Park. Rabbits and pheasants also stay clear because the lawn
is regularly mowed in the park, limiting space for animals to
hide, lay eggs or give birth. In contrast, just one block down on
Smith St., between Brush and John R., where not one single house
remains on the north side of the street, an informal green space
has emerged -- so populated with pheasants that one of the
neighbors calls it “Pheasant Park.” She enjoys observing them
while sipping tea in her front porch. Down one block, on Bethune
St., a couple of residents have also reported seeing pheasants,
rabbits and possums on a regular basis. Up north at the Oakland
Avenue Urban Farm, pheasants munch on kale and eat peas
(that they learned how to shell), not without being observed by
some menacing hawks – and a very exasperated farm manager.
The North End today is inhabited not only by humans, but also
by the people of the pheasants, diplomats of the rabbits, possum
pioneers, exiled members of the falcons, insistent woodpeckers,
the sovereign nation of bees, the colonizers of dandelion, the
diaspora of mulberry trees, and many others. A neighborhood
with so many life species coexisting and interacting cannot be
simply called “vacant”: it looks more like a parliament of things,
as the philosopher Bruno Latour would say.
Contrary to what the “ruin porn” narratives would like us to
believe, the North End is not an “empty,” “dead” or “ghost” area.
It is a lively and rich neighborhood, in which humans cohabit with
other species, and the built environment lies side by side with
less-tamed landscapes. It is an assemblage that challenges the
traditional divides between what is usually seen as “natural” or
“rural” on one side and “urban” on the other side. The boundaries
become blurred: it does not make sense to claim that the North
End is not “urban” anymore only because it has wildlife. At the
same time, it does not make sense to argue that it is a purely
man-made industrial landscape, because such a thing does not
exist. Is it a “rururban” space? Or is it a post-industrial, neo-rural,
new urban landscape? The terms might not be too important.
What matters here is that the North End is alive. And the only
way to assure that it is truly alive, that it remains vibrant, is by
looking at all these species, all these socio-naturally constructed
spaces, and by taking pictures of them, talking about them,
talking to them, everyday, until it makes sense to be together,
until we can compose this rich parliament of things. Until
everyone else is able to do what Hubert says: “Just open your
eyes.”
While Hubert might unique in his photographic front porch
pursuits, so many of the North End’s residents observe and
interact with the emergent flora and fauna. These interactions
allow different species to coexist, which may ultimately
correspond to a multispecies entanglement, where human life is
not the only one to be accounted for.
Lorena is a student of urban sociology at
Sciences Po, Paris. She can be reached at
lorena.figueiredo@sciencespo.fr
76

JAZZ ARCHEOLOGY
words Dr. Carleton Gholz
images Jean Louis Farges
On International Jazz Day, April 30th, a group of jazz
archaeologists from the Detroit Sound Conservancy (DSC)
and Detroit Afrikan Music Institution (DAMI), celebrated and
salvaged the Blue Bird Inn’s modest but hallowed stage.
The time had come. The current owner, like many Detroiters,
unable to accumulate the capital to launch the West Side
property into a new business, had given the DSC permission to
survey, document, and salvage interior elements of the former
jazz club. The initial survey occurred last spring but with the roof
finally caving in the time to finish the job had arrived.
Thanks to DAMI, the DSC was able to couple imagination with
sweat equity to remove the stage and its multicolored backdrop,
so that some day others will be able to stand with Miles Davis,
John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef…. It is now in a safe storage unit
ready to be activated.
It would be folly to think that any one organization could or
should preserve all of Detroit music history. We must pool our
ideas and our strength, inspire one another across our cultural
preservation ecosystem, and build legitimacy for sonic values
within Detroit’s resurgence together.
On removal of the stage, the DSC immediately wrote a grant
proposal to renovate the stage as a mobile museum and
programming platform. We continue to engage the owner on the
future of the building. You can read more on the DSC website.
archeological team: Carleton Ghotz, Eric Howard,
Bryce Detroit, Jean Louis Farges, Lorin Brace
learn more about Detroit music preservation efforts at:
detroitsoundconservancy.org

WELCOME TO DETROIT, BIRTHPLACE OF
THE NEW ECONOMY
words Paul Chandler
Capitalism is failing people and the planet. However, its
failures are not yet pervasive enough to force humanity to
develop a better alternative. Not yet.
Detroit cannot wait idly for this to come to pass. Here, the
old economy has failed so badly and the need for survival
is so great that Detroiters must do for themselves and must
do so differently. At the same time, should transformative
efforts succeed, we could serve as a model for the world’s next
system.
Therefore, Detroit is not only the canary in the coalmine.
Detroit is the great hope of humanity.
The number and variety of Detroiters’ visionary initiatives are
vast. They include: community gardens, urban farms, sovereign
food systems, member-owned cooperatives, buying clubs,
social enterprises, community production facilities, new work
enterprises, community land trusts, community supported
agriculture, renewable energy solutions, community-owned
power, fabrication labs, off-the-grid homes, gift swaps,
timeshares, freedom schools, co-working spaces, independent
media, artist collectives, cooperative entertainment
infrastructures, experimental music venues, new genre
explorations, and intentional cultural programming that uplifts
positive and indigenous identities.
These efforts share a common goal: collective economic
determination and social liberation through a genuine culture
of cooperation, community, democracy, and solidarity. Scaled
up, these core elements could form the basis of a new cultural
and economic paradigm—the solidarity economy.
Yet if the solidarity economy is a better alternative than
unbridled capitalism, how can it actually replace it?
The first step must be to establish the viability of the solidarity
economy. Detroiters are already doing this at the project
level with unparalleled resourcefulness, creativity, and vision.
Additional resources and training must be provided to ensure
the continued success of each initiative.
The second step must be to scale, and to scale in a way that
is strategic; to coordinate the many successful projects so
that they prefigure the next system and convert the old one;
to transform a city that symbolizes the impending failures of
the old system into a liberatory beacon of the new. In short, to
build Detroit’s solidarity economy.
Detroit need not only be ground zero of the failing old
economy. Detroit can be the birthplace of the new economy.
In fact, it must be. For if it can be done in Detroit, it can be
done anywhere. And that is the ultimate goal. To envision a
better world and build it out of the ruins of the old. Speramus
Meliora; Resurget Cineribus. What’s more Detroit than that?
Interested in the new economy? Attend the Detroit
Cooperative Community, a monthly gathering meant to
nurture the cooperative consciousness and commitments
needed for a solidarity economy. It takes place the last
Wednesday of each month at the D. Blair Theater of the Cass
Corridor Commons, 4605 Cass Ave. Visit c2be.org to learn
more.
***
Paul Chandler, a recent graduate of Columbia Law
School, is the Lowenstein Law Fellow at C2BE,
providing technical legal assistance and community
education while facilitating collaboration within
Detroit’s cooperative ecosystem. In his free time, Paul
writes and raps.
93

