The City Wasn't There by Small Hinges SCE

The City Wasn’t There An Explorative Reflection on the Essential Relationships Between Black History, Black Culture, and Arts Education in New Orleans

Morgan-Me’Lyn Grant African & African American Studies Creative Honors Thesis Spring 2020

Abstract “The City Wasn’t There” is a shared ritual reflection that searches through the elements of memory for the final stages in a cycle that has caused avoidable trauma for thousands of Black youth across the city of New Orleans. Using the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts as a case study, this work explores the important role of the inherently Black New Orleans cultural traditions and histories in arts education for Black New Orleans youth. This work demands that NOCCA’s administrative structures be held accountable for the historic systematic deemphasis in Black educators, Black students, and Black New Orleans cultural creators and practices. The research reclaims negromancy as a protective ritual to advocate for the incorporation of the inherently Black artistic cultural traditions of New Orleans as well as the white western artistic techniques in NOCCA’s curriculums.

Acknowledgments

You know this hair is my shit Rode the ride, I gave it time But this here is mine.

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Touch My Hair Solange Knowles

Table of Contents Abstract

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

Introduction

The Concept: Negromancy

The Justification: History

Literature Review

Art Review

Methodology

Reflection

Conclusion

Bibliography

Table of Figures Figure 1 Negromancy Coil. A hand drawn diagram, showing the negromancy process that is being utilized at NOCCA.

Figure 2 NOCCA Achievements. Images from the NOCCA Achievements page of the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website for the years 1973-2000.

Introduction For a long time, I struggled to figure out what my thesis would be about. I knew I wanted to do an artistic project and that it had to be something eye-opening. There weren’t any specifics really. I figured if it were art, I had to dance. It would probably be cool if I wrote something too. A scene or monologue? A monologue, obviously. However, a poem or two wouldn’t be a bad idea. Now, how do I justify breaking into song? I wanted to showcase all of my talents. I wanted to prove that I was a strong artist in every medium I felt connected to, but I hadn’t nailed down an actual topic, so I didn’t need to shoot anything down just yet. Then I went and told somebody I would do my thesis on my high school, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

The Concept: Negromancy “One downside to the takeover by the state, according to one interviewee, who was a former student of NOCCA, was that serving the whole state diminished the percentage of minority or students of color at the school (Signal). The rebuttal to this concern is that NOCCA was created to fill the needs of talented students without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status or any other demographic concerns. The other argument is that since NOCCA|Riverfront now serves the entire State of Louisiana it should reflect the demographics of the state, not merely the population of Orleans Parish. Regardless, no official study has been done since the school changed hands regarding the demographics of its student body.” Suzanne Michelle Blanchard Chambliss New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: A History in Progress LSU Doctoral Dissertation

The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) is Louisiana’s premier high school arts education program. Most young Black artists in New Orleans have learned from or been inspired by city legends, a number of whom attended NOCCA. Some of NOCCA’s most renowned alumni include “Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Wendell Pierce, and Anthony Mackie”.1 All public records from NOCCA identify Shirley Trusty Corey as the

“About NOCCA.” n.d. NOCCA (website). Accessed May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/aboutnocca/. 1

sole founder of the school in 1973. The pre-professional arts training center for Orleans Parish Public School district was founded through funding from community fundraising, Orleans Parish School Board, and the National Endowment for the Arts.23 In 1980, Harry Conick Jr. was unable to attend NOCCA because he didn’t attend a public school. His father, the New Orleans District Attorney at the time, “wrote to the school board, arguing that since NOCCA was publicly funded, any qualified citizen of the parish should be able to attend (Connick). This issue was then brought to the school board, discussed at meetings, investigated, and then voted on at the 25 August 1980 meeting. After discussing the issue, the Board members voted 4 to 1 to accept private and parochial school students into NOCCA.”4 Officially, this was a way to increase all Louisiana high school students’ access to the opportunities the school offered. The school’s partner non-profit, the NOCCA Instititute lobbied for funding to construct a permanent building and program in the gentrified Faubourg Marigny on the river. In the summer of 1999, the Orleans Parish Public School Boards could only afford half of NOCCA’s $3.8 million revitalization budget for the 2000-2001 school year. The state had already agreed to invest $17 million dollars in the construction, so in 2000 NOCCA’s jurisdiction transitioned from an Orleans Parish public school to an agency of the State of Louisiana.5 The school, the students, and their art would from then on be legally recognized as property of the state. The deemphasis of Black educators, Black students, and Black New Orleans cultural creators and practices in the curriculum are a direct result of the school’s conscious administrative decisions.

“NOCCA Achievements.” n.d. NOCCA (blog). May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/noccaachievements/. 2

Chambliss, Suzanne Michelle Blanchard, “New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: a history in progress” (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2307. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2307 Page 50 4 Chambliss. “New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: a history in progress” Page 80 5 Chambliss. “New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: a history in progress” Page 89 3

NOCCA’s recitation of its founding leads the world to believe a really large group of well-meaning white folks tried to teach art to Black kids in New Orleans and couldn’t bring themselves to keep that gift from the rest of the world. They are lying. Black students enrolled in the first music, theater and visual arts classes were taught by Black teachers like the late Ellis Marsalis, the 12-year founding head of the Jazz Department, in basements of the University of New Orleans and small rooms in the New Orleans Museum of Art in the early 70’s. Mr. Marsalis was one of several leading Black culture bearers from the that helped construct the NOCCA program and curriculums. Black artists and community leaders that had grown tired of Black New Orleans youth being excluded from formal arts training. A cycle has been established where Black folks aspire for their art to radiate the essence of New Orleans, but we seek out an imitator to teach us. Young Black students are encouraged to pursue an education at NOCCA by the same Black community that call for widespread changes in the school’s structure. Parents, students and community members have frequently vocalized to institution faculty and administrators that the modern curriculums, disciplinary actions, audition requirements, student and staff diversity, and day-to-day treatment of Black students cannot be allowed to continue. Over the years, I’ve talked with dozens of Black NOCCA alumni about the ways we felt NOCCA failed us as students. “Um, we could talk about performances. Like, compared to the people who are in this discipline, how many- Who do we see on stage?” Celine Seiber, a 2016 graduate of NOCCA’s Academic Studio and Dance Department, asks the question that every Black performing artist, and their parents, at NOCCA asked while in high school. 6 As young artists, many of us questioned our talent when we weren’t selected to perform in our

