momma’s wishes video
Directed: @brianamichellesmith
DP: @jordanamcnear
Additional direction: @admdav
Edit: @brianamichellesmith
Color: @killestt
Title card: @fka.cris
Thank you to my beautiful family for their generosity, overwhelming presence in participation & for all their help in hosting our little team.
Thank you to @jordanamcnear & @admdav for bringing this together short notice and for your thoroughness and presence in the process around it. Thank you @killestt & @fka.cris for believing in it!
Blessed to have this piece exist as an archive, a manifestation of efforts towards unraveling lineage and stewarding preservation.
I wrote this song one morning reflecting on the cost of my own ambition, my homesickness, and devotion to my dreams. Thankful for music as a container and vessel for truth. Since that day, I have gone into a deep meditation of where wealth really lies and where our inherent worth and freedom exist beyond capitalism. It exists in creativity, connection, education, preservation, and community. A song I wrote in a moment of defeat has turned into such portal for possibility.
Home is always with me and I am so rich because of my family’s unyielding support, especially my momma’s 🫶🏾 It is a privilege.
YT link in bio :)
🧠💘reading list
Books & titles I’ve collected over the past few years, part of an ongoing study of music, diaspora, and the systems that shape them
1. The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power by Jared A. Ball
2. The Political Calypso by Louis Regis
3. Sound Within Sound by Kate Molleson
4. The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
5. Inward Yearnings by Colin A. Palmer
6. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
7. Coolie Woman by Gaiutra Bahadur
8. Why Solange Matters by Stephanie Phillips
9. Calypso Calaloo by Donald R. Hill
10. Just Another Nigger by Field Marshal Don Cox
11. Showing Off In America by John Brooks
12. African American Visual Artists, a bibliography by Daniel J. Frye
13. String Music of Black Composers, a bibliography by Aaron Horne
14. The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia
