Flowin’: Breakthroughs in Black Feminist Jazz & Literary Studies

Presented by Yale University’s Black Sound and the Archive Working Group, Flowin’: A Conference in Celebration of Farah Jasmine Griffin took place on campus September 23-24, 2022. YC&E assisted with this important conference and we enjoyed working with everyone involved!

Some two years in the making and previously postponed as a result of the pandemic, this event marked Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin’s extraordinary achievements as a scholar of Black feminist literary studies, cultural studies, and jazz and popular music studies.

This conference opened with a keynote conversation between Professors Angela Davis, Gina Dent, and Farah Griffin, which led into an opening keynote performance with Grammy Award-winning, preeminent jazz vocalist, Dianne Reeves. With a closing keynote conversation between Professor’s Robin D.G. Kelley and Farah Griffin. Our distinguished featured conference panelists and interlocuters included Jason Moran, Alicia Hall Moran, Vijay Iyer, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Bryan, George Lewis, Wesley Morris (New York Times) and others.

With last year’s twentieth anniversary of her landmark publication, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, it is clearer than ever that Professor Griffin’s brilliant, groundbreaking scholarship has paved the way for an entire generation of cultural critics, historians, and music scholars to follow in her path by pursuing critical new directions in Black feminist literary and music studies.

Farah Griffin’s studies and pedagogy have created the space for scholars to ask bold and creative questions of historical and sonic archives and to press forward in centering women of color as we discuss, write about and theorize the history of popular music culture and the history of Black women’s radical cultural work. 

YC&E assisted the conference with:

• Registration (speakers, VIP guests, waitlists)
• Speaker management (presentation prep, session itineraries, welcome packets, run-of-show, timing, personalized individual itineraries)
• Performer management (artist riders, communications with teams, performance agreements, payment, dressing rooms, greenrooms)
• Car service
• Food and beverage 
• Worked with vendors to produce two musical performances
  • HB Live, Schwarzman Center, Shaboo Productions
• Secured backline equipment and tech 
• Stage setups
• Printed materials through YPPS (programs, badges, signage)