Seiber, Celine. Celine Seiber Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. January 20, 2020.

school’s productions. As Black students, we questioned our purpose at a school that didn’t always seem to want us there. Our community leaders created NOCCA to give Black New Orleans youth the structural support of an arts education program that the country’s historic systematic racism had taken away. Where that ambition of the school’s vision has fallen short, Black New Orleanians still try to keep up. “Yeah, but I- I knew NOCCA was a Black school and not exactly sure how it turned white but…” recounts Zenobia Zeno, a 2016 graduate of NOCCA’s Academic Studio and Visual Arts Department. 7 The City’s children are bound to the sustaining of the land and community several times over. A stubborn group of survivors, we have a habit of refusing to let go of what we’ve grown in the City, even if it means sending generation after generation of youth to be traumatized in the pursuit. In our culture, that pursuit becomes a journey with the trauma transformed into captivating stories within stories. New Orleanians have traditionally communicated and recreated our embodied experiences through storytelling as a way to preserve and further develop our history and cultures. I didn’t want to disrespect the narrators or the narratives themselves, so I decided against trying to decode or translate stories for non-New Orleanians. The standard research and journalism interviewing format would drain the spirit from their stories. I would be doing the same thing as NOCCA if I tried to bring the body of their stories to life, and requested they leave the soul at home. I had to walk in the nature of New Orleans by rooting my work in conversation-based oral narratives from recent Black alumni like Celine and Zenobia. By comparing components that were repetitive or similar within oral narratives of Black NOCCA

Zeno, Zenobia. Zenobia Zeno Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. February 19, 2020.

alumni such as Celine Seiber and Zenobia Zeno, I was able to identify the systemic abuse of a cultural safety mechanism called negromancy. Negromancy refers to a Black person’s magical revival from the attempted killing off of Black cultural and traditional knowledge at the hands of forcefully affirmed white western concepts.i This term comes from the combinations of negro and necromancy, the magic practice of communicating with or raising the dead for the purposes of divination or control. Urban Dictionary defines negromancy as “black magic done by black people whose dark skin represents the dark deeds they have done. The darker their skin the darker the deeds they have committed against humanity.” The revised definition I’ve provided amends the notion of negromancy as a sinful magic Black people practice that reflects their wrongful deeds. Instead, we read negromancy as a soul-oriented magical transformation experienced to overcome the wrongful deeds committed against them because of their blackness. Negromancy empowers Black artists to create multidimensional impactful art that draws attention to their New Orleans origins. Once an artist becomes successful, their life becomes public knowledge and institutions they attended get credit by association. In order to secure limitless access to young Black New Orleans talent, NOCCA exposes Black students to high volumes of cultural death to syphon credibility for the profitable results of negromamcy without taking the accountability for unjustly inducing the trauma. Young Black New Orleanians are drawn to NOCCA’s reputation of producing Black New Orleans artists with nationally recognized talent. I said before that attempting to translate oral narratives into interviews would do the experiences of Black alumni a disservice. While that holds true, it’s also important to know to look for a pattern within the

stories. NOCCA’s goal is to teach students technique they need to be successful in the professional world, but the subtext reads as white western standards of art professionalism. In my search for the stabilizing factor in NOCCA’s success, I was able to identify a pattern within Black alumni’s stories and show the steps that comprise negromancy, which can be seen in Figure 1. The Negromancy Coil represents each phase of negromancy, and how NOCCA’s manipulation of negromancy impacts students’ lives. The coil is similar to a strand of 4C hair: when stretched, the strand spirals out into its full length, but when it is compressed, it can look like a plain old circle. At first glance, NOCCA has a typical cycle of admission, training, graduation, and later success that inspires new students to apply for the chance at admission. However, Black Alumni oral narratives pull at the ends of this cycle to expose the role NOCCA plays in how alumni engage with world. I found that there are seven phases in a negromancy process, First & Second Lost, First & Second Rapids, First & Second Reflection, and Ashé.

Figure 1 Negromancy Coil. A hand drawn diagram, showing the negromancy process that is being utilized at NOCCA. 11

Students are First Lost when they make the decision to pursue art as a profession by attending NOCCA. The level of commitment required in deciding to pursue career training at 13 years old is an immense weight to carry. Upon admission to NOCCA, students struggle in the First Rapids of the school’s structure to maintain their cultural, and inherently Black New Orleans cultural and traditional knowledge. In the pursuit of improved technique, Black students suffer mistreatments such as more harsh and lower grading, as well as exclusion from productions, performances, and leadership roles, as the school triggers negromancy. During the First Reflection, Black students realize that technique is a tool to produce art and not the gatekeeper as NOCCA’s curriculum often suggests. By returning to the source of passion for their art and the ways they learned art outside of white western techniques, students are able to grasp the value of diverse trainings. When graduation comes around, students linger in the Second Lost to decide whether or not they will continue to pursue art. The burden of the decision has increased, as continuing forever entwines the Black cultural traditions with the white western technique.ii If students decide to continue walking the artist’s path, they must face the Second Rapids. Ceylon Seiber, a 2016 graduate of NOCCA’s Academic Studio and Dance Department, recalls not being “prepared to be working with people who- who didn’t see the way things I saw.” Students fight to maintain the balance between their trainings while navigating a world that does not comprehend the alternate realm New Orleans exists in. Eventually, every student needs a Second Reflection to sit down and consider the relationship between their identity and their art. They have to restore their faith in the complex skill set their dual training background gives them access to. The confident use of white western technique to accentuate the talent that their New Orleans cultural traditions fueled is the product of Ashé that makes Black alumni nationally

recognized artists. Black New Orleans youth aspire to attain that confident and passionate artistry. As a result, their focus turns towards getting accepted to NOCCA, so the Negromancy Coil connects and continues.