DOCUMENTING DETROIT
Participants in 2016 Ideas City, an artists’ collective travels from Bogata to Detroit and documents
the people they meet on the way.
Ideas City came to town at the end of April. Organized by New
York’s New Museum, the weeklong event cum nomadic think tank
was staged at the Herman Kiefer Complex, a once city-owned
public health facility recently purchased by New York developer,
architect, and Ideas City partner Ron Castellano. Over the
span of one week, participants in the initiative’s competitive
residency program animated this future site of redevelopment
with conversations and workshops addressing Detroit’s most
pressing urban issues: affordable housing, historic preservation,
urban mobility, land stewardship, and of course, gentrification.
Ideas City organizers strategically established working teams
comprised of people who could roughly be grouped as belonging
to three key categories: smart Detroiters, US cultural players,
and international creative thinkers. Together, tasked with
research and deliberation, they produced proposals for urban
action. Site visits, lectures, and conversations with storied local
residents, policy makers, activists, and others, complimented
the workshops. The week culminated in a public conference,
featuring a range of expert speakers and Ideas City participants
ready to share their new insights into what shapes the city.
For some international contributors, the week of formal
activity was just a primer, enticing a prolonged stay and the
exploration of the city at an independent pace. The Columbian
arts collective, CaldodeCultivo, for one, extended their visit,
connecting with local cultural producers and documenting the
encounter for an evolving video art project. Their thoughts and
snaps are shared here...
***
CaldodeCultivo is a trans-disciplinary group of creation and
research based in Bogota, Colombia. The work of our artistic
collective transits from aesthetical to political strategies to
address the city and the urban experience as a contested
territory. We see our projects as a possibility for subverting
official narratives and imagining new ways of being together.
Our practice focuses on questioning the neoliberal narratives
and policies of the contemporary city, through contextualized
projects developed closely with local artist and grassroots
organizations. We use diverse artistic languages, from public
installations to video, to create devices of counter information
and popular agitation with objective of highlight the exclusions
and the violence that urban policies imply but also to amplify the
struggles, the resistance tactics and strategies of the so-called
informal city, this great mass of beings and places that are
excluded from the development and are victims of it.
Coming from Colombia we know how it feels to be diminished
by stereotypical images and narratives of our land and our
people. Although Detroit its full of life, creativity and resilience,
terms such as “the greatest bankruptcy” “the ghost city”, “the
capital of crime”, “the ruin”, that are used to describe the city
are not only ahistorical and biased but also useful to speculators
who are seen as saviors of a “hopeless” metropolis while the
Detroiters are blamed when not completely erased from the
equation. So the people from Detroit are not only fighting the
violence of the State and the market but also facing the violence
of misrepresentations of the city and its inhabitants. In that
context, CaldodeCultivo with a video piece want to respond
to such violent representations with the creative “violence” of
the spoken word in a broad sense, that is to say that we want
to build a powerful imaginary of the city through artists and
activist who use the body and the words as political and poetic
strategies.
This project is the result of a residency at PoppsPacking, and was
possible thanks to the laboratory Ideas-City an experience that
let us get to know amazing people and projects, and of course
it couldn’t be possible without the collaboration of the artists
who participated in it (by Alphabetical order): Billy Mark, Bryce
Detroit, Deonte Osayande, Detroit Poetry Society (Gabrielle
Knox, Sheezy Boo Beezy, Intellect Allison, DOMiNO LA3, Rocket
Man), Hallima Cassells, Malik Yakini, Marsha Music, MavOne,
Ray C. Johnson, Sanu , Sol Le, Tawana Petty, and Underground
Resistance.
learn more about CaldodeCultivo at caldodecultivo.com
94

FREE MARKET GOES GLOBAL
words & image Halima Cassells
Born on Detroit’s North End and catalyzed by the ONE Mile
project, The Free Market of Detroit is exploding. It’s gone global!
We are staying busy: upcycling clothing items, swapping in
gardens, at schools, in the park, and across the Atlantic Ocean.
In conjunction with Zimbabwe Cultural Centre of Detroit and
artists from both Detroit and Zimbabwe, we have created an
intercontinental swap. Working with visiting artist, Masibma
Hwati- we launched a project called Pimp My Shoe. Creating
upcycled shoes with scrap leather, we swapped the repurposed
shoes and other Detroit items with folks in Harare, and they
returned in kind. A part of a larger cultural exchange with artists
and students, ZCCD has helped facilitate 3 exchanges, and we
look forward to more.
We know that there are many other folks out there swapping.
There are churches like St. Peter’s and Spirit of Hope and Fort
Street Presbyterian that have community closets. There is
Detroiters Helping Each Other in SW Detroit, a year-round free
store. Some folks have treasure chests in their homes that they
bring out at parties... And one-time swaps are popping up all
over.
So you can, too --Next time you get together with family and
friends, ask everyone to bring something to give away and set
it on a table. Once everyone is there - tell them they can take
whatever they like. It’s that simple.
On one level swapping is fun - people get rid of unwanted
stuff, share stories and take home free stuff that they do want.
Swapping is also interrupting capitalism and over-consumption--
it keeps useable stuff out of landfills or the incinerator, and
keeps money in your pocket.
And at a deeper level it is also an act of resistance and cultural
reclamation.
Gift economies have existed for hundreds of thousands of years
all around the world. Gift economies work by the principle of the
“third corner,” as opposed to a one-to-one transaction. Everyone
lives in abundance and everyone shares; when someone
fishes, everyone eats. The concepts of personal property and
boundaries are much more fluid; the values of community
responsibility is uplifted; and things are valued for their use-- not
as symbols of status.
There are many mechanisms for sharing stuff and time. One
tradition that has been practiced by the indigenous in North
America has been the potlatch - a feast where goods and foods
are shared between families, kind of like a church potluck+swap.
This was actually outlawed in Canada by the colonial settler
government for 100 years because it was viewed as a threat--
the simple notion that the native desire to give away goods was
the opposite of the “Christian capitalist” values and threatened
commerce, justified criminalizing a culture of swapping and
community building. Not only can you find great shoes and
books-- but each time you swap you strike against empire and
oppression, and build the beloved community.
Upcoming Free Market of Detroit Swaps...
08/06/16 Sidewalk Festival of the Arts @ Artist Village Detroit
08/20/16 The 4th Annual Healing Arts Festival @ Oakland Ave.
Urban Farm
10/11/16 Plant Swap @ Oakland Ave. Urban Farm
12/03/16 Noel Night Holiday Swap @ Cass Corridor Commons
12/11/16 Holiday Swap & North End SOUP @ St. Matthew’s
St. Joseph’s
99

proposal for Michigan Arts League, Carr Center

AKOAKI
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNERS
interview Samantha Okolita
drawings Akoaki
photography Doug Coombe

Jean Louis Farges and Anya Sirota have collaborated creatively
for a long stretch. They met in Paris, moved to New York, and
even survived a short stint in Boston. But it wasn’t until relocating
to Michigan in 2008, that they launched their design studio,
Akoaki. Since, they have staged illicit galleries on the roof of
the Packard Plant, hosted a 36-hour film festival and public
agora, installed op art pavillions in defunct industrial sites, and
in partnership with Bryce Detroit and Halima Cassells, launched
the ONE Mile Project in Detroit’s storied North End. I sat down
with Jean Louis and Anya in their studio office, where the shared
work space is, surprise, hot lips pink.
JLF: Yes, optimistic. I mean architecture is a tool for impact.
AS: In a sense, we’re not just critical of the things that are
happening around us. We want a hand in bringing joy more,
share in the pleasures of pop aesthetics, create environments
that seem untethered, traverse social barriers, all of that… it’s
incredibly optimistic. . .
SO: Are you a social or an aesthetic practice?
JLF: We are not a practice.
SO: Gold or pink?
AS: Both. Gold and pink!
JLF: We love to see the reality of the world in gold and pink.
SO: Would you consider yourselves optimists or a pessimists?
AS: Oh. We are total optimists. Don’t you think? I mean, I‘m
privately pessimistic – that’s just my cultural background -- but in
the work we do, we’re material utopians. We totally believe that
architecture is not just a projective representation of a possible
world, but that formulated it transforms our realities, hopefully
for the better.
102
AS: Right, I think it is fair to say that we are not a practice in the
traditional sense. The term ‘practice’ suggests that a method can
be perfected through endless repetition. We think of the work we
do as siding more closely with experimentation. So, we are more
of a research office than we are of a practice where we perfect a
particular form of making and adjust it to a multitude of possible
scenarios. But the question of whether we are more concerned
with the social or aesthetic qualities of space making is very
important. I think the two always go hand in hand. We produce
aesthetically considered work regardless of the complexity, or
the economic scarcity, of a particular situation. So while we
are always responding to the social realities of place, we are
nonetheless committed to experimenting with novel aesthetics to
make those situations legible and inclusive.

