NEW ORLEANS – Among the many points of connection for the more than 1.2 billion people worldwide who constitute the African diaspora, New Orleans stands out as center where enslaved peoples shared music, art, food and other aspects of their cultures.
Fittingly, the city will again host the African Diaspora Consortium’s annual “Conversation and Concert,” which will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday evening, Aug. 12, at New Orleans’ Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, located in the city’s Ninth Ward. And again, the event will feature two native sons of Louisiana who have made a global impact in illuminating the diaspora by connecting education and the arts.
The NEA Jazz Master Award-winning trombonist, composer, producer and educator Delfeayo Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra will take the stage, in the venue named for his father, for a “jazz concert” following a conversation about the “The Intersection of History, Education and the Arts,” in a unique combination of swinging, stomping, syncopated fun and education.
Marsalis, part of the legendary New Orleans jazz family, serves as ADC’s Global Artistic Music Director, and has emerged as a central figure in connecting African-descended artists worldwide and educating the public about the historic traditions that are shaping their efforts. He co-directs a semester-long online experience offered by ADC that convenes students and emerging artists from four diaspora countries; leads both the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, which focuses on maintaining important New Orleans traditions, and the Uptown Music Theatre, which empowers youth through musical theatre training; and during the past two years, has publicly fought to protect Congo Square and other “sacred ground” in New Orleans. “My mother made us aware of the history and the struggle. She urged us to never take for granted what our ancestors accomplished and the price they paid for us to be here,” Marsalis says. “It’s a fundamentally American story, and it’s best told through jazz, because jazz truly represents democracy.”
Moderating the discussion will be Jackson, a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, musician and producer who served as a panel judge on American Idol and hosted the radio program Randy Jackson’s Hit List. “I love my state of Louisiana,” said the Baton Rouge native who moderated the ADC’s inaugural Conversation and Concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City in 2018, to rave reviews. “And I’m so proud of New Orleans. So when I find efforts like the work to educate people about the African diaspora, I’m all about helping, because they’re bringing those traditions to the next generation.”
Marsalis and Jackson will be introduced to the audience by The Honorable Jason Wynne Hughes, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the 100th District, and ADC’s Senior Vice President for Global Partnerships.
The African Diaspora Consortium (ADC) educates the world about the resilience among diaspora populations, their contributions to cultures around the globe, and the connections they share across time and distance. “The diaspora is a story so central to an understanding of history, cultures, and human experiences that it just has to be examined and told,” says ADC Founder and President Kassie Freeman, an internationally acclaimed scholar on the diaspora and comparative/international issues in higher education. “Our efforts are guided by the African proverb that ‘until the lion learns to speak, the tales of the hunt will always favor the hunter.”
Also on August 12th, prior to the Conversation and Concert, ADC and the College Board will co-host their first-ever face-to-face teacher workshops, at which 100 educators from around the world will meet first with American culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, whose book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America became a four-part Netflix series; and then with acclaimed Moroccan hotelier Meryanne Loum-Martin, author of the category best-seller Inside Marrakesh: Enchanting Homes and Gardens, now in its fourth reprint.
The workshops, which will be held at New Orleans’ historic Gallier Hall in the city’s Central Business District, are an extension of an Advanced Placement Seminar with the first African Diaspora content, which ADC developed with Teachers College, Columbia University. Made available to all schools nationwide in 2020, the seminar gained national media attention. The course is the first devoted exclusively to a part of global history obscured by the Euro-centric worldview of most textbooks, and the College Board’s first AP course with an Africa topic.
Located in Lafayette Square, Gallier Hall, a three-story marble structure with fluted Ionic columns is the former New Orleans city hall and a nationally significant example of Greek Revival architecture. Built 1845–1853, it continues to be reserved for Mardi Gras royalty, and parades on the St. Charles route pause in front of them. On Mardi Gras Day, the city’s mayor toasts the kings of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club and Rex Parade here.
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