The Justification: History “The first circle would be training students, the second would be training teachers, and the third, would be affecting the community.” (Shirley Trusty Corey Interview) Suzanne Michelle Blanchard Chambliss New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: A History in Progress LSU Doctoral Dissertation

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, the food capital of America, and world renowned for its Mardi Gras celebrations and parades. A tourist attraction for the masses, New Orleans is often described as a lively city where the good times roll. At the same time, New Orleans is the poster child for the catastrophe born of natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina put New Orleans on a new map by almost erasing it. After the disaster that was hurricane relief aid became public knowledge, the city’s haunted reputation grew. This crypt sits atop the buried history of French, Spanish and American colonial rule in a cemetery built by enslaved and oppressed Black and Native Americans. 8 All of these are true statements, and none of them actually tell you what New Orleans is. New Orleans is more than a place on the map. The City has a life of its own. I can’t tell you what New Orleans is because it exists within the indescribably unwritable moments that happen every day and across lifetimes. New Orleans is born from the magic of quotidian rituals. “One important theoretical view of performance addresses the notion of experience. This view asserts that experience begins from our uneventful, everyday existence.”9 New Orleans stands at

Evans, Freddi Williams. 2011. Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans. University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 9 Madison, D. Soyini. 2005. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc. Page 151 8

odds with time itself in a way you can only dream of understanding by genuinely being of the city. Black New Orleans traditions denounce the hierarchical systems of white western European thought that constrain community access to knowledge and training. Even though I can’t identify what New Orleans is through the medium of writing, my hope is that by the end of this shared ritual reflection the people will be able to tell their stories without needing pedagogical intervention. The people who, as W.E.B. Du Bois would say, are considered the problem, have not gotten an opportunity to speak about their experiences on a public platform where they feel validated.10 “The primary responsibility is to those studied (people, places, materials, and those with whom you work). This responsibility supercedes the goal of knowledge, completion of project, and obligation to funders or sponsors. If ever there is a conflict of interest, the people studied must come first.” (Madison 111) Black students that are currently attending and have recently attended NOCCA need to be given the chance to give their opinion on the quality and efficiency of NOCCA’s education system. There have been many conversations about the school, the city and arts education increasingly erasing the presence of blackness, but how many of them center the voices of the students? Black alumni fall into two categories: those that associate with NOCCA and those that were associated with NOCCA. If an alum associates with the school, it means they occasionally return to campus or have personally acknowledged that they were students. An alum is associated with NOCCA when any source other than them confirms that they went to the school. The school accredits “the ethic of discipline and responsibility it instils in students, which

Du Bois, W. E. B., and Jonathan Scott Holloway. The Souls of Black Folk. Vol. First Yale University Press edition. New Haven [Connecticut]: Yale University Press, 2015. https://search-ebscohostcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1000450&site=ehost-live. 10

prepares them for productive adult lives whether or not they choose to pursue art careers” as its “key to success”.11 What type of success necessitates the minimization of the cultural knowledge and traditions of its students? How can a school whose instruction is rooted in uplifting white standards be the “crown jewel” of a Black city? 12 Can an institution that doesn’t incorporate New Orleans history and arts practices in every department’s curriculum claim to be the New Orleans Center for Creative Art? The creative component of my thesis utilizes the embodied elements of New Orleans storytelling to explore my experience with the four stages of the Negromancy Coil, Second Lost, Second Rapids, Second Reflection, and Ashé, as a NOCCA alumna myself. “The City Wasn’t There” is a shared ritual reflection that searches through the elements of memory for the final stages in a cycle that has caused avoidable trauma for thousands of Black youth across the city of New Orleans. Using the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts as a case study, this work explores the important role of the inherently Black New Orleans cultural traditions and histories in arts education for Black New Orleans youth. The piece was originally conceived to be a 40minute ritualistic retelling of the lived experiences of some young Black alumni. Much like the research that cultivated this work, the ritual performance incorporates oral narratives, music, dance, film, photography, poetry, and theater based in New Orleans. As global health dangers prevented me from staging the ritual reflection in person, I created a short film to help visualize conceptual portions of the performance. The project remains a shared ritual reflection, but in an abbreviated format. The film will be housed on the Institute for Diversity in the Arts’ website in the Fellows Archive.

“About NOCCA.”

Chambliss. “New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: a history in progress” Page 21 15

Literature Review The best way to comprehend the possibility of negromancy is to explore the complex web of topics and conversations forming its foundation. I looked to “Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, Performance” by D. Soyini Madison and “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular’” by Stuart Hall to establish the fundamental role of accurate lived experiences as the foundation for my work.13 I recognized moments of subconscious emotional trauma in the stories of alumni through Hall’s discussion of the injustice caused by the use of popular culture as cultural gentrification.14 “Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System” by Katrina Hazzard-Donald and “No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans” by Daniel E. Walker were critical for historically contextualizing the assertion that New Orleans culture is Black and Native American culture. Consequently, institutionalized racism has always strived to maintain academic ignorance of the deep spiritual knowledges and histories that Black spiritual folks contain. 15 16 “Performance and/as History” by Diana Taylor and “Performance Studies Interventions and Radical Research” by Dwight Conquergood are in conversation with each other and Madison as they insist on the validity of performance and rituals as sources of academic knowledge.17 18 Scholars in the anthropology, ethnography,

Madison, D. Soyini. 14 Hall, Stuart. 1993. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20 (1/2 (51-52)): 104–14. 15 Hazzard-Donald, Katrina. Mojo Workin: The Old African American Hoodoo System. 2012. University of Illinois Press. https://web-b-ebscohost-com.stanford.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=d00d179b6fa8-43bf-8fe4-386c1da7e9f9%40sessionmgr103&vid=0&format=EB. 13

Walker, Daniel E. 2004. “Imagining the African/Imagining Blackness.” In No More, No More, NED-New edition, 105–32. Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsm5m.7. 16

Taylor, Diana. 2006. “Performance and/as History.” TDR (1988-) 50 (1): 67–86. Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research.” TDR/The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–56. https://doi.org/10.1162/105420402320980550. 17 18

history, social science, theater and performance studies, ethnic studies and gender studies fields have established foundations for the growth of this work. In “Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, Performance”, Madison emphasizes the significance of ethics and performance in critical ethnography by articulating the relevant links between theory and method that are found in performance ethnography. Stuart Hall’s discussion of the dangerous politics of a “popular culture” in “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular’” reminded me to acknowledge and reiterate the origins of New Orleans culture in my work. The cultures of Black and Native American people are New Orleans culture. Like many children of cities whose cultures and public image are rooted in non-white ethnicity, the Black people of New Orleans have often found ourselves left out of our own histories. In detailing the relationships between a film and its subjects, Madison says, “…the film not only documented the lives and stories of real people the filmmaker came to know but also introduced those lives and stories to us. Representation has consequences: How people are represented is how they are treated (Hall, 1997).”19 Madison’s conversations with Hall’s “Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices” and “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” helped ground my insistence on the narratives of Black NOCCA alumni being the forefront of all conversations surrounding the school’s impact. 20 By erasing the cultural forbearers of the City, white western society had attempted to accredit our culture to a tourist attraction on the map. Anyone can live in a city, and, technically speaking, a city can’t object to mistreatment. “Critical ethnography, in its very charge to enunciate and clarify the obscurities of injustices and then to thoughtfully offer