The Mothership, assembly manual
previous page: the Mothership site plan

Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, emergent plan

JLF: No, we are not a firm in the traditional sense. We are just
individuals, very singular individuals, working in the urban field
using design as a political tool for communication.
SO: Since you are not a practice, do you consider your “practice”
to be architecture? And if so, how would you define architecture
as a role within that?
JLF: If you design a space, you build a space, and you have a
program, I believe it is probably called architecture.
AS: No, we side flatly with the idea that we are working within the
disciplinary bounds of architecture. We might be pushing those
boundaries, or not pursuing traditional, economic or institutional
frameworks for the production of architecture. We don’t want to
be licensed, for instance, because we don’t need a license for the
kind of work we do.
JL: There is no license to do a temporary music scenography.
Maybe you need a license to do a kitchen? When you design and
fabricate contemporary object sin the city of Detroit, like the
Mothership, you really don’t need a license.
SO: Your website claims that you critically engage the social,
spatial and material realities of place. What do you consider the
reality of Detroit that you work within?
JLF: The reality of Detroit is that it illustrates a great American
failure. There are people, institutions, corporation that are
responsible for bringing about this situation, and the outcomes
of those historical and continuing actions are a now a collective
responsibility. Everyone needs to react to this failure, and not to
leave people to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces for
other’s mistakes.
AS: I might have to disagree with you. I’m not sure that Detroit is
simply evidence of America’s greatest failures.
JL: I know. It’s not the greatest. But it’s one of them. And there are
mini late capitalist failures like this everywhere but this one is a
big one.
AS: Yes, so it may be a failure, but Detroit is also a dark
illustration of capitalism’s exceptional successes, which is that
it’s incredibly elastic, it can leave people behind, it can adapt
and adjust, and it’s ruthless, and it always succeeds in moving
to wherever there are greatest opportunities. So, we are seeing
at the tail end of the cycle and the beginning of a new cycle
where there is new speculation and new redevelopment and
new opportunities for someone. Those opportunities do not
appear egalitarian at this time and there are quire a few people
excluded from the upward and prospective turns we’re witnessing.
SO: What are some of the challenges that you face as designers
in the city of Detroit?
JL: As a designer, I think it is very important for me to witness, to
learn and to listen to people. It is a challenge. You have to put
all assumptions to the side, everything you know, everything you
learned and everything you believe is true because you have to
confront something that doesn’t exist anywhere else at this scale.
You really have to listen to the people who live in this city.
AS: I think a unique thing about Detroit is that it’s one of the
few places I have ever lived and operated that is so brutally
expressive about problems of race. I think those issues exist
elsewhere, but because of the demographics of the city, there is
a way that people talk about those frictions and problems that is
spectacularly frontal and transparent, and frankly, constructive.
It is something I have never experienced in other cities, and I am
sure that these issues are just as pertinent and pressing in other
cities, it’s just that they are left unspoken. And I think one of the
challenges in working in Detroit is the baggage that comes with
all of the pre-conceptions attached to race, ethnicity, gender,
age, history, narrative, euro-centrism, and all of those are superimposed
on us as architects. We have the challenge of surpassing
those presuppositions, sometimes publically.
SO: So, despite the fact that neither of you are from Detroit, do
you consider your work to be authentic Detroit design?
JL: I think it is very positive to be outside of Detroit because
it gives an alternate perspective. When I am in Europe,
people fascination with and attraction to Detroit is palpable.
Maybe for people living in city, when you’re fully embedded,
it might sometimes be difficult to see its unique advantages,
idiosyncrasies, cultural possibilities.
AS: I also think we are from outside of the city. I think we are
from outside of every context in which we work. So we are never
authentic New York architects, even if we are practicing there. We
are never Parisian architects. I think this is an advantage where
we have to consistently reconsider and critically reconsider the
meaning of particular contextual scenarios, social situations.
We redefine the terms and and learn how to work in novel ways,
sensitive to the context but mostly outside of it.
JLF: There are so many opportunities when you have knowledge
and access to capital. There are so many opportunities in the
city of Detroit. But when you get involves, you start to be part
of the transformation of the city from a personal vantage point.
When you buy property even if you believe you are the right
person and you have moral feelings, you invariably change the
cultural dynamic of the city.
107

SO: You seem to be constantly building relationships with the
community organizations. How do these relationships affect the
way you work?
AS: We don’t actually create relationships with community
organizations. We build relationships with individuals in the
community. What we have discovered is that there are a lot of
politics involved in community organizations. Those forces can
be very complicated and sometimes detrimental to the longevity
of a particular neighborhood. We have done better establishing
relationships outside of those constructs. What has happened
is that it has helped us build and join a very broad network
of individuals who are Utopians like us and get to operate in
ways that are, until now, unfathomable, that are completely
interdisciplinary, that are risky, that can be fast moving and
shape shifting.
SO: In a place like Detroit with extreme and wide spread
poverty, how do you justify investing capital in something like the
Mothership?
AS: Yes, we’ve thought about it so often: having just invested
$30,000 into designing and fabricating a neighborhood icon in
the form of a golden spaceship. And we could have used that
money to salvage a dozen roofs. If you just change the asphalt
shingles, you are going to save all these at risk properties from
water-damage. But in the end, that might be a kind of short-term
investment. If you create an object that is well-designed and
offers a sense of identity to a historic neighborhood, an object
that helps transmit stories of people that have been underrepresented
in the dominant renaissance narrative, then perhaps
the intangible power and prowess of the design artifact is much
greater than the tangle impact of a renovation. It is really
difficult for us to quantify how the mothership has impacted
the sense of place in a community. But I believe its presence is
important.
SO: One can say you are branding the ONE Mile project. So
what is the value of creating a recognizable identity for a project
like ONE Mile?
AS: Well, real estate re-developers do that masterfully. They first
brand a place first, a place that might not exist yet, a place that
is a virtual projection. Think Soho, Nolita. You start by identifying
a virtual boundary and then capital comes. In this case, the ONE
Mile project doesn’t necessarily attempt to brand a place so
much as the concept of cultural vitality and cultural autonomy
in order to bring to the forefront a great many narratives from
people already deeply rooted in the place. It a preemptive move
to ensure everyone is included in the equitable future of the
neighborhood.
SO: Okay. What is the role of community participation in your
design, or is there one?
AS: Participatory design is a very charged term because it has
an entire history. Since the 60s architecture has established a
number of tropes about how it’s done, its methods and measures.
If we ask ourselves, have we followed a participatory design
tactic or strategy? We have not. What we have done is that we
JL: The Mothership is a long-term investment. We try not to do
Band-Aid beautification projects. There are lots of projects
that are critical first respondents that work on mitigating or
alleviating the issues of the day to day: water, power, education,
and violence. The work being done is very important, but that is
not our approach. In the end, the images we produce might not
be understood as direct assistance, but they are not pejorative,
they’re projective and celebratory and committed to creating
situations were ensuring a sense of dignity and delight are
conceptual drivers.
Pop Stars, Amilly, France
108

