Shani Jamila

About Alexis

SHANI JAMILA | SHANIJAMILA.COM| @SHANIJAMILA

Tell us about the music you chose to build your playlist and why you picked these songs. *

This particular playlist is all about what it feels like to be at home, which is one of the major themes I explore in my work. I live in Brooklyn, so these songs give me the feeling of summers in NYC and sun splattered dance parties in the park. As we all come cautiously out of our quarantine cocoons and figure out how to be in the world with each other again, I’m looking forward to the joy and community music like this inspires.

i’ve been spending a lot of time with the very first track (We Insist! Freedom Now Suite), after a conversation I had on my podcast, Lineage. In the first episode of the new season, with the poet Sonia Sanchez, she talks about how the music that came from her community of creatives in 1960s New York informed the development of her own aesthetic and other writers of that era. Ever since then I’ve been revisiting Max and Abby, it’s been one of the many gifts of that beautiful exchange. 

The Interview

Does the music you listen to inspire any of your work?

Absolutely. I’m often listening to fellow artists as I paint, as I cook, as I travel, as I live. I pull from all different kinds of art to inform what I’m making, especially books and music, as words and sounds are a core part of my practice. 

I believe the best artists of any genre are the ones who can transport you, who can make you feel something so deeply of another time in the past or make you dream about the future. In my TED Talk I refer to that as “journey work.” It’s what I strive to do in my own practice, and I like to surround myself in the sounds of musicians and artists who are doing the same. 

Who is your top artist and why?

I have a set of DJs who curate music in a way that I really love. DJ Monday Blue, Rich Medina, Spinna, JahSonic, Stylus, Natasha Diggs, Reborn, D Nice, and any of J.Period’s Live Mixtapes with special love for the ones he did with Lauryn and also the ATLiens edition. In a similar vein, I love seeing The Roots do their thing live— I love the band’s command of music from so many genres and eras and Black Thought’s lyrical complexity.

I also have a very soft spot in my heart for the classics… literally anything folk like Luther, Aretha, Whitney, Prince, or Stevie ever touched. For me it’s about the mastery of artists who have created pieces that transcend time and have healed people across generations.

Tell us about your process and how you tune in when you are ready to begin creating.

I like to immerse myself in beauty. Every gaze around my workspace is filled with things that make me smile. In addition to the sounds— which could be music or interviews,  I like to listen to both as I work— the walls are painted in colors I love, there are always fresh flowers, living plants, scented candles, double lined bookshelves, travel mementos, family heirlooms and genealogical records. I want to feel myself in the spaces I work and then put myself into the pieces I make. 

Tell us more about your practice. What inspires your work and how does your playlist inspire you?

I make work in response to centuries of family records meticulously researched by my genealogist grandmother. My abstract pointillist paintings, soundscapes, collages and films explore what it’s meant for my family and for our people to make home here.

I've also been curating and hosting conversations with fellow contemporary socially engaged Black artists (including Carrie Mae Weems, Derrick Adams, Lynn Nottage, Alicia & Jason Moran, Fahamu Pecou and Kiese Laymon) about the themes of genealogy and identity I explore in my painting practice. Recently, I released a film, produced with the Park Avenue Armory, that features Lineage artists reflecting about their ancestry.  All together, this multi-platform project is about creating an intergenerational narrative of contemporary Blackness in America through the eyes of our most imaginative thinkers.