19 20

Madison, D. Soyini. Page 4 Hall, Stuart. (1997). Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices. London: Sage. 17

just alternatives, must be deliberate in its ethical responsibility to carry forth that charge.”21 To establish a healthily balanced reality, ethnography is essential to reestablishing the foundational ties between Black people and New Orleans arts and culture. “In this instance, as in most, interpretation held a great deal of power.”22 “Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System” by Katrina HazzardDonald explores African Americans' experience and practice of Hoodoo. She argues that Hoodoo emerged from three regions she calls “regional Hoodoo clusters” and after the turn of the nineteenth century, shifted from a regional to national scope. Hazzard-Donald writes, “The survival of African religious tradition in the United States would take a noticeably different path than it did in the large plantation societies of the Caribbean and Latin America. Known by several names, including Hoodoo, conjure, Juju, and root work, African traditional religion in the United States Traditional Religion in West Africa and in the New World would have a shorter life span as a completely sustainable religious system than those African religious forms in Cuba, Haiti, or Brazil…In Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, as well as other places, African religion mixed with both Native American beliefs and Catholicism while reestablishing elaborate and complex levels of orthodoxy, including initiation rites, systems of divination, types of worship, and religious mythology.”23

As a primary port for enslaved Africans, New Orleans became an epicenter of diverse Black cultures and traditions. Generations of practitioners and culture bearers protected African spirituality and identity by burying them at the core of Black New Orleanians’ cultural traditions. The enslaved people of New Orleans, like Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba, mixed their African religions with Native American beliefs and Christianity. Some Black New Orleanians wear white at church without knowing their songs and dances descend from Ifá or Obeah.

Madison, D. Soyini. Page 91 Madison, D. Soyini. Page 4 23 Hazzard-Donald, Katrina. Pages 32-33 21 22

Daniel E. Walker speaks directly to the life spans of African religious traditions in New Orleans in his book, “No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans”. The fourth chapter entitled, Imagining the African/Imagining Blackness, recounts the tactics Europeans used to caricaturize and police the ways Black folk in Havana and New Orleans and their cultural practices were viewed. Walker writes, “In the nineteenth century, much of the Western world became fixated with attempts to arrive at scientific ‘proof’ that various racial groups were different, not only in outward appearance, but, more importantly, in intellect, cultural achievement, and relative levels of civility…Moreover, expressions of popular culture (art, literature, music, drama, etc.) in [Havana and New Orleans] attest to the fact that the denigration of the image of the African and the racial concept of blackness were central to the larger social-control objective of both regimes.”24

Ritual centers its structure around the constant combination of racial identity, spirit, cultural practices and traditions. Ritual is a powerful conduit of knowledge and healing, so it had been villainized by white western societal structures like NOCCA. Work like mine and other Black alumni that are forced to initiate negromancy identifies the spiritual and ritual aspects of creative art processes. “Performance and/as History” by Diana Taylor defends cultural performances and rituals as “socially legitimate ways of understanding the past” using the ceremonies of annual fiesta in Tepoztlán, Mexico. 25 Taylor’s intellectual debates with other historians helped me sculpt the societal framework of the Negromancy Coil and identify the space NOCCA operates in. Section One details some of the origins of Western academia’s resistance to the validity of ethnic traditional performances as scholarly sources. She states: In the Americas, they date back at least to the Conquest when the European conquerors and colonizers used written documentation to dispossess native communities of their lands, belief 24 25

Walker, Daniel E. Page 106 Taylor, Diana. Page 68 19

systems, customs, and livelihoods. With the Conquest, (certain) forms of embodied practice were denied validity. Performance practices were forcibly expelled from colonial meaning-making systems when they threatened to transmit native history, values, and claims. If we take a historical look at the tension between performance and history, it becomes clearer that performance is not un- or anti-historical. On the contrary: it has been strategically positioned outside of history, rendered invalid as a form of cultural transmission, in short made un- and anti-historical by conquerors and colonists who wanted to monopolize power.26

Ritual and performance have always been identified as complex, yet powerful methods of storing and transferring knowledge. Taylor notes how colonizers targeted that power source, the culture itself, and ripped from it the people’s hands, placing it just out of reach. Taylor’s argument identifies the cycle of institutionalized racism that infected the City when Black people were brought to the land against their will that Walker identifies. Black New Orleanians are again having their cultural traditions, histories, and experiences invalidated and erased through the societal and academic structures Taylor identifies and under the guise of growth and rebirth. Through parasitic practices of gentrification, the Black people of New Orleans are having their histories, creations, family traditions, and stories of struggle and happiness drained to construct the frameworks that white artists in fields like jazz, culinary arts, dance, performance, and visual arts freely take advantage of. While some cultural forebearers, such as Louis Armstrong, Congo Square, and Leah Chase, are paid their proper respects, the rest of the scenes have been in the processes of being swallowed up by white “trained” and “educated” artists in each cultural field. When the New Orleans Jazz Market had a mural commissioned for their wall on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, a street named after the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement leader, a white man from New York was hired to paint “his

