Projects

Audio

Seasoned

Seasoned is a podcast for listeners with a love of stories about the politics and histories of everyday foods and ingredients, and and an interest in the communal joy of sharing meals, tunes, and stories with the people around us.

I created, researched, wrote, produced, recorded, and edited all episodes of Seasoned. I booked, scheduled, conducted, and edited all interviews that took place in the episodes.

Every Voice

I am a researcher for the Every Voice podcast with New York Public Radio’s WQXR. The episodes, which are slated to release in February, 2023, explore themes of blackness and blackface in the opera.

Museums & Arts

starlight was a community arts space and artist workshop open from September 14–October 29, 2022 at 2709 W. Devon Ave. in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood. starlight was organized by members of the SpaceShift Collective in partnership with Northwestern University’s Race, Caste, and Colorism Project.

I was one of seven facilitators that led the transformation of what was a jewelry store front by the same name into a community arts space that housed three South Asian and three Black artists in-residence. starlight hosted concerts, film screenings, workshops (calligraphy, basket weaving, pumpkin truck art painting, etc.)

starlight

Through starlight, we explored historic South Asian-Black solidarities and engaged with community members around questions of race, caste, and colorism. To this end, I:

  • organized and co-hosted a teach-in, “Race, Caste, and Colorism”, highlighting the sociocultural dimensions of anti-caste resistance movements

  • organized and co-hosted a Protest Music Listening Party with Aquil Charlton (artist-in-residence at starlight and musician/DJ) highlighting connections between protest music movements in South Asia and the U.S., especially in hip-hop.

I also:

  • curated the listening station with vinyls showcasing music from South Asian, African, and African American musical genres + a digital listening station with curated playlists on an iPad with headphones.

  • conceptualized and created a playlist zine containing five playlists: Retro Bollywood, Sounds of Protest, Disco-theeka, Afro-South Asia, and Chai Time Breather.

Vinyl listening station at starlight

Reading nook at starlight

starlight team

Smart Museum of Art

I was a public practice intern at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art between September 2020 and June 2021.

During this time, I helped curate, organize, and conduct public practice events at the Smart Museum of Art including Take Care, Be Well, a day-long series of live-streamed experiences and recorded content created by artists, students, community partners, and educators.

For Take Care, Be Well, I co-curated the day’s events and coordinated with musician Angel Bat Dawid, who rounded out the night with A Candlelight Sonic Supper. I also worked with broadcasting partner, Public Media Institute, to arrange the run of show.

Playlists/DJ

Notes on Notes

Notes on Notes is a monthly listening exchange series that I co-founded with Joshua Babcock. Involving a range of collaborators from artistic, academic, and musical backgrounds, Notes on Notes connects two people to take part in the monthly listening exchange. Each month, a collaborator provides a playlist to which the other responds with a non-musical pairing.

In addition to making these playlists, I also co-managed the monthly curation of the playlist pairing that was uploaded to Medium. I contacted potential collaborators, wrote copy for the blog, and handled social media (Instagram) for the monthly posts.

Notes on Notes: City Sounds 9 October 2020 collab, followed by a private virtual screening of A Machine To Live In (dir. Yoni Goldstein, Meredith Zielke)

Virtual DJ Sets

I have curated online sets ranging from one to three hours for virtual DJ sessions, comprising a range of genres from funk, disco, soul, RnB, hiphop, and jazz to South Asian rap, raaga music, Latin cumbia, Brazilian bossa nova and MPB, Ghanaian highlife, Afrobeat, zouk, dub, and reggae.

I have played sets for the weekly virtual DJ sessions on JQBX, an online listening platform: Clap Back (tunes with handclaps); Pentatonic Gin & Sonic (tunes from around the world in pentatonic scales); Back To The Future. I also played two 3-hour virtual sets for Focus Group Radio: Four Seasons, and Music For A Garden.

DJ/Listening Parties

I DJ under the names Poinciana & Mirami. I use Serato, virtual DJ software, but also have a modest vinyl collection. You can find my collection here.

I DJed for starlight’s Disco Night. I curated a two-hour set comprising tunes from Bollywood, Arab, Italian, and Pakistani disco in addition to canonical disco hits from artists including Patrice Rushen, Diana Ross, Heatwave, Crown Heights Affair, and Anita Ward.

DJing at starlight’s Disco Night

I gave a workshop on Joy & Protest Music at the 2022 Postock Music Festival in Albany, WI. In this one-hour session, I gave a historic overview of protest music in the U.S., tracing the lineage from the likes of Pete Seeger, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone to contemporary artists like Kendrick Lamar, N.W.A., and Solange. I also spoke about global musical protest movements from Son Jarocho, Chicano, and Nueva Cancion to Tropicalia, Magharan rap, and South Asian rap.

Joy & Protest Music Workshop at 2022 Postock Festival

Playlists 2023

romanticizing winter slush, January 2023

winter weary, but scheming/dreaming, February 2023