Paul Leroy Robeson: Mountains, Rivers and Deserts

Dudù Kouate

PERCUSSIONIST, MUSICIAN, AND CULTURAL MEDIATOR

Dudù Kouate  is a percussionist, musician and cultural mediator born in Senegal into a family of Griots, singers responsible for carrying forward the stories of their people, conservators of the African cultural and musical tradition. A multi-instrumentalist musician, he interprets tradition in a modern and multicultural key. He lives between Berlin and  Bergamo teaching African percussion; he holds seminars on the history of traditional African instruments trying to trace the territorial boundaries of populations; he meets schools with interventions to disseminate the African cultural tradition through stories of fairy tales set to music and transversal musical experiences. A versatile and eclectic musician, he conducts constant research on sound (sound of elements) for ever new experiences in the world of music. Kouate is a part of the Chicago Art Ensemble and performs regularly with a broad range of musicians internationally.

Dr. Shana L. Redmond

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERAURE, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EHNICITY & RACE (CSER), COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

B.A., Macalester College (2002); Ph.D., Yale University (2008). Shana L. Redmond (she|her) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER) at Columbia University. A writer and interdisciplinary scholar of race, culture, and power, she is the author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU Press, 2014) and Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020), which received a 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation with the special citation of the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism. Named a “Best Book of 2020” by National Public Radio (NPR), Everything Man also received the 2022 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music, 2021 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society, a 2020 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, and finalist and honorable mention designations for the Sterling Stuckey Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and the inaugural book prize of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History. In addition to being co-editor of and contributor to Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke UP, 2016), she is co-editor of the University of California Press series “Phono: Black Music and the Global Imagination” and has published chapters, articles, and essays in outlets including The Futures of Black Radicalism, Current Musicology, Black Camera, Black Music Research Journal, Race & Class, Women & Music, and Brick: A Literary Journal as well as NPR, the BBC, Boston Review, and Mother Jones. Her work with artists and labels includes the critical liner essay to the soundtrack vinyl release for Jordan Peele’s film Us (Waxwork Records, 2019) as well as the notes for String Quartets, Nos. 1-12 by Wadada Leo Smith (TUM Records, 2022) and Nina Simone’s You’ve Got to Learn (Verve, 2023). Redmond’s current project is a forensic listening to Black life before mourning. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, she is a 2023-2024 Guggenheim Fellow and Past-President of the American Studies Association.

Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’

ADJUNCT LECTURERE AT IUAV, STANFORD FLORENCE, AND NYU FLORENCE

Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’ holds a PhD in Social Science, which she earned from the University of Padua. Her doctoral dissertation, titled Perché non li porti a casa tua? Storie di accoglienza tra rifugiati e locali, delves into the intricate analysis of racism and anti-racism, seeking to unravel the complex connection between everyday practices and systems of domination. Currently, she is an adjunct lecturer at Iuav, Stanford Florence, and NYU Florence. Her extensive research contributions continue as a research associate at the University of Padua and as a resident curator at Centrale Fies for the Agitu Ideo Gudeta art residency grant. Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’ takes part in the anti-racist discourse in Italy, focusing her efforts on education and outreach.

Jason Thompson

JAZZ MUSICIAN

Jason Thompson is a third-generation jazz musician from Peekskill, NY. He began his professional saxophone career in 1996 when he gave up a scholarship to the University of Tennessee and started a six-year stint on the road with Knoxville-based, nine-member rock/R&B group Gran Torino. The group toured nationally, made several recordings, and enjoyed some college radio success before disbanding. Thompson then returned to the UTK to study jazz. He had the privilege of studying under many great professors including Jerry Coker and Donald Brown. He completed his undergraduate degree in 2004 and has been studying on his own and playing local gigs ever since. Thompson’s choice of the baritone saxophone as his main voice puts him in a smaller circle of the saxophone family, but it’s his bass saxophone playing that makes him truly unique. He has scored and performed sound based works with his brother Justin Randolph Thompson over the past 25 years.

Jemma Thompson

GRADUATE OF THE UNIVESITY OF FLORENCE IN DISCIPLINES OF ART, MUSIC, AND PERFORMING ARTS

Jemma Robin Thompson is a recent graduate of the University of Florence’s DAMS (Disciplines of Art, Music and Performing Arts) where she presented the Thesis Take Thy Stand: Studio su Othello di Shakespeare e Lettura Socio-Politico delle Performance di Paul Robeson nel Ventesimo Secolo, examining Othello and Paul Robeson’s socio-political engagement with the play. Thompson is social media manager for The Recovery Plan and Black History Month Florence, for Associazione Culturale Teatro delle Donne and for Le Dee Vulnerabili all socially oriented sites of cultural production. She interned in communications at Fondazione Teatro della Toscana in 2023.

Justin Randolph Thompson

ARTIST, CULTURAL FACILITATOR AND EDUCATOR

Justin Randolph Thompson is an artist, cultural facilitator and educator born in Peekskill, NY in ’79. Based in Italy since 1999, Thompson is Co-Founder and Director of Black History Month Florence and of The Recovery Plan. Thompson is a recipient of a 2022 Creative Capital Award, a 2020 Italian Council Research Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, a Visual Artist Grant from the Fundacion Marcelino Botin and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park amongst others. His work and performances have been exhibited widely in institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and The American Academy in Rome and are part of numerous collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museo MADRE. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and the arrogance of permanence by employing fleeting temporary communities as monuments and fostering projects that connect academic discourse, social activism and DIY networking strategies in annual and biennial gathering, sharing and gestures of collectivity. 

Bradly Dever Treadaway

FILMAKER, ARTIST, EDUCATOR, AND CURATOR

Bradly Dever Treadaway is a Brooklyn based filmmaker, artist, educator and curator utilizing lens-based image making, moving images, sound, and performance to comment on the breakdown and reconstruction of intergenerational communication and broken in the face of natural disaster, technological evolution, societal shifts and the continuance of interpersonal detachment occurring within American communities. His work is visualized through archival interventions, recontextualizing the archive to serve as form, medium, subject matter and concept, elevating domestic ephemera and rituals while questioning material significance within the photographic medium. Treadaway creates memorials, monuments and mnemonic devices to illustrate ancestral collisions with contemporary responses. 

His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, The International Center of Photography, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Agora Gallery in Chelsea, NY, The Mobile Museum of Art, The Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, Italy, and the Lishui Museum of Photography in China. His film/video work has been screened at the New Orleans Film Festival, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Centre for Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia, Union Docs, Anthology Film Archives, the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, the Nashville Film Festival, the Coney Island Film Festival, and at the Brooklyn Arts Council’s Scene: Brooklyn. Treadaway is the founder and curator of “Archival Interventions”, a series of exhibitions and screenings that focus on the archive in contemporary artwork