Tag: damani harrison

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Arts Culture

PICK: 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase

Stage to screen: For the second year in a row, the Virginia Film Festival is screening works by local hip-hop video directors and rappers during the 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase. Curated by Cullen “Fellowman” Wade, who compiles a wide variety of styles within the genre, the showcase connects some of the most prolific creative work in the community to a broader audience. The lineup of eight music videos includes King Gemini’s “Play Me,” directed by Ty Cooper; J-Wright ft. Scottii’s “Memories,” directed by Kidd Nick; and Damani Harrison’s “One For George,” directed by Harrison and Eric Hurt. A discussion with filmmakers follows the screenings. Virtual access pass required.

Through 10/25, $8-65, content becomes available October 21 at 10am. virginiafilmfestival.org.

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Arts Culture

Done talking: Damani Harrison drops ‘One for George,’ a three-part collaboration with local artists

Damani Harrison on the set of the "One for George" video shoot. Image: Jason Lappa

Damani Harrison is done talking.

The activist, musician, and all-around C’ville art community anchor recently orchestrated the release of an ambitious three-part creative project he calls “One for George,” and he wants the work—a hip-hop song, music video, and portrait series—to speak for itself.

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“Woke up this morning to a post / Another black soul getting choked / The whole damn nation on the ropes / Please tell me how the hell can I cope,” Harrison raps in the song’s opening lines.

Why is Harrison done talking? According to his “One for George” collaborators, whom he asked to speak about the project on his behalf, he’s more interested in action. According to his collaborators, he’s so “busy fighting racism on all levels,” he’s tired of talking.

“One for George,” at any rate, speaks volumes. Before Harrison went media-silent, he told it like this: Producer Lekema Bullock shared an instrumental track he wrote in the wake of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis. The track opens to a warbling melody overlain with Floyd’s final cries—“Please… I can’t breathe”—before giving way to a methodical snare and haunting vocals handpicked by Bullock to “represent my pain and how I was feeling.”

“I was devastated. It was senseless,” Bullock says. “I normally don’t turn to my music when I’m upset. But I wanted to honor George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and all the senseless murders that have happened to date.”

The act of police brutality against Floyd, which sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the nation and around the world, had also inspired Harrison. “It only took about 20 seconds of listening to the song before words started gathering in my head,” he said in a social media post shortly after the “One for George” release. The song’s lyrics were on paper three hours later, declaring “we won’t be silenced no more,” and recorded about 48 hours after that.

Harrison’s longtime collaborator Mike Moxham stepped in to record and mix the track.

“I would never want to speak for him, but I got the idea he felt like it would be easier to get the emotional content down if he wasn’t recording it himself,” Moxham said. “When you try to convey heavy emotional content, the last thing you want to do is worry about technicalities.”

As Moxham went to work mixing the final recording, layering a backup vocal with heavy distortion over the original to highlight the angst-ridden rhymes, Harrison brought in others to carry out his vision. Video producer Eric Hurt and photographers Jason Lappa and Ézé Amos joined the team. Seven days after Harrison’s lyrical inspiration grew from Bullock’s beat, the “One for George” team was on set shooting a music video.

The video focuses on Harrison, performing in stark black and white against a fire and smoke-filled backdrop. Interspersed with the performance are images of hate—enslaved people and police brutality, but also homophobia and broad xenophobia—and local activists standing with Harrison and the equality movement writ large.

“We didn’t want to go too broad,” Hurt says. “It’s mainly about the African American struggle, but Damani wanted to make sure it wasn’t just that.”

The music video shoot, which according to those on set took on a peaceful protest, almost festival-like atmosphere, went down one week after Harrison had heard Bullock’s beat. Lappa sat the activists featured in the video for still photo portraits.

“Still images have an impact. It’s a persistent view,” he says. “There’s something in those photographs that is real, visceral. This subject is real and visceral.”

One week after the video shoot, the crew had released the entire project, with the photo series posted to an Instagram account, @oneforgeorge.

“Everyone just came together. We all knew this was bigger than us,” Harrison said on Instagram at the time. “This wasn’t easy for any of us. It wasn’t easy to relive trauma. It wasn’t easy to confront demons. But everything told us to go forward. We have to go forward.”

Where does the “One for George” project go from here? Moxham says the group hopes for organic exposure for the art series. Bullock hopes social media influencers might take up the mantle and help push the message: Folks all around the country, including Charlottesville, stand with those who’ve been killed. They are hurting along with all those families.

