INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

It was a long time coming, but the 2022 International Conference on James Baldwin took place in Nice and Saint-Paul de Vence June 16th through 18th. I was excited to be able to participate as a panelist in the session titled "James Baldwin and the Internal Closet" with co-panelist Diane Harriford of Vassar College. Nearly 200 attendees came from all over the globe to sit in on panels, and to view items that had belonged to Baldwin that were on display. As Saint-Paul de Vence was Baldwin's adopted home, being in the medieval village took on an air of pilgrimage as the conference director Shannon Cain took us on a walking tour of the area where Baldwin lived for 17 years, to the spot where his house stood. Shannon lead a one-woman campaign to keep Baldwin's house from being demolished when investors wanted to build on the property. Unfortunately, she lost that battle, but her efforts to keep Baldwin's legacy alive, in spite of objections from Baldwin's family, c...

  Pianist/author Nina Kennedy and sociology professor Diane Harriford will share the stage in a discussion titled "James Baldwin and the Internal Closet" at the 2022 International Conference on James Baldwin in Nice, France June 18th. During this discussion, a clip from Renée   Baker's opera BALDWIN CHRONICLES: The Art of Being Black  will be screened. Originally scheduled to take place in 2020, the Baldwin Conference was planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James Baldwin's arrival in the South of France. The conference was postponed twice because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, but is finally happening June 16-18 at the Centre Universitaire Mediterranean. Nina Kennedy* Pianist and conductor Nina Kennedy is the author of  Practicing for Love: A Memoir  and  Practice What You Preach . Her portion of the discussion will focus on Baldwin's closetedness in his public life, and his very public "friendships" with Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and Nina Simo...

  Last night I happened to walk into Henrietta Hudson in Manhattan for a well-deserved cocktail, and found a fundraiser in progress benefitting the onePULSE Foundation. As we all remember, the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was the scene of a horrific massacre in 2016 in which 49 people were murdered and 53 more were wounded. The majority of the victims were LBGTQ, and as it was Latin Night, most were Latino and Latina. The club's owner, Barbara Poma, has begun a campaign to erect a memorial and museum on the site of the nightclub.  Barbara Poma "No one can dance there anymore," said Poma to the crowd at Henrietta's, as she shared the story of being invited to the White House to witness President Biden's signing of a bill naming the location of the massacre as a national memorial. Here is the  Statement by President Joe Biden on the 5th Anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting . You can contribute by texting Hudson to 50155, or by scanning the QR code abo...

On Saturday March 19th, Chadra Pittman, founder and executive director of The Sankofa Projects , and Michelle Brown, founder and host of the weekly podcast Collections by Michelle Brown , presented a Zoom Event called "A Conversation with World Renowned Pianist, Filmmaker and Conductor NINA KENNEDY as she launches her 2nd book and talks about the women who shaped her life." People from all over the country joined the Zoom meeting, during which Nina read from her two books Practicing for Love  and Practice What You Preach . After a screening of the video of Nina's performance of Schumann's "Widmung,"  the discussion opened with an homage to Ella Sheppard, matriarch of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers founded in 1871. The Singers toured to raise money for the fledgling Fisk Free Colored School, known today as Fisk University. Nina's parents met when they were students at Fisk, and she stated that she probably would not be here today had it not been for Fi...

  Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski The other night I was watching Amanpour and Company , and happened to see the Polish ambassador to the United States being interviewed. Behind him were the Polish and European Union flags prominently placed, and the keyboard of a Steinway grand piano. It reminded me that one of Poland's greatest heroes was pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin. Frédéric  Chopin in 1849 During the interview, Christiane Amanpour repeatedly asked the ambassador what he thought about the United States' refusal to assist the Ukrainians by replacing Polish war planes sent to Ukraine with American planes, and flying them from NATO air space. The ambassador was as diplomatic as he could be, without directly accusing the United States of contributing to the death toll in Ukraine. Looking at history, Poland had rebelled against Russia in the November Uprising of 1830-31. Chopin was out of the country when the rebellion began, and wrote in his lett...

James Baldwin As we are nearing the end of Black History Month, I find myself reading and listening to the words of James Baldwin. He became one of the most articulate voices of the Civil Rights Movement, yet it is hard to find any description or discussion - in his own words - of his life as a gay man. One could guess that he describes some of his gay life in the novel Giovanni's Room , which can easily be dismissed as a work of fiction. We know that he met the man who became the love of his life, Lucien Happersberger, in Paris in 1949, when Lucien was 17 and James was 25. The fact that Lucien was white could have served as proof that, at least in Baldwin's mind, black men and white men could love each other. But unfortunately, Baldwin chose to remain in the closet, using references to "... my wife" and "... my woman, my children..." in his interviews. The truth is, the most significant woman in his life was his mother, and the children he referred to were ...

  Nina and Matthew Kennedy On February 24th, the Church of the Holy Spirit of Lake Forest, Illinois presented a panel discussion on "The History and Evolution of the Negro Spiritual." Panelists included former Fisk Jubilee Singers Delano O'Banion, George Cooper, Robert Denson, and E.J. Murray. Nina Kennedy was the only non-Jubilee Singer panelist, as her father served as director of the group from 1957 to 1986. The Reverend Mother Jihan Murray-Smith, Associate Rector at the Church of the Holy Spirit, - and also a former Fisk Jubilee Singer - served as moderator. The conversation included much history of the Negro Spiritual starting with its origins on American plantations during slavery, and the importation of African melodies during the Middle Passage. Several recordings were heard including those of Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. Delano O'Banion While the famous portrait of the Fisk Jubilee Singers commissioned by Queen Victoria was on the screen, Nina Kennedy sh...