have listened to a lot of stories, many testimonies about how
people perceive their neighborhood, the neighborhood’s history,
the real and projected values of place. There are so many stories
and impressions that come from the every neighborhood. As
designers we are able to unify them, to cull them, and to figure
out which of the narratives are the most promising and uniting
and which could be materialized into physical form. I think
that lots of people participated in sharing their stories but as
designers we worked very hard in collaboration with local artists,
activists, and residents to craft the narrative into a format for
public dissemination. I think that is the skill that is critical to
architectural practice in the public realm, but it often goes under
considered.
JLF: But we live in a collective world. So everybody has a
skill. Everybody has a role. And everyone’s skills need to be a
connected into a unified whole to make impact. And when you
work with residents in Detroit, you can’t help but react to what
you hear and what you feel. The critical feedback you get can be
challenging, but it is a very good way to learn. Public criticism is
necessary because we cannot be right 100 percent of the time,
that would be amazing but it’s not the case. You have to listen
when there is a critique and try to figure out what is the mistake
of the design, what is the attitude the design should take, how to
improve what you are doing and to be more genuinely connected
with the people around you.
AS: Yes, I also think that architecture without programming
has no significance. I wouldn’t say that designing things in
conjunction with people and events isn’t necessary participatory,
but it’s invariably collaborative with all of the collaborators
deeply involved in the conceptualization of the programming,
the space, the narratives, the political stance, the relationship to
social advocacy in the city, etc.
SO: What kind of historic and aesthetic precedence drives your
practice?
AS: We look very closely at cultural precedents that are in the
popular sensibility of a place, and we make a concerted effort to
depend too seriously on architectural precedent as conceptual
inspiration. So we look at poetry, we look at music, record
album covers, advertising, fashion, anything but the stylistic and
historical development of form in the discipline itself.
SO: How does music tie to your work?
JLF: I think music ties to everything in Detroit. Detroit i¬s the most
important generator of vanguard sounds for the last sixty years,
and if you want to work in Detroit you need to be in contact with
the music. What we’ve learned is that musicians are cultural
creators, they are designers, they are artists, and they represent
a very important community in the city. They have in some ways
designed a global music industry. That design needs to be a part
of the urban planning, it needs to be part of the life of the city. I
cannot stress that enough.
SO: Are you trying to create a signature Detroit style?
JLF: We don’t agree about that. I think the culture of the city
did influence our work. Now if we were in Chinatown in San
Francisco, that culture would have influenced our work. It’s just
the context, the work expresses the culture circumstances of
where it is produces. This Is very important to have an influence
so that you don’t become a top-down kind of designer where you
say this is the rule, this is the form, and the form needs to be this
way.
learn more about the work at akoaki.com
109

ANN CARTER
MAKES JAM
THE CHEF BEHIND DETROIT’S FRESHEST JAM
interview James Lesko
the Center for Community Based Enterprise
Meet Ann Carter of AfroJam, the first business-incubator project
of Oakland Avenue Urban Farm. AfroJam furthers the Farm’s
efforts to create a vibrant locally rooted economy in Detroit’s
North End through urban agriculture, cultural programming and
sustainable design.
James Lesko: What do you most like about cooking?
Ann Carter: Food is my passion. I love to see people enjoy
the food that I make. I love doing it. They don’t even have to
say, “This is good,” you can tell from the expressions on their
faces, it’s like “yummmummmm’. And that just gives me joy.
JL: How did AfroJam come to be?
AC: At the Farm we knew that we needed an added-value
product besides the fresh fruits and vegetables we sell at
the farm stand on Oakland Avenue and in the five Chrysler
plants. And I found I enjoyed working with the fruit, how it
changes—how we can make something that was already
good, even better. You know? And so many people enjoyed it.
So we thought, ‘let’s do this…why not try?
JL: What are people saying about your jams?
AC: People love the jams. They say it’s gooood. They say they
haven’t had good jam in a lot of years. Their grandmothers
made jam or their great-great-grandmothers but people stop
doing it, you know. It became convenient to go to the store and
buy it already made. So this is something new that we’re bringing
back to the city. Bringing back to our heritage. And to anyone
who wants to have fresh homemade jams.”
JL: Why is AfroJam important to you…and to Detroit?
AC: It’s always been a dream of mine to start a business but
I never knew how to go about it; when you don’t know how to
do something you sometimes put that on the back burner. But
we decided to do it right here in this community. For one, it
will create jobs, and sustainability for people who society says
are unemployable. I think that if you can teach someone to do
something, they can live a lifetime off of doing that. So we want
to train people how to make their owns foods, teach how to can,
teach them to live healthier lives. But most importantly, it is to
give people pride in what they do and let them know that they’re
worthy and have value. Everybody has a gift. It may not be jam,
but maybe it’s out here picking the berries. Maybe it’s digging a
hole to plant something…because everyone is useful. And that’s
what we want everyone to know: that you’re important and that
no one is without worth. You train people and people can grow.
We should learn something new every day.

