I first saw Prince Diabate perform at an event for the Dalai Lama’s citywide World Festival of Sacred Music held in LA in 1999. I was mesmerized. I was flattened by the cascades and crescendos of celestial sound that flowed from his exuberant kora (West African harp). It sounded like angel tears bursting into fireworks of joy!
Dear Football, I love you. You have been the love of my life for as long as I can remember. Everything good that I am, everything good that I will ever be, in part I owe to you. You were there for me when I thought all was lost. You picked me up and loved me when no one else would. Now can you please sit down? I have some things I need to say.
“You’ve become as bat-shit crazy as she is. ‘Ricky spend th’ night’…’Ricky stay fer dinner,’” he continued, mimicking me. “When the bloody hell were ya gonna tell me I’d be eatin’ my dead sister’s brains for dinner?”
The one thing I want to make clear, is that my agenda is not political. Having said that, I also am a great believer that art should not happen in a vacuum. I don’t believe in chamber art. I don’t see that as a function of art. I think art connects us to the world.
My camera and pen are my tools for sharing and examining my experience of living, my way of exploring my own curiosity of what it means to be here at this moment in time. In my heart, I’m a storyteller, a communicator, someone who wants to provoke thought and facilitate change.