To a person, the “One for George” crew says they’re hoping for real, sustained change in the way this country confronts racism. Some signs indicate they’re not alone. A survey by online research firm Civiqs shows countrywide support for the Black Lives Matter movement has reached as high as 53 percent in the months since Floyd’s murder. The number had hovered around 42 percent for the two years prior, up from below 40 percent at the time of C’ville’s own civil rights horror, the white supremecist-driven Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Will support continue to grow? The way Bullock puts it, it has to. The Black Lives Matter movement, he says, is really about one simple thing: “Stop killing us,” he says. “Black Lives Matter at its core literally means, ‘our lives have value.’ That’s it. Our lives have value. Stop killing us.”

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Arts

Listen up: C-ville’s hip-hop scene is on the rise

Louis Hampton and Damani Harrison of The Beetnix perform at the Nine Pillars Cultural Hip-hop Fest. Photo by Ron Paris

It’s a gray Sunday evening, 50-something degrees and drizzling when The Beetnix step onto the outdoor stage at IX Art Park. It’s been raining all day, but a crowd of more than 100 has gathered on the graffiti-painted concrete ground in front of the stage. Many of them hold their phones and tablets in the air, precipitation be damned, ready to capture Charlottesville’s most legendary hip-hop duo on video.

“Come closer,” Damani “Glitch One” Harrison says to the crowd as he picks up a mic. With his arms stretched out wide, Louis “Waterloo” Hampton beckons for everyone to move in closer.

For Harrison, 39, hip-hop has been part of his life since he was a kid. A military brat who grew up in Germany and Philadelphia, he remembers exactly where he was when the music caught him.

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News

Bellamy calls on local black males

Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy hosted a July 26 black male town hall summit to present a three-tiered plan of action about how African-American males can create change. Photo by Eze Amos

“I’m not a nigger, I’m not a nigga, I’m a king,” Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy said at a July 26 black male town hall summit he initiated on behalf of the local African-American population. “When I see all of you, I see kings.”

Following the homicide of 23-year-old Denzel Morton, a black man who was shot to death in a parking lot on Earhart Street July 17, Bellamy called for the “brothers”—local men of color—to band together in an effort to positively influence younger generations. And Bellamy has a three-tiered plan to do so.

“How many of you are willing to work with some brothers who may not be going down the right path?” he asked a room of almost 60 African-American men who gathered on behalf of the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement, 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, the Black Professional Network of Charlottesville and local hip-hop radio station 101.3 Jamz. “We value [young people],” Bellamy said. “We will not give up on them.”

One tier of his plan includes a twice-monthly “circle of brotherhood,” in which a group of men would meet with black males ages 17 to 29 for an open discussion and to teach the younger men a set of useful skills. He also asked the men at the meeting to sign up to greet kids outside their schools on the first day of class this month.

But potentially, the most discussed tier of Bellamy’s proposed plan is improving political visibility within the city and county for African-Americans. Asking those present at the meeting to attend and speak on their own behalf at City Council, Board of Supervisors and School Board meetings each week, Bellamy said, “When we talk about changing policy and representation, if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

Bellamy is the sixth black person to serve on City Council, and on the Albemarle School Board, Graham Paige is the third. An African-American hasn’t served on the county’s Board of Supervisors for more than 10 years.

Damani Harrison, who runs 101.3 Jamz, noted at the meeting that while white families talk public policy at the dinner table, basketball is a topic more likely to surface in barbershop banter.

A racial minority’s overall disinterest in politics can be attributed to the lack of education on how the system works, says Derek Perkins, a 29-year-old Charlottesville resident from Brooklyn, who attended the meeting.

“A lot of our brothers and sisters aren’t properly prepared to understand exactly what the political system is in itself,” says Perkins who moved to town five years ago and met Bellamy while coaching third-grade basketball for the Charlottesville Dream. “They just assume it’s a bunch of people who are trying to rule over us and don’t necessarily understand their jobs and duties,” he continues. “So they don’t vote.”

Perkins’ interest in politics comes from the grassroots organizations he worked with in New York.

“It drew me more into wanting to create a change and understanding the importance of a vote and the importance of holding [elected officials] accountable,” he says. “Especially because we’re paying them with our tax dollars, so we must hold them accountable for completing their jobs to the standards we want to hold them to.”

At 29, Perkins is in the age group Bellamy’s circle of brotherhood intends to reach.

“I know there’s a lot of people out there that’s close to my age, still walking that thin line,” Perkins says, “and realizing that our time is running out.”

Local attorney Jeff Fogel—who is known for his current lawsuit against an Albemarle police officer who has allegedly targeted black people and his work in asking city police to release stop and frisk records—said at the meeting that solely showing up to council meetings isn’t enough.

“City Council has not been responsive,” he says, referring to a presentation to council in which he showed that officers are twice as likely to find something on a white person than a black person, yet 70 percent of all stops made are of African-Americans.

“That’s just one issue,” said the vice-mayor, to which a man in the crowd could be heard saying, “That’s an issue enough for me.”