Kamau Daáood’s Archives: Documenting Black Los Angeles
For well over five decades, Kamau Daáood’s work as a community artist, performer, educator, and activist, has strived to nurture the community he comes from through the arts. The project works on comprehensively organizing and cataloging his archives, materials he has been collecting throughout his life, which reflect the Black artistic communities he has been part of. Through a community archive-building approach, this project documents Black Los Angeles arts, culture, and activism from the mid-1960s to the present day.
Project Participant Bios
Robin D.G. Kelley is a distinguished expert on African-American history and culture. He is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History here at UCLA. He is the author of influential books, which include Theolonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002), just to name a few. Robin has spent his career exploring American and African American history; social movements in the United States, the African Diaspora, and Africa; and cultural movements including jazz, hip-hop, and visual art.
Samuel Lamontagne is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and the Department of History at UCLA. His research focuses on hip hop and electronic dance music in Los Angeles, and in the African diaspora more generally. He has published articles in various national and international publications. He’s the former co-editor-in-chief of the journal Ethnomusicology Review, and founder of the section ‘France through Race: Beyond Colorblindness’ of Ufahamu: An African Studies Journal. Alongside H. Samy Alim and Tabia Shawel, he co-leads the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative. Beyond his academic work, he’s been involved in L.A. and Paris musical communities for the past decade.