JL: So what’s your secret ingredient?
AC: I think the most important thing about AfroJam is we’re
here in the community. We’re here in the city of Detroit.
You can always stop by, knock on the door and watch me
make the jams, you can see what I’m putting in, you can
see that there’s no additives…and that we get pleasure in
the camaraderie in the kitchen. And that we love and we
laugh and we cook together. And that ingredient…with the
ingredients in the pot, is pure gold (laughing)…pure gold.”
You can sample the current batch of strawberry
and raspberry AfroJam at Oakland Avenue Urban
Farm’s Saturday market, 11am to 3:30pm, through
early October, weather permitting.
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A TIME TO PROJECT AND PRO-ACT
NEW IMAGES, SOUNDS
AND NARRATIVES?
BLACK DETROIT
words & artwork MASIMBA HWATI
images Smac gallery, Capetown
Masimba Hwati is a Zimbabwean artist, known for unconventional three-dimensional mixed media
sculptures. Hwati studied at the Harare Polytechnic from 2001 to 2003 where he majored in Ceramics
and Painting he currently teaches Drawing and Sculpture at Harare Polytechnic. His work explores the
transformation and evolution of knowledge systems that are indigenous to his own background whilst
experimenting with the symbolism and perceptions attached to cultural objects, expressed as an art
movement known as “The Energy of Objects”. His current work juxtaposes intense cultural objects and
symbols with trivia and seemingly ephemeral mainstream symbols and Icons. His works use contemporary
and historical themes. He also works extensively with found objects, transforming existing artifacts
into antennas and gadgets of memory. His research grows around exploration of postcolonial themes by
re-appropriating archives and objects and presenting them in new contexts. With an emphasis on sculptural
work, Hwati collects historical, culturally imbued items ranging from cars and shoes, to scrap metal and
found objects, altering and repositioning them in a contemporary urban setting. His work has been shown
in place like Germany, France, Canada, and London, The United states of America, Australia and southern
Africa. In 2015 he represented his country at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale in Italy. Masimba has
worked and researched in Places like Capetown, Avignon France, Nova Scotia Halifax, and Detroit Michigan.
He is currently a resident artists at Popps Packing in Hamtramck, Detroit, Michigan.
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I come from a school of thought that people gravitate towards
that which is constantly projected before them. The Zezuru
people in Zimbabwean culture, as in most cultures on the Afrikan
Continent, are primarily and a profoundly visual people. A
greater percentage of communication patterns including the
Symbol, metaphor and proverb have root in the visual aspect of
life. My time in Detroit has been filled with wonder, comparison
and learning. The word “Alive” best describes the Detroit art
scene. I have a special Interest in Black Detroit not only because
I’m Afrikan but because the Black American story is yet to be
fully told and owned by its own people…but how do you own a
future story?
“Until Lions have their own historians, Tales of the hunt will
always glorify the Hunter”
African Proverb
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Today I would, however, augment the meaning of the word
Historians and replace it with Projectionists. Projectionists
function in the office of “Prophets” they observe the times and
study history but are neither preoccupied by the present or the
past. Instead they liberate themselves from the constraints of
the afore mentioned definitions of time, and they create and
nurture fragile future Images, sounds ideas and atmospheres
hoping that their own people will grow to become those images. I
have deep respect for Afrikan American people. This particular
group of people have had to fight harder for the right to “Being”
and continue rightly so in the face of atrocious racial vices and
apparatus in their environments. The struggle today is in place
that’s both beautiful and critical in that Afrikan American Artists
in history have managed to ground and locate black people
in the reality of their circumstance and more so to challenge
and respond to stereotypes and constructs associated with the
Afrikan American in this country especially the Afrikan American
Male species.
May I submit to you the following opinion: Art is as powerful or
as relevant a tool as the intentions of the person(s) who owns it?
In Zezuru cosmology we have a proverb that says “Chisichako
masimba mashoma” which means you only claim power of
definition over that which you own”. This is why repatriation
processes must continue for the ancestral works of art stolen
from the Afrikan continent. Vices such as Illicit trafficking of
Cultural objects must be challenged with retroactive instruments
that will allow Afrikans and Indigenous peoples and all over the
world to take back their Art from former colonizers or pillagers
of the Meme (cultural gene), heritage and Art. In This context, I
would like to encourage the continuation of the notion of growing
and cultivating Afrikan American collectors of contemporary
Afrikan American Art. It is still questionable to have other
groups of people as major collectors and presenters of such
Important Afrikan American exhibitions such as 30 American
Voices. I do not advocate for separation or segregation of any
race especially in the art world, which is a space, we all share. I,
however, think that Afrikans and Afrikan Americans committed
to projecting and Pro-acting new narratives and Images of their
own people need reflect on the fact that Art is a tool and is only
powerful as the intentions of the one who owns it. Perhaps this is
the time for us to de-perpetuate the Idea of the Afrikan as the
producer of cultural goods and think of him as the consumer and
proprietor of these bodies of Cultural Knowledge. The Absence
of black Consumption balance in Art tends to perpetuate the
emasculation of powerful black Narratives and Images. I admire
the work of Dr Charles Wright in building a Legacy of History
for the African American Community in Detroit. The work of Dr
George N’namdi cannot go unnoticed as a positive development
and hope for cultivating more Afrikan American collectors of
contemporary Art.
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As much as art can be commodified, I’m of the opinion of that
it is irresponsibly dangerous for Afrikans and Afrikan Americans
to yield ownership of their Artistic expressions to other groups
of people especially to former colonizers and former enslavers.
This is because In Early Africa colonizers made it a point to
loot cultural objects and the art of Afrikan communities and
proceeded to use them as objects of Inquiry to study the African
Meme (cultural Gene) and also to selectively represent images
that served their best interest. When Cecil John Rhodes led the
Pioneer Column in 1890 to annex the Region of Mashonaland in
Zimbabwe he made a point to loot the best articles of creative
and cultural significance as a means of studying the Indigenous
people to arm himself with subtle cultural information for the
future success of the colonial machinery. The Afrikan Continent
today is still battling with issues of neo-colonialism and cultural
hegemony because of loss of critical cultural information, which
has either been hidden from them or misappropriated. The
afore mentioned vices are made successful because of cultural
products that are designed to psychologically distort and
gentrify black culture and most of these products are delivered
through instruments such as television and other mediums.
Several reports say that black and minority children watch
more television than any other groups of people in America (the
same can be said about Afrika). This could rightly be termed
“psychological gentrification” a word coined by Dr. George
N’namdi in 2005.This is possible because Neo-colonial cultural
designers use intricate Cultural information gleaned from
stolen and museumized memes to create counter products that
psychologically gentrify targeted groups of indigenous people.
The question is how are these groups of people responding to
this state of affairs? Recent studies show that Afrikan Americans
consume more television products that any other group in
America .It is observed that Marketers and advertisers spend $
75 billion on television only $ 2.24 billion of that sum is invested
towards media focused on black people. Clearly there is need to
create critical cultural content and appetite for Black Audiences.
A million dollar question can be phrased as follows: Do Africans
on the Continent and in diaspora understand the times that we
are in at the present moment? Is this the time of imprisoning
ourselves in the negativity of our times, or a time of reacting to
negative stereotypes and constructs that has been presented
before us? I strongly believe this is a time to project and pro
-Act what we want to become. Maybe a time to Interrogate
labels even self-imposed one too, sometimes I feel that the
“black label/Brand” has been used so much in protest art and
movements such that it has morphed into an albatross that has
diverted our attention from more important things. In zezuru we
have a proverb that says “Haikona Kupedzera museve kunana
Dhimba Hanga dzichauya” it simply means do not waste your
arrows on smaller prey because the lager prey will come, its
only a matter of time. Everything around us confirms that this
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is the time of projection and Pro-action for black Detroit and
black people around the world. We cannot afford the cost of
forgetting history neither can we be naïve about the here and
now, but at the same time we must invest more in the aspect
of history that speaks of a victorious heritage and legacy and
above all project the future. My heart sank when I encountered
the slave ship section in the Charles Wright Museum of Afrikan
American History. I wasn’t saddened because my people where
dehumanized by the vice of slavery but I was sad that my people
chose to invest more resources in projecting a part of the story
that details defeat more than they invested in other narratives of
victory in the same story.
Why not invest more resources and attention in Victorious
narratives such as the 1811 slave rebellion of Louisiana, The
Amistad rebellion led by Cinque, the Creole Rebellion in the early
1840’s .Black American history does not fall short of Heroes talk
of Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Taubman, and Gaspar Yangar of
Veracruz. Why not built and recreate larger than life narratives
around these heroes? Countless other Heroic stories live on
the African continent which are at the disposal of Afrikans in
the Diaspora. There is a need to de-perpetuate the selective
apparatus that has focus fixed on negative portrayal of black
people. I admire the work of Kehinde Wiley for addressing some
of these issues at the right time around the early 2000 ‘s. I have
respect for Tyree Guyton for grounding people in their present
reality of demise in the late 1980’s. I respect the work of Nick
Cave for realizing the need of our current times and projecting
new images pro-acting important processes and directly
Borrowing Ideas from the Afrikan continent around dance ritual
and costumage and translating these to a wider audience. This
time on the Afrikan psycho-social and political calendar is a time
to consider Marx, Brecht and Mayakovski’s beliefs that art is not
a mirror to hold up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape
it.
Notes:
Zezuru-A Clan found predominantly in northern region of the
Southern African country of Zimbabwe, the majority ethnic group in
Zimbabwe.
Afrikan-adopting this spelling is a conscious and rebellious reference
to an Afrika free of slavery, Colonization and hegemonic frames of
reference.
“Until Lions have their own historians, Tales of the hunt will always
glorify the Hunter”: African Proverb (Igbo) –Believed to have come
from the Igbo tribe in Nigeria, The Igbo are an ethnic group of
southeastern Nigeria.
“Chisichako Masimba mashoma” shona proverb-Directly translated
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you have limited power over those things that you don’t own
D.I.A-Detroit Institute of the Arts Address: 5200 Woodward Ave,
Detroit, MI 48202, United States.
30 American Voices – 30 Americans showcases works by many of the
most important African American artists of the last three decades.
This provocative exhibition focuses on issues of racial, sexual, and
historical identity in contemporary culture while exploring the powerful
influence of artistic legacy and community across generations. Recently
a travelling exhibition shown in some City Galleries in the United
States at The Detroit Institute of the Arts.
Afrofuturism- is a literary and cultural aesthetic that combines
elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity,
and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique
not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise,
interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of the past. First
coined by Mark Dery in 1993 in his Essay Black to the future. https://
thenewblack5324.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mark-dery-black-tothe-future.pdf
Dr Charles Wright Museum of African American History Address:
315 E Warren Ave, Detroit, MI 48202, United States
Dr George N’namdi- G R N’namdi Gallery Address: 52 E Forest
Ave, Detroit, MI 48201, United States.
26 March 1902 was a British colonial-era businessman, mining
magnate, and politician in South Africa. An ardent believer in British
colonialism, Rhodes was the founder of the southern African territory
of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which was named after
him in 1895.
Tyree Guyton- Tyree Guyton is an artist from Detroit, Michigan.
Cofounder of the Heidelberg Project in Detroit east side www.
heidelberg.org
Nick cave- Nick Cave is an American fabric sculptor, dancer, and
performance artist. He is best known for his Sound suits: wearable
fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly www.
cranbrookart.edu/museum/nickcave/exhibition/
Karl Marx, was a German philosopher, economist, communist,
sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist.
Bertolt Brecht- was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director
of the 20th century http://www.britannica.com/biography/Bertolt-
Brecht.
Vladimir Vladimiroviç Mayakovski was the leading Russian
Futurist poet of the 20th century who created an entirely new form
of Russian poetryhttps://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.
htm#mayakovsky-vladimir
Cecil John Rhodes- Cecil John Rhodes born 5 July 1853 -died
123