Taylor, Diana. Page 70 20

expression of jazz”.27 That decision alone is enough to reflect the lack of recognition and respect towards Black people’s role in creating the New Orleans culture white people have coopted. “Performance Studies Interventions and Radical Research” by Dwight Conquergood calls for a hybrid discipline that celebrates lived experiences and combines the analytics of academia and the artistry of performance. Conquergood writes that, “…[performance is] radical because it cuts to the root of how knowledge is organized in the academy… knowing in the academy is that of empirical observation and critical analysis from a distanced perspective… [performance is] another way of knowing that is grounded in active, intimate, hands-on participation and personal connection.”28 I think of it like this: Historically, the academy has observed, analyzed, and defined performances like a photograph. They provide a lot of information and details, for sure, but only from the single angle the stationary image captures. The academy only uses performances as a portion of a moment. Conquergood and Taylor argue that the traditions of cultural performances are equivalent to a three-dimensional holographic film with audio. Utilizing historical context, lived experiences, emotions, inherited knowledge, and non-Western concepts of knowledge and learning, there are endless possibilities to how and what we can learn about and from the past by validating the use of performance and cultural traditions as historical accounts. “Very bright, talented students are attracted to programs that combine intellectual rigor with artistic excellence that is critically engaged, where they do not have to banish their artistic spirit in order to become a critical thinker, or repress their intellectual self or political passion to explore their artistic side.” 29 Arts education in New Orleans must be a 3D holographic film with

“GoNOLA Find: The New Orleans Jazz Market Mural.” 2017. GoNOLA.Com. December 12, 2017. https://gonola.com/things-to-do-in-new-orleans/gonola-find-new-orleans-jazz-market-mural. 28 Conquergood, Dwight. Page 146 29 Conquergood, Dwight. Page 153 27

audio by incorporating non-white traditional forms of education into their teaching methods to reflect the innovation and magic of the artists themselves. Accepting that some things can only be explained through experience and emotion are foundational for comprehending negromancy. It is to that point I insist that the repetitive appearance of spiritual and non-written knowledge from traditions that have survived centuries is more than a mere coincidence. “The City Wasn’t There” is a byproduct of NOCCA induced negromancy, as I am an alumna of NOCCA and have completed the negromancy ritual. This research and ritual reflection alter the cycle by embodying solutions to the two problems: vocalizing the experiences of the youth and replacing the institution’s education structures that facilitated unnecessary trauma. The research formulated from the scholarly research I’ve engaged with has produced art that centers the experiences of young Black artists by combining the techniques NOCCA taught them and the Black New Orleans cultural traditions NOCCA tried to erase. This is balance come full circle.

Art Review Following in the footsteps of REVIVAL: Millennial Re-Membering in the Afro-NOW, the Stanford University Theater and Performance Studies’ 2019 Mainstage Fall Production, “The City Wasn’t There” builds a conscious relationship between ritual performance and academia. “[REVIVAL] is an Afro Futurist, devised dance theater work, inspired by the founding of the Committee on Black Performing Arts (CBPA), which marks its 50th anniversary this year. Utilizing the stories and characteristics of the Yoruba deities known as Orisha, REVIVAL is a multi-media and multi-site experience exploring the people and events that have catalyzed

movements for social change through time.”30 Sharing the communal reflective journey through negromancy with an audience, in the way “The City Wasn’t There” does, pushes questions of the differences between performance and a performance. I looked to other sources of ritual and traditions for inspiration in both research material and medium and format for the final showing I wanted to create. This ritual, and the research to complete it, would not be legitimate without art inspiration and incorporation from the City. Learning about Sarah Broom’s “The Yellow House” was simply divine timing. 31 I hadn’t heard of her or her book before I found out she was speaking on Stanford’s campus. What I can only describe as ingrained allegiance forced me to go to the nighttime talk when I found out she was also from New Orleans, and I was more than glad that I did. Hearing Broom read brought me to tears. It was in that moment that I knew what I wanted this ritual to do. I wanted people to cry with us as I reenacted the painfully beautiful life of an aspiring Black artist from New Orleans. I could see every detail of New Orleans East in Broom’s words. People had to see what we saw, if for no other reason than to make sure they understood that our souls are on the line in all of this. Broom’s storytelling, but more specifically, her decision to simply write down the stories. Madison said, “The primary responsibility is to those studied (people, places, materials, and those with whom you work).”32 The stories of my family and our City deserve to be heard in their native tongue. Where the standard question and answer interview format calls for a formal, somewhat distant approach, Broom’s work showed I didn’t have to pretend not to know these people. “The Yellow House” utilizes a documentation tactic that I had been experimenting with – oral history told through stories and collected through conversation.

“REVIVAL: Millennial Re-Membering in the Afro-NOW” Novemeber 14 - 16, 2020. https://taps.stanford.edu/revival/. 31 Broom, Sarah M. 2019. The Yellow House. Grove Press. 32 Madison, D. Soyini. Page 111 30

Informally structured oral history and ritual performances ground my thesis in its New Orleans identity. Second lines, Mardi Gras Parades, and street performances are common ritual performances that are recognized and practiced New Orleanians. Ritual performances have long histories, both recreational and ceremonial, with Black New Orleans culture, art, and identity development. Since I was raised to understand these rituals as second nature, I wanted to document any differences I might find after arriving at AshĂŠ in the Negromancy Coil. I attended and documented 5 Mardi Gras Parades in the 2020 season to pay closer attention to our traditions.33 The Nyx, Muses, Rex, Endymion and Zulu parades are some of the most popular parades for Black people to attend. While the season is often full of love and joy, the 2020 Mardi Gras season was bleak. A partially constructed Hard Rock Hotel collapsed in October of 2019 in downtown New Orleans. City officials chose to leave the bodies of two workers that had died in the wreckage atop the dilapidated tower. Mardi Gras season arrived, and the atmosphere of the city felt off. Three people died during parades this year, one on the ground, the top of a float, and a balcony. Black folks heard the city loud and clear. We have always believed that the nature of our relationship with the city is based upon balance and respecting the deceased. Mardi Gras traditions range across religions, but the season calls for a ritual celebration of life and death across the board. Films and shows such as Princess and the Frog and Girls Trip identify some of the tropes popular culture assigns to New Orleans and its people outside of the city. The main character in Princess and the Frog, Tiana, is from New Orleans and becomes a princess by being a hard worker and eventually falling in love. 34 While Disneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first Black princess film provides young

Mardi Gras 2020 Season Parades Footage. 2020. New Orleans, LA. Musker, John & Clements, Ron. 2009. Princess and the Frog. Family Animation. Walt Disney Animation Studios. 33 34

