“A Night of Poetry & Black Music” – Book Release Party & Reading by Vievee Francis, with music by Steven Johnson

Live Music, Barbecue, Film Screenings, Book Reading, Signing, and Dance Party Celebration

Acclaimed poet Vievee Francis brings a “Night of Poetry & Black Music” and book release reading from her new work, The Shared World to JAM.  Her latest collection imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black woman, delving into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother—with or without child. Books will be sold on site by Still North Books & Bar with BBQ from Wicked Awesome BBQ.

Live Blues music will be headlined by visiting artist Steven Johnson, CEO of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation and grandson of blues legend Robert Johnson, of Crystal Springs, MS with band Kit Creeger, Doc Winslow, Steve Drebber, David Westphalen, and Jakob Breitbach.  A sneak peek of documentary-film-in-progress, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home,” directed by Samantha Davidson Green with partial funding from Mississippi Humanities Council, will also be shown. Debunking the myth of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent, the film illuminates a missing chapter Robert Johnson’s life when he returned home to Copiah Co. Mississippi at a critical point in his musical development, fathered a child, and left a living legacy in the Johnson grandchildren who are working to inspire future generations through the elevation of blues heritage and uniting of sacred and secular music in the African American tradition.

The night will close out with a dance party with JAM’s own inimitable DJ GenderEnder!

Supported in part by

FREE and open to the public but RSVP required.  (Donations gratefully accepted at the door.)