ZA’NYIA KELLY
POET, PILOT, GARDNER
interview Linda Cassells
imaginary scenography Sam Okolita & Jonathan Watkins

Poet, pilot, photographer, gardener, and culinary artist-- meet
Za’Nyia Kelly, whose name means strength and strong will. Recent
graduate of Benjamin O’Davis Aerospace High School, she is
headed to Michigan State this fall to pursue study in agricultural
science. She is the coordinator for Know Allegiance Nation, and
teaches poetry to youth, as well as coordinates monthly poetry
meet-ups with Illuminate Crew in the North End. Linda Cassells
recently met up with Za’Nyia to talk about
LC: Let me ask you this, how did your family or friends decide on
your name?
ZK: Oh [laughs]. My mom just told me this story, and it is always
slightly different... So, my great grandma who is still alive, bless
her heart, she was in the hospital for something minor at the
same time I was born. And my great-aunt who became my
godmother, she said something she kept coming from my granny’s
room, coming between my granny’s room and my mom’s room,
like, coming with different names and my grandma decided
to name me Za’Nyia. My grandma and my mom, they were all
like, deciding and Za’Nyia came along and they looked up the
meaning and it meant strength and strong will.
LC: Oh how nice! So your grandmother named you.
ZK: My grandmother and my aunt all pitched in.
LC: Now I believe that you enjoy gardening, reading, poetry, the
arts and you are definitely interested in culinary arts, right? So
tell me what plans you have? Are you thinking about, I think I
read about you, are you thinking about owning a bakery at some
point?
ZK: [laughs] So, since what you read, since then, my plans have
kind of changed and everything but I am definitely still in the
works, just later on in life... My plan now, after I graduate from
Davis, I am going to Michigan State for, basically farming, for
agricultural sciences, sustainable growing and I think I might
major in botany and nutrition. I would be focused on those fields.
Think if I am going to do food I should start from the ground up.
LC: You seem to be a very happy, creative person.
ZK: I’m glad I come off that way.
LC: Aww, and this is something I want you to think about for a
second. How does your sense of creativity help you deal with life’s
challenges sometimes?
ZK: ...It’s really hard to talk about me because, looking back
and comparing myself to other people, I do a lot of stuff but it
just seems normal because that is what I have always done. So,
creativity to me is like the norm. Just looking at my response to
problems in general. Growing up I have learned a lot of different
mediums to express myself and give my message across, to just
communicate with other people, with myself and sometimes with
no one at all. Creativity has helped me a lot because sometimes
I am trying to convey this message verbally, and it is not coming
out properly, and then I decide to try meditating on it. I may
do a vision for it, or I may just draw a picture. I may create
a sculpture. So it helps me in expressing my emotions or fully
finding proper solutions…so holistically...
LC: What inspired you to be a poet? Where did you get your
inspiration?
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poetry party. So everybody brought a pie. For poetry I had Dina,
who’s awesome. Deena, an Illuminate graduate as well, won first
place in the Illuminate slam last year for her age group. She was
my opener, and Jamii, my poetry mentor, did some poetry, it was
really cool. So that, and booking gigs and doing this later on at
the Louder Than A Bomb. I may be the sacrificial poet, who’s
just the poet who goes after the actual slam, just to give the
judges a basepoint on how they want to grade.
LC: I think you anwered it, but can you tell us a little more about
what emotion you write about?
ZK: Any emotion would just be that, not just only me, but that
we’re here, and that we won’t be quiet and that we have a voice
and that we know how to use it, and we have education, and
we’re literate. We know how to utilize our voice and our words,
and bring upon message, and empower not only listeners, but us
through our voices.
LC: What about chapbooks?
ZK: We were in class one day and Jamii Tata encourages us to
hone in on the ability to properly be an entrepreneur, and to take
what you learned as a poet and to apply it to the business realm,
live off of it. It’s so often you hear, I’m a starving artist. And that’s
something really important that Jamii teaches us. So we’re sitting
in class one day and he was like okay today is about chapbooks.
He took a blank piece of paper and folded it a certain way and
he told us write your poem on it. So we wrote our poems and
make it look nice. It was just a simple piece of copy paper. I
like art so I went home and I went all out. I got cardstock, thick
watercolor paper, two sheets of it and folded it in half. The first
one wasn’t even intentionally for like selling, I was making it for
a super special friend who introduced me to Illuminate, Yakuza
Moon, a.k.a Khafre. So I got some cool pen markers from Blick
in Midtown, and I did some cool edging on the paper, and I did
an elephant design. I went all out.I calligraphed all my poems.
I felt cool, I felt like a boss. So I showed Jamii, and he said, sell
them. And I was like no, but he said sell it. So I stitched together
one, stitched the spine, so it looked like a book. And that’s sort of
how the chapbook started. And all of them are handmade. The
second one I did was butterfly, it was a pattern almost. It was
a little different, you know. Incorporating all the different kinds
of creativity, you know the art and the poetry. The entrepreneur
thought of it, it just bring something cool with it?
LC: Nice. Did you sell any of them?
ZK: Yeah. What I do is I make a master copy, then I copy them
onto cardstock. I’ve sold a couple... And I’m currently making one
for one of my friends, Aalia Mohamad, a Know Allegiance Nation
intern, which is an organization that Illuminate and two other
programs are under. I’m doing one for her mom.
LC: This organization sounds wonderful, you guys have classes
when?
ZK: Class is on Friday in the summer. The graduates of Illuminate
also get together so we can keep our skills polished... We have a
bi-monthly meeting.
LC: Tell me a little more about the people involved.
ZK: We have Aalia Mohamad, she’s awesome. She’s a writer,
and you have 11 year olds. We have this one kid—I’m sorry,
woman. She’s super young, Aziza, as tall as a table, and she is
a powerhouse. And she always holds her own. But it’s kind of
embarrassing to have like 11 year olds against 17 year olds. And
it’s not that they can’t keep up, but you have to judge on two
different things, so the score is kind of wacky. So we split it up
into age groups, but now that we have Aalia, there will be a an
Illuminate that’s called the Nighlights and that’s from ages 7-12.
Then the age 13-18 group is called the Illuminate Entrepreneurs.
LC: How has this organization helped address illiteracy problems
in Detroit?
ZK: it’s never just literacy, it’s never just poetry with Illuminate,
with Jamii, with Know Allegiance Nation. it’s a tool. This is what
it’s called. This is it’s impact. This is how you use it. This is how it’s
been used throughout history, and so much more. So just being
less ignorant to the world in general through the discussions we
have and the current events we talk about. It helps me further
educate myself and peers around me. I go to my little brother
and say well this is what this word means, and here’s your word
for the day and, so just getting in the practice of sharing the
knowledge on a more consistent basis, I feel has made an
impact.
LC: Do you feel that you have benefitted as much from the
classes as the paid performances?
ZK: Absolutely... At my school talent show, I knew, when I got on
the stage, people were waiting to hear me speak. And as I got
older I got quieter, I needed to learn humility. That was a big
lesson I needed to learn. I’m learning that being an introvert,
and needing to learn humility, there’s a middle ground. And the
middle ground is where I’m getting to now in this stage of life.
So my paid gigs have helped me to learn that it gave me the
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ZK: I’ve been doing poetry for a really long time. In elementary
school, I remember I was in it really heavy, around like fourth
grade. So it’s been a while. And I remember I went to Nsoroma
Institute, shout out to Nsoroma, it just closed down recently: an
African Center school, it was so small and community oriented,
you felt safe. So just being in that environment really young, I
started expressing my opinions and my ideas and everything I
had through poetry. I’m not sure how it happened, it may have
just started in class one day and branched off on it’s own. It
started there and as I got older, I became more of an introvert,
instead of exchanging more, which is weird. Cause I started not
doing performances or anything out there. And then the older
I got, the more closed in I got. Just recently, maybe in the past
