QUEER Hip Hop Cypher

Join us for an exploration of the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop through discussion, film, performance, and food. The event includes a Black healing portal curated by Astraea award-winning duo Krudxs Cubensi, a session with Soul Fire Farm on BIPOC vegan foodways and their connection to community-centered activism, and a panel discussion centering on the queer underground hip hop scene led by Hip Hop Heresies author and scholar Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls.

CLAGS (The Center for LGBTQ Studies) award-winning hip hop musician and dharma teacher Shanté Paradigm Smalls leads an enlightening roundtable discussion focusing on the ways that hip hop culture in film, visual art, and music in New York City from the 1970s to today offers queer articulations of race, gender, and sexuality, and how this might affect the future of hip hop. Panelists include Creative Capital grant-winner and Priestess of Twerk Nia Witherspoon,  Afro-Latina MC, artist, and activist Ms.Boogie; Founding Co-Editor of Vibe Magazine Scott Poulson-Bryant; and educator, poet, youth advocate, and hip hop artist tim’m west.

Krudxs Cubensi headlines Black Healing Portal II / Beyond Time, a queer Afro-Cuban hip hop cypher featuring dance, drumming, projections, procession, and community offerings that links Afro-Yoruba spiritual practices to modern rapping and explores race, religion, gender, class, and sexuality. This immersive session features Afro-Cuban dancer Yesenia Selier and batá drummers, MC and Executive Director of the Nuyorican Poets Café Caridad “La Bruja” De La Luz, and the music and art of Krudxs Cubensi. Group members Odaymar Cuesta and Oli Prendes adhere to vegan lifestyles and politics, and the event includes a riveting keynote address delivered by Soul Fire Farm’s Co-Founder and Farm Manager Leah Penniman that underscores the importance of BIPOC food sovereignty, food justice, and ancestral connection between food and land.

Presented in collaboration with the BLACK STUDIES COLLABORATORY AT UC BERKELEY.

Queer Hip Hop Cypher Schedule

3:00pm–4:00pm: Celebration of BIPOC Vegan Foodways
Second Floor Hallway

4:00pm–5:15pm: Hip Hop Heresies Roundtable
Veterans Room
This event will be live streamed on the Armory’s YouTube channel.

5:15pm–5:30pm: Processsion
First Floor Hallway

5:30pm–7:00pm: Black Healing Portal II / Beyond Time
Board of Officers Room