LitFest 2024: Music & Activism with Benjamin Barson

Freedom of creative expression comes in many different forms. In his book Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons, musician and activist Benjamin Barson explores one such form of expression: jazz music. The book dives into the birth of jazz, and unearths vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to illuminate the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work presents a “music history from below,” following musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes, placing emphasis on the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas, and tracing the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.

This program will bring Ben’s research to life, as he takes the stage with a group of Pittsburgh and New York based musicians to reimagine the music discussed in the book and its resonance in our current moment. The program will be moderated by Justin Laing.

You can purchase your own copy of Ben’s book, Brassroots Democracy, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

Featured Musicians:

Benjamin Barson: baritone sax, bass clarinet

Alex Zander Redd: alto sax 

Gizelxanath Rodriguez: guitar, vocals 

John Bagnato: guitar, banjo 

Chris Fazio: piano 

Eli Namay: bass 

Hugo Cruz: percussion 

Ayana Sade: Vocals

Chantal Joseph: Vocals

Luana Reis: Poetry

About the Arist:

Benjamin Barson is a saxophonist, historian, radical educator, and organizer. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. He received his PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and recently completed a Fulbright Garcia-Robles postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Mexicali, Mexico and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s Africana Studies & Research Center. Barson has performed with luminaries including Fred Ho, Arturo O’Farrill, Craig Harris, and Geri Allen, and at a wide range of national and international venues, including the Kennedy Center, the Guggenheim Museum, CECUT in Tijuana, and the Mesopotamian Water Forum – an event organized by ecological activists in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan. He is the winner of the 2018 Johnny Mandel Prize from ASCAP for his composition “Insurrealista,” and was a member with the Afro Yaqui Music Collective when the group was named Pittsburgh’s “Best Jazz Band” by the readers of the Pittsburgh City Paper in 2018. Barson is also an activist, and was a cultural organizer in the campaign to free political prisoner and Black power activist Russell Maroon Shoatz. He currently works closely with a group inspired by Maroon’s legacy named Ecosocialist Horizons.

About the Moderator:

Justin Laing is the thankful son of Susan and Clarence Laing, professional class people of English settler colonial and African Caribbean histories, blessed husband of Ebony Ross, and proud father of Kufere, Etana, and Adeyemi Laing. Originally from Silver Spring, MD, Justin has made Pittsburgh, PA, his home for the last 30+ years, applying his University of Pittsburgh Black Studies and CMU public management degrees. Justin’s work began as part of a Black cultural nationalist collective, the Village 4 an Afrikan Cultural Center, in the form of classes and shows. This experience, which included time as an Allegheny County Probation Officer and a Hill House youth case manager, was followed by an equal length of time as a program officer in The Heinz Endowments Arts & Culture program, developing and implementing grantmaking strategies in arts education and racial equity with small and mid sized arts organizations. During this time, he worked with his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers to start the annual Black Studies Saturday School for young people, the Omega Dr. Carter Woodson Academy, and with a group of culture workers, began the planning and implementation group, “Arts in the Hill district” “ArtsinHD.” In 2017, Justin formed Hillombo, an LLC that consults with organizations on antiracist and anti-capitalist strategy, evaluation, analysis, and experimentation. Today, Justin is part of a newly formed collective, the Black Socialist Formation, committed to synthesizing socialist, nationalist, Black Feminist, and Pan-Afrikanist thought and practice and being loudly, proudly, and visibly socialist in Allegheny County.