year or so, I got back into poetry with a group called Illuminate
Literacy Entrepreneurs. And I’ve gotten back into the poetry
scene.
LC: You took a break this past year?
ZK: It was more so, like I still wrote. I might be sweeping the
floor, and a poem will just come to me. And I have to hurry and
run and get some paper. I have to hurry and just write it down
quickly. Just recently a friend of mine says, “You know, we have
poetry classes, you should come.” I started going to Illuminate’s
poetry classes at Jamii Tata’s house. And now I’ve been
intentionally doing poems.
LC: What impact your poerty? What about music? Does it
impact your poetry at all?
ZK: Anything that gives me feelings impacts my poetry. Whether
it’s something someone said to me who knows how long ago, or
whether it’s just emotion I was feeling, a movie I was watching,
current or not so current events in the world. And definitely
music. I’m not the best with rhythm ironically, so music is
something I really envy. I love musicians who can just move their
body and who can use their voice or their hands to make beats,
it’s really amazing to me. So just to listen to music and be moved
so much is just inspiring.
LC: What are some topics or some ideas that your poems deal
with. Or are there broad topics, or is it one day it’s this, one day
it’s that? If you think about the poems you’ve written this past
year, what do they center on?
ZK: So, at 17, soon to be 18, this year getting ready to be a
freshman in college, I’m at a transitional stage of adulthood, so
a lot of my poems, subconsciously--- oh! And not only that, just
being in Detroit, and seeing the movement in Detroit, whether it’s
food or poetry, or music , or whatever the case may be, I’ve went
to my poems and I’m looking and I’m like I’m a revolutionary poet
at this moment in time. So most of my poems have been about
empowerment, or revolution, and resurrection even, if you’d
like to use such a strong word. That’s what it is, and it’s never
intentional. Usually when I do my poems, it’s usually just what
I’m feeling, what I’m thinking. and the best way I feel like that
message could be put out there. Sometimes, it’s just what I’m
doing, or it’s just spur of the moment. I remember waking up one
day and—this is a famous poem that people seem to like, from
me—I was asleep, and I woke up and it was the day of one of our
Illuminate open mics, and I had a dream. And I had fallen asleep
next to my notepad, and my paper, and I just woke up and I
wrote based off what the dream made me feel. And it’s really
abstract, but it gets to some point at the end.
LC: Okay, well I’d like to read it. What’s the name of it?
ZK: “I woke up like this”. Because, that’s how I woke up.
LC: Can you give me a few line from that poem? Or would you
have to read it?
ZK: Okay.
He split eternity and forever at the heel of my
mother’s callous foot
Like two sides of the same quarter
25 to 50 cent he double his cent to make sense
Trying to make sense of a currency with no value
LC: So you mentioned you still go to the open mics they have
every fourth Saturday?
ZK: Yep. I’m the coordinator this year. So look out for that. I
promise it will be even better than the last time. I have all the
features and the openers lined up already.
LC: Are there any other ways that you have managed to make
your poetry more accessible to listeners and readers? What else
as well as open mic?
ZK: So believe it or not, I’m extremely shy. When I’m comfortable
around people, I get really outgoing. But I still get really nervous
talking in front of people, talking or spitting poetry... So that was
one of my goals to work on, to be more comfortable on stage.
Doing it for a purpose. What’s the point of doing the poems and
people can’t hear it if they don’t have a way to get to it... So,
other than the open mics, I’ve made an EP, an Extended Play. I
think it had about 5 poems, other than my most known poems.
So, and I had an EP release party. It was the pie potluck and
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ability to gain confidence. As far as people are paying to hear my
speak, and it’s not just like oh cool poetry, it’s like, I heard you at
an open mic and you were awesome so come to my event. Just
the fact that people can see me and love this, that’s awesome.
LC: Can you speak a little about your experiences in school?
ZK: Yeah, transferring from a chartered school that was ethnic
centered, that was small, that was family-oriented and then
going into Detroit Public School system. I’m not saying my school
isn’t loving or isn’t family-oriented, but it is still different. It was
a big change for me. So, it has helped me find myself again and
find my voice because for a very long time, I didn’t speak my full
mind. It is in my poetry. I had a complex that, I can say this, but
I cannot show you the face behind these words, and be okay
with that. So it’s been that and this year I am a senior so it is you
know college essay this and, this a billion page paper, this has
definitely helped my writing skills on a very basic level as well.
LC: So you talked about college and getting those essays out.
ZK: I have always been a good writer, but it has taken my writing
skills to another level. There are so many scholarships that
require essays and to make my paper stand out through my
speech is really important.
LC: All these experiences that you’ve had, I think that’s exciting.
What has been the best advice that has been given to you about
being a writer, or poet?
ZK: I’ve gotten a lot. I know it’s from Jamii. I’m paraphrasing here.
He’s always blunt but it’s always for a reason. So he’s like you
know people are going to see you, you’re going to be up there, so
go. Give it all you’ve got. There’s no point in being up there if you
can’t do your best. And then, listen. Once you do your best, and
if your best isn’t what you feel is enough, then do it again.
LC: Do you have a favorite poet?
ZK: So, I’m super indecisive. But my longstanding favorite poet
is, hmm. Saul Williams. Saul is beautiful, like I love his hair. He’s
not young, he’s been in the game for a minute. The diction, the
words he chooses, he is so powerful, his words, his voice, and the
meaning behind it. It’s the feeling he exudes, and the feeling he
brings forth is amazing. Even written, the way he writes, the way
he composes his poetry books, it all has meaning. So being so
purposeful with his words and understanding the importance and
seriousness of it, and the honesty in his words, and the fact that I
can relate to his message is why he’s one of my favorites.
LC: 10 or 20 years from now, what effect do you want your
written or spoken words to have on this community?
ZK: What effect would I want my words to have? The same effect
it has always had. That is one thing, I have a lot of poetry that
I don’t share because of more personal reasons. But the poetry
I do share is with intent, well so far, well I can’t speak for 10, 20
years, but so far I don’t want that intent to change, that intent
for a reason. I want my poetry to exemplify confidence and my
story, but not only my story, anybody who can relate to that
story. I want my poems and my words to be able to touch people.
That’s one of the things that makes a poem or any work of art
important or worthy of mentioning. It brought forth feeling or
thought. You have a lot of stuff that sounds cool, but I don’t feel
it. It’s cool to hear when I am like riding past wherever.
LC: Something that’s deeper...
ZK: People will feel my words, meaning behind the words, or the
meaning behind the words and take something from it that is
beneficial, whatever that may be, or whatever message that may
be, whether it was my intention or not...
LC: That’s good! What advice would you give young writers?
ZK: Just be comfortable. Don’t be afraid to compromise, and I
don’t mean to compromise your character or your ideals, nothing
like that or your ethics, nothing important. Know why you’re doing
it. Be comfortable where you are, but be comfortable advancing
and changing. To have a goal is to get somewhere different from
where you are currently. Be comfortable with then steps you
have to take to get there. It has become a very used term in the
No Allegiance Nation circle when talking about Jamii, when he
tells us to do things. So, maybe the first day I met him my mom
is bad at being punctual. I love his house and after class when
we were playing the question game. He asked me basically what
do you wanna get from the program? I was like I want to be able
to be comfortable in front of people. I want to be comfortable
delivering my message. It’s way less effective if people can’t feel
it. So, he has always been throwing me on the stage at any given
moment with no type of preparation and [imitating Jamii Tata],
“There is no host we need a host.” And I say, “I don’t even know
what the event is!” So, it gets me uncomfortable. but that is what
it takes to get to your goal, and I think those are the steps that
are the steps towards your goal.
learn more about Know Allegiance Nation and Illuminate Open
Mic on: knowallegiance.wordpress.com and follow events on FB
123