Black children with an opportunity to see themselves represented on screen, the film doesn’t actually shift the stereotypical narrative of New Orleans. Disney filmmakers clearly struggles with finding the perfect visuals of New Orleans in the 1920s for Tiana’s story because they completely butchered the facts of life for Black folks at the time. Tiana couldn’t have had a rich white best friend that spoke to her freely and respectfully in public because it was illegal. Jim Crow laws and segregation would have prevented any Black person, Voodoo Doctor or otherwise, from approaching or expressing anger towards a white man. Interracial marriage was legalized in 1967, and racial classification wasn’t repealed in the state of Louisiana until 1983. The violently disappointing history of racism and imperialism cannot be erased by drawing a prettier picture over it. The message of Disney’s film is sweet, but the sad reality is that Tiana would have been killed before her sixth birthday if she had been a fraction of the woman she was on screen. The movie Girls Trip battled with the imperfect nature of avoiding New Orleans stereotypes as well. 35 The main characters in Girls Trip are four Black women that come to New Orleans for Essence Festival to reconnect with each other through a week of alcohol and sex induced fun but end up coming to terms with their individual and interpersonal insecurities. This movie was closer to maintaining factual accuracy for modern times by centralizing a real Black festival hosted in the city. Unfortunately, it still explores New Orleans through the eyes of a tourist. Similar to Princess and the Frog, Girls Trip highlights changes the whirlwinds of experiences in the city can bring, but it does not tell the story of that magic for the city’s residents. These films paint the fantastical possibilities that are born in the city, and in that way, their effects are similar to those of the implied association between successful NOCCA alumni.

Lee, Malcolm D. 2017. Girls Trip. Comedy. Universal Pictures. 25

The reinforcement of New Orleans stereotypes, whether positive or negative, contribute to larger scale institutionally induced negromancy. Stereotypes of that capacity lead to the commodification of the city and her people and result in citywide induced negromancy.

Methodology The creative component of my thesis is a shared ritual reflection that utilizes the embodied elements of New Orleans storytelling to explore my experience with the final four stages of Lost, Rapids, Reflection, and AshĂŠ as a NOCCA alumna myself. The shared ritual reflection that I have created showcases the essential role of racial identity and heritage, as well as, cultural practices and traditions in arts education for Black New Orleans artists. Utilizing oral narratives, a critical practice in the historic continuation and development of New Orleans culture and history, I created a semi-autobiographical performance that narrates the journeys through identity and arts that Black New Orleans youth experienced at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. The ritual performance would incorporate music, dance, film, photography, poetry, and theater. As a strong pillar for this work, oral narrative plays a key role in the actual ritual itself. I returned to New Orleans to capture footage and document the narratives of 2016 graduates of NOCCA. These conversations were necessary for the first and third sections of the piece. Some of the audio and video from these oral narratives are incorporated into the performance. This will include projections, sound mixing, and dialogue. At the same time, footage and photography of the city were to be used for more projections and to further inform the choreography and musical selections.

This piece directly confronts the ideology surrounding what constitutes as art, arts education, and artistic development in New Orleans. A city with a complex and magical past, the byproducts of Black New Orleanians’ survival have always been the face of New Orleans culture. However, as time has passed, the faces of New Orleans culture and history have become “whiter” and less Black community based. This research, and the ritual performance that it culminates in, brings the new perspective of New Orleans youth into this conversation. Ethnic and cultural studies scholars such as Freddi Williams Evans, Richard Brent Turner, LaKisha Michelle Simmons, Allyson Ward Neal, have partaken in monumental conversations regarding New Orleans culture and Black culture being one and the same in New Orleans, and the ways that these histories and truths are present in the arts. But a key missing aspect in these conversations is the youth voices that are being raised under these traumatizing conditions. This work makes space for those voices. Black New Orleans youth have experience and insightful knowledge on the gentrification of New Orleans art and culture. By incorporating the images and voices of the Black alumni that shared their stories in the ritual performance, I would ensure youth were the focus of the conversation. Audiences and participants are required to accept our narratives as truth to begin engaging with the artwork. The piece is deeply personal and engages with long-term undiscussed trauma amongst Black youth. Experts in fields that intersect with my work will hopefully be invested in promoting more conversations by and for Black New Orleans youth. The summer before my senior year, Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Executive Director of Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and I talked about her son not being accepted into NOCCA and why she thought that was. Her son was a jazz musician who had played his instrument for at least 5 years, and he wanted to go to NOCCA. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to apply because of the

Jazz Department updated their audition requirements.iii After I graduated, the school’s Jazz Department had implemented an audition requirement during the 2016-2017 school year which was the most recent incident of the school’s covert discrimination: “Students should take PRIVATE MUSIC LESSONS for at least ONE FULL YEAR with a QUALIFIED jazz instructor to have the necessary skills required to pass the NOCCA audition.” 36 Addressing the inequitable requirement inspired the inquiry for my thesis. In the first phases of my research, I created a long list of questions that I wanted to ask each interviewee. At that time, I had about 23 people I planned on interviewing and about 20 questions each. There was no way I would actually get that all done, but I wanted people to speak as freely and deeply as they had before we had the formal setting of an interview. I spoke New Orleans and I knew these people personally, but straightforward questions don’t account for New Orleanians’ roundabout way of speaking. Everything with us is a story within a story within a story. You can’t just tell the end story because the final answer requires bits and pieces from all three stories. I was basically trying to predict all of the questions I would need to ask to get the general picture of all three stories without the stories. Meeting Sarah Broom and reading “The Yellow House” was my deep breath. I wanted students to feel comfortable speaking with their New Orleans voices, instead of code-switching. Broom and her writing helped me follow my instincts and practice collecting oral narratives in story format through casual conversation. During the initial conceptual stages of my research, I had been interested in the idea of having recorded conversations. I would ask a question, everyone would know they were being recorded, and we would go from there. Starting with “How do we know each other?” answered at least 7 other questions I had planned on asking. Just “NOCCA 2020-2021 Audition Requirements for All Departments.” n.d. NOCCA. (website). Accessed May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/nocca-achievements/. 36

having a regular conversation was more natural flowing and less nerve-wrecking for both parties. This also made space for folks to control the development of their own narrative and the direction it traveled in. The strongest research methods in my work have been lived and embodied. Madison says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If we accept the notion of human beings as homo performans and therefore as a performing species, performance becomes necessary for our survival. This is due to the belief that we come to simultaneously recognize, substantiate, and (re)create ourselves as well as Others through performance.â&#x20AC;?37 (Madison 150) The oral narratives of my peers and other New Orleanians, memories of my time as a student at NOCCA and growing up in the city of New Orleans, Mardi Gras experiences and documentation, poems that I wrote during my high school and college years, and music performed by New Orleans artists play key roles in my research practices. This is a study of ritual performance, soul, inherited knowledge, and communal learning.

