Dixon Place presents a World Premiere Event
ARTIFICIAL AFRIKA
A Tale of Lost Cities
February 10 – 25 at 7:30pm
Created & Performed by VERNON REID
In collaboration with AKIM FUNK BUDDHA & DJ LEON LAMONT
"One of the most unique and innovative performances I've ever seen" --Brian Weidy, Feast of Music
Tickets: $15 (advance), $18 / $12 stu/sen or TDF (door)
Grammy Award-winner and Living Colour founder, Vernon Reid, merges music, hip hop, film and visual art in a journey through the Dark Continent. This extraordinary new work contrasts the idea of Africa—a continent with a multiplicity of cultures, languages and peoples—with Afrika: a country of the mind, a notional landscape encompassing everything from Aunt Jemima to Tarzan, filled with our fear and desire and hope and despair.
NEWS/VIDEOS
Listen to Vernon and his collaborator, Akim Funk Buddha, interviewed this February 3rd on WNYC's Soundcheck and read more about it in The Village Voice, Beyond Race Magazine and in the latest Lo Down
VERNON REID is best known for leading Living Colour. Early versions of the group formed in NYC in 1983, and Reid led the group for about another decade. Among the highlights: a double platinum-selling debut album, Vivid, released in 1988; its gold-certified successor, Time's Up, released 1990; two consecutive Grammy Awards in the category of Best Hard Rock Performance; opening for the Rolling Stones' 1989 Steel Wheels tour; and appearing on the first Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 1991; Collideøscope released in October 2003 on Sanctuary Records and The Chair in the Doorway in September 2009.
In addition to his work with Living Colour, Reid has been engaged in a number of other projects. He released Mistaken Identity, his first solo album in 1996 and has collaborated with the choreographers Bill T. Jones on Still/Here and Donald Byrd on Jazztrain. He performed Party 'Til The End of Time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) with The Roots, an end of the millennium tribute featuring the music of Prince's album 1999.
ARTIFICIAL AFRIKA: A Tale of Lost Cities is commissioned and presented by Dixon Place with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs.
Photo by Bill Bernstein.