130

DARK OBJECTS
DISCOVERING ZIMBABWE AND SELF
EXPRESSION WITH JONNI UJAMA PAIGE
photography Jean Louis Farges
When Jonni is not drawing, designing accessories, or
prototyping industrial objects, she is thinking about how
her work might make positive impact in the city and
beyond. We caught up with her on a hot afternoon at the
Detroit African Bead Museum where she shared a little
about her work and recent journey to Zimbabwe...

ONE Mile: Tell us a little about your work.
JUP: I make graphite drawings, usually dark objects, where it’s
harder to pull light from them... I like to draw dark leather, brass,
three dimensional dark materials. It’s a reference to Detroit.
When people think of Detroit, they often think of one thing: the
poverty, the bad stuff that’s going on. But they don’t see the light
that’s in Detroit. I work to draw out that light.
OM: If someone from Europe said, “Oh, you live in Detroit, what
does it look like?” What would tell them about your city?
JUP: It’s beautiful! Detroit, to me, that’s what comes to the top
of my mind. You know, a lot of the aspects of Detroit are hidden.
So, if you’re coming to the city and you’re not familiar with it, a
lot of the beauty in Detroit is hidden. It’s hidden underneath the
abandoned buildings people see. They don’t know that actually
a lot of the buildings they think are abandoned, aren’t actually
abandoned. They may have galleries or art installations or other
functions. So, there is a lot of beauty that’s coming from the city.
OM: What is your vision, in terms of your work in art? Where do
you see it going?
JUP: I would like to work with refugees to develop some type
of prototype to benefit them..., I would like to help building
community people without a homeland. When you encounter
133

people who have had their homeland taken from them, or even
in Detroit, the huge homeless community... I would want to help
create opportunities people wouldn’t normally have, to work
for a group of people that are otherwise overlooked, and have
someone notice them, to know somebody wants to contribute to
their experience. We can grow off of each other together.
OM: How did you become sensitized to issues of displacement?
JUP: For the past month, I travelled to Zimbabwe with Chido
Johnson and students from the College for Creative Studies as a
part of an artist exchange between Detroit and Zimbabwe called
ZCCD. During my travels I spent a few days in Tongogara Refugee
Camp (TRC) which is about seven hours outside of Harare,
Zimbabwe near the Mozambique border. Alone, I traveled to
Mutare, a city near TRC, to meet up with my contact from
the refugee camp. While I was in the camp I met people from
Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. I went
into the camp to study refugee culture as a part of my research
to improve a prototype I designed for food storage but in return
I received much more. I heard horrifying stories of genocide and
survival. There were times I would walk off and break down crying
because of the conditions of the camp. The people there did not
even have what I believed to be “basic necessities” but as I found
out, those “necessities” were not needed to find true happiness.
To see young girls behind shacks laughing and playing games
brought tears to my eyes. My contact is raising a young child by
herself and has no family because she witnessed her parents
being slaughtered and thrown into a ditch at six years old.
Refugees like her live with those horrors haunting them unable
to sleep at night and yet still have a smile on their faces in the
morning. Refugees are powerful people. They are true soldiers
and they are the light amongst the darkness that is plaguing
Sub-Saharan Africa.
134

#DETROITAFRIKANS
verse Bryce Detroit
No holding back,
going full-throttle.
World stages,
looking like a model.
Model behaviors,
by building new models.
Bottle occasions;
bring out the models.
I’m out here; Mothership.
Light-years; I’m on ‘another’ trip.
They fabricating, I don’t “trip”,
We fabricated our own Ship!
I’m on my P’s and Q-tip.
My Tribe, bake a pie
take a slice, how we do “flips”.
Re-invest, make the stew thick.
We eating decent.
Family not eatin’,
causes dissent in your team;
keep your Team fit.
We ‘get green’ like vegans.
For protein, when we speak
in integrity we keep it.
Build a bond,
got us flexxin’ like a muscle while geekin’!
Tweak my levels til they crispy.
Used to crease khakis til they crispy.
When I pull up, count’em-
“BUCKETS”, means she did not ‘miss me’.
Never press her, complimentingtell
her, “let’s do something complimentary.”
When she’s ‘open’, then apply the ‘D’.
We up, and it’s our time you see.
The blind can see.
Not bout my People,
then they blind to me.
“monkey do, monkey see”.
King Kong, got nothing on Me.
King Kong, got nothing on Me.
They bang their chest loud;
I’m cutting-edge.
I’m ‘right now’,
and sounding like ‘the best out’.
I’m draped-Up and dressed-Down,
“to the nines”, got 10 proud.

DETROIT

FOUNDED IN 2012, THE DETROIT SOUND CONSERVANCY (DSC)
IS THE LEADER IN DETROIT MUSIC HISTORY ACTIVISM.
GET INVOLVED. DETROITSOUNDCONSERVANCY.ORG

• Red Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor •
saving soles since 1969
8348 Oakland Street, Detroit, MI 48211
313 662 9182
* follow us on facebook

Center for Community-Based Enterprise
C2BE provides technical assistance, education and collaboration to
develop cooperatives, community based enterprises and a mutual
support network—including a pool of shared capital—providing one of
the bedrocks upon which Detroit’s solidarity economy is being built.
www.c2be.org
Dr. Makeeba Ellington
THE ABSTRACT ORACLE
SAVE YOUR SOUL SUNDAYS | ABSTRACT SCENTS | NOMADIC GALLERY | SPIRITUAL READINGS
theabstractoracle.org

Update: Community Benefits Ordinance Signatures
Qualified for November Ballot and Immediately Challenged
Successful grassroots Community Benefits Movement in Detroit threatened by
anonymous legal challenge.
On Monday June 27, 2016, the City of Detroit Department of Elections certified the
Community benefits Agreement Coalition had collected enough signatures to place the
long-sought Community Benefits Ordinance on the ballot in November. As required by
law, a letter was sent to City Council thereby giving them 60 days to pass the ordinance as
written or refer it to the Election Commission for placement on the ballot in November.
Within 48 hours efforts to challenge the Community Benefit Ordinance were underway.
On Wednesday, CBA Coalition members learned of a legal challenge filed against the
ballot initiative. One of Detroit’s leading corporate law firms, working on behalf of an unidentified,
anonymous client, has challenged the validity of signatures collected.
CBA Coalition partners will be working today to confirm the details of this challenge and
will share more information as it becomes available.
This has been a tremendous effort and an important act of citizen-led democracy on
display. The CBA Coalition partners want to thank the members who have supported and
made this all-volunteer grassroots effort possible. Detroiters from every corner of the city
have stepped up to help move the CBA Ordinance to a vote by the people, and we will
continue the fight.
Please visit http://www.risetogetherdetroit.com/ for more information and updates on the
efforts to gain a Community Benefits Ordinance for all Detroiters.
“If we have to pay, we get a say!”
#RiseTogether #DetroitCBA

FOR THAT SOUL-DEEP FLAVOR
PARKS
OLD STYLE BAR-B-Q, INC.
7444 Beaubien Street, corner of Cluster
313.873.7444
“The DIFFERENCE is in the TASTE”
since 1964
D E T R O I T R E C O R D I N G S . C O M

August 28, 2016 | 11AM - 4PM | EASTERN MARKET, DETROIT
know allegiance nation
knowallegiance.wordpress.com

Ava’s World Famous Sweet Potato Cake & more!
tastes good. always fresh. exceptional quality.
sweet potato cakes * cupcakes * bundt cakes
to order contact
sweetpotatofamous@gmail.com or call 313-721-7057
The Detroit Mushroom Factory
is proud and grateful to be a part
of the North End community.

***
O.N.E. Mile is made possible through the generous support of
the Knight Arts Foundation, ArtPlace America, and Creative Many’s
Resonant Detroit Program.
Special thanks to SXSW Eco for recognizing the ONE Mile project with a
Place by Design Award, 2016.
The O.N.E. Mile Magazine is kindly underwritten by the Oakland Avenue
Urban Farm, Detroit Recordings, C2BE, Fellow Citizen, Akoaki,
and the Free Market of Detroit.
Many thanks to the countless, wonderful people who have participated in
O.N.E. Mile’s events, shared their stories and wisdom,
and contributed to the collective vibe.

oaklandurbanfarm.org