Reflection They wanted to know what I thought about this process. But how do you describe an experience? How do you tell someone what the air of reflection tastes like? How do you write down the feeling of a pain 3 generations deep? This ritual was supposed to be my farewell to two chapters of my life that brought me more pain than any one person should have to relive. I thought that by leaving my high school, I could find happiness and certainty in a place far from my home. What I found was much of the same world I left. California was new and distant when I first arrived, but negromancy is not limited to the City of the Dead.

Madison, D. Soyini. Page 150 29

The movie Inception can’t describe what I’ve lived because this wasn’t a dream, and I wasn’t asleep. I refuse to believe that I slept through four years of my life and dreamt about the four years I lived through before I went to sleep. People might never understand the heartbreak I felt when I realized that the ritual I manifested to help generations of Black kids heal from wrongs they never should have had to suffer through, wouldn’t see the light of day. Not on schedule anyways. Correction. Not on my schedule. So who’s time are we working in? The universe holds all of the answers it seems. I came to Stanford and met beautiful people that offered me the support I needed to actualize this truth. Yet, when the time came to show it, there was nothing. The city wasn’t there. Maybe the City called me back home. Maybe somethings are meant to be unearthed only in New Orleans. I started this journey trying to figure out what to say. In the midst of this journey, I couldn’t figure out what not to say. Now that I’ve reached the end of this era of my work, I wish I didn’t anything else to say. The last few pages of this thesis close the chapter of my life where I searched the sky for a sign that I wasn’t crazy. Believing that 2020 was a year of completion, I was willing to bet my degree on it and ended 2019 planting the seeds of what I wanted to become. The work I’ve presented has survived 22 years of Black womanhood and artistry while the world kept spinning by a thread. NOCCA didn’t create negromancy, nor did they invent its weaponization. Black bodies have been murdered and disregarded on cellphone, computer, and television screens across the world. Black spirits have been ripped apart and broken. The Hard Rock Hotel Collapse, COVID-19 pandemic, and resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement could be the only things history remembers of 2020 in New Orleans. Medical, political, and economic violence could be the world’s banner for the year, and I’d remember the pain twice over.

Academically, 2020 should have been a year of celebration for me. Completing performance and written portions of a creative honors thesis, graduating from Stanford University, securing a post-graduate job, and having my own vehicle and place to live were at the top of my list. I still accomplished all of those objectives but having to vacate campus in the middle of the school year in preparation for the largest spreading viral outbreak in a literal hundred years was a lot, even for me. I left my friends turned family at 9 o’clock in the morning knowing that we wouldn’t be standing together in front of a dumpster on the curved parking lot road between Roble and Ujamaa again for years. The vision I spent late nights, early mornings, and countless twilights manifesting would never see the light of day. The journey was for my mind alone, but in true New Orleans fashion, the story has crossed seas. The one unavoidable condition of in-person ritual is the finite nature of that experience. The feelings and reactions can only be felt in that moment. Ideas, though, defy time. Thoughts and memories cannot be confined by time because they aren’t physical objects, but they can still be passed to others. As my ritual grew, I was introduced to both people and concepts by exploring sources, discovering authors, listening to stories, watching art, and living ritual. I talked to my family around the country, community folks back home in New Orleans, and friends and colleagues in the United States of America, Britain, Ireland, and Scotland about theories I generated. Were the original vision of “The City Wasn’t There” to have seen fruition, it would have been perfect. It also would have been a drop of water in the Mississippi. In the form of uncontrollable circumstances, the unpredictable disposition of life forced me to deny myself limits. Pushing myself to keep digging deeper was one of the hardest battles I’ve ever had to fight with myself. But I won. I researched and created theorization that allowed me to share my deeply complex ideas in thorough detail. I believe the original conception of “The City

Wasn’t There” would have been a good product of me succeeding. The thoughts within this document are a reflection of what I have accomplished. I still want to share the in-person “The City Wasn’t There” ritual, and I will share it one day. It’s just more likely to be seen in the City. New Orleans people and Stanford people do not ride on the same tracks. New Orleans language patterns, methods of communication, and priorities differ from Stanford’s, sometimes to a point of chaos. After all the combinations of stories about NOCCA got pulled up in my head, I was able to walk through a wall of my own. By looking past my cloud of frustration, I actually listened to my own story and saw the cyclical abuse of negromancy I had been ignoring. While there were many variations, Black alumni were wearing the same experience skeletons. The specific events somewhat differ, but the layout is the same. My assertions of NOCCA’s injustices have been bold, but they are undeniably rooted in facts. Even with the inconveniences of life, I am still incredibly grateful for the stories I was able to collect. Ceylon, Celine, Prinsey, and Zenobia showcase a breadth of New Orleans backgrounds that holds true to the city’s Black demographics. More importantly, they exhibited a passion and wealth of knowledge that I am blessed to have witnessed. Now that I’m back home, I’ll establish more platforms for the narratives of Black NOCCA former and current students to be heard. A number of alumni, students, and staff expressed interest in sharing stories on the record, but I wasn’t able to document them, and I’d like to change that. Black students will continue to enroll and suffer unnecessary traumas at the school as long as our stories remain unheard.

Conclusion The city of New Orleans is alive to the point where most of us think of the City as an ever-present family member. This city has a personality and attitude with memories and magical traditions. We know what our city feels like and learn to understand her. We speak river height, wind speed, Catholicism, Voodoo, spirit, food, drink, music, and laughter. With all of that inside of us, we know when something isn’t right. The process of manifesting “The City Wasn’t There” began because I was looking for what was lost. All I started with was the desire to change the direction NOCCA had been going in. When I went back to the school before the 2019-2020 Winter Break, I met over 12 Black students in the Musical Theater Department. The ninth grader in me was so happy to see that there were enough Black students that they could befriend each other out of want, not necessity. I smiled because I knew that, if only 2 were cast in a fall production, someone would notice and hear them. However, when I talked to them, I felt like I was actually still in the ninth grade. Their stories aligned with mine, and, I eventually realized, the Negromancy Coil as well. “There was a lot of stuff goin’ on, you know, when we graduated that I still hear about that’s just nonsense, and you wouldn’t even think- believe it,” Ceylon insisted with her hand pressed firmly to her chest.38 “Well I’ll say this one thing,” her twin sister Celine added. “We didn’t have a Black History Month celebration until the students asked for one.” 39 It became clear that NOCCA’s problem requires a two-step solution. Step One is the Removal of Trauma. Individuals that have knowingly caused harm, been notified of harmful actions and continued, insisting on harmful behaviors, encouraging harmful behaviors, or feigning ignorance of harmful behaviors must be removed from the institution. Silence in the

38 39

Seiber, Ceylon. Ceylon Seiber Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. January 20, 2020. Seiber, Celine. Celine Seiber Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. January 20, 2020.

face of anti-blackness is compliance, and children’s well-being cannot be the price that is paid in exchange. Step Two is the Healing and Prevention of Trauma. Increasing diversity amongst students alone will not improve the quality of education at NOCCA. The structural approach to school’s values, thus curriculums, must be redesigned as well. Embrace the genius and skill level required for mastering the inherently Black artistic cultural traditions of New Orleans and teach them as well as the white western artistic techniques in NOCCA’s curriculums. During First Rapids, we figure out that our frustrations and struggles are rooted in the erasure of our cultures for the sake of improving white western technique. We realize that we were being made to believe that our knowledge and abilities from cultural and traditional history were not valid. Class curriculum didn’t teach the history of the city that gave birth to our school. The school’s own founding history and mission aren’t required learning either.iv Instead, we are taught to pursue an insider’s dream from an outsider’s perspective. Our freedom to heal begins once we recognize the techniques we were taught as the tools they are, and our art takes on new forms. We learn that our cultures and traditions can be professional and passionate. By staying true to the spirit of our culture, we are eventually able to blossom and create art that is able to represent our full identities.

Figure 2 NOCCA Achievements. Images from the NOCCA Achievements page of the school’s website for the years 1973-2000.

The Jazz Department’s private lesson requirement was put into effect the year after I graduated. In high school, we had always talked about how most of the white teachers had a heavy bias in favor of kids that could afford private lessons. Not one of us believed the school would be bold enough to ever put that bias in writing. The requirement is unethical and an insult to the traditions that called for the school’s creation. “Oh yeah. Are you bringing Black people of like a different economic status?” Zenobia questioned.40 In the birthplace of jazz, private lessons are expensive. Black folks in New Orleans disproportionately lack wealth, so this requirement makes the program highly inaccessible for low-income students. The enforcement of this requirement means students without the “proper training” cannot apply for an audition at a high school meant to provide training. I’ve been told that the requirement was put in place because number of applicants for the Jazz Department keeps increasing, and they needed a way to narrow their choices without having to take up so much inperson audition time. While I can understand that there must be hundreds of students in the state pursuing jazz, cutting off access to the students whose culture the school is built on, only feeds a worse problem. It reflects that the school has a preference to white students, often from outside of the city, and wealthy Black folk that aren’t invested in the unconventional traditional knowledge of the city. Mandating a “qualified” jazz instructor teach a student is classist and a clear sign of gentrification. New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, an art form created by Black people, historically passed on through families and informal settings, and rooted in the expressions that cannot be taught formally, only felt. Suggesting that the same methods that have cultivated the jazz artform and that were responsible for bringing jazz to non-Black people are not valid forms

Zeno, Zenobia. Zenobia Zeno Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. February 19, 2020. 35

of education is both racist and toxic. NOCCA’s current curriculum and structural approach are therefore inherently racist with two origins: the societal practice of delegitimizing the contributions of Black cultural traditions and knowledge and the actions of members of NOCCA’s administration and faculty that have knowingly traumatized Black students. Just like technique, negromancy is being used as a tool to control and profit from the struggles and futures of Black folks. Negromancy is not the problem, but institutionally generated trauma at the hand of academic and arts educators is. Negromancy helps Black New Orleans youth channel their ability to adapt to the minimization of their cultural knowledge and overcome the trauma of forcefully affirmed white western concepts. This is to say that as beautiful as the products of Ashé are, negromancy is only supposed to be a protective response. We see in the Negromancy Coil that Black alumni have been able to become successful artists by combining Black New Orleans cultural traditions and histories with white western techniques. So, the solution is simple: skip the trauma and incorporate New Orleans cultural and traditional knowledge into the curriculum for New Orleans artists. The combination of ethnography and white western technique would do more than produce professional and successful artists. It would help nurture healthy and strongly equipped creators of truly beautiful works.

Bibliography “About NOCCA.” n.d. NOCCA (website). Accessed May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/aboutnocca/. Broom, Sarah M. 2019. The Yellow House. Grove Press. Chambliss, Suzanne Michelle Blanchard, "New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: a history in progress" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2307. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2307 Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research.” TDR/The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–56. https://doi.org/10.1162/105420402320980550. Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039. Du Bois, W. E. B., and Jonathan Scott Holloway. The Souls of Black Folk. Vol. First Yale University Press edition. New Haven [Connecticut]: Yale University Press, 2015. https://search-ebscohostcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1000450&site=ehost-live. Evans, Freddi Williams. 2011. Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans. University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “GoNOLA Find: The New Orleans Jazz Market Mural.” 2017. GoNOLA.Com. December 12, 2017. https://gonola.com/things-to-do-in-new-orleans/gonola-find-new-orleans-jazz-market-mural. Hall, Stuart. 1993. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20 (1/2 (51-52)): 104–14. ———. n.d. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular,’” 10.

———. (Ed.). (1997). Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices. London: Sage. Hazzard-Donald, Katrina. Mojo Workin: The Old African American Hoodoo System. 2012. University of Illinois Press. https://web-b-ebscohostcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=d00d179b-6fa8-43bf-8fe4386c1da7e9f9%40sessionmgr103&vid=0&format=EB. Lee, Malcolm D. 2017. Girls Trip. Comedy. Universal Pictures. Madison, D. Soyini. 2005. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1428629&site=ehostlive&authtype=ip,sso&custid=s4392798. Mardi Gras 2020 Season Parades Footage. 2020. New Orleans, LA. Musker, John & Clements, Ron. 2009. Princess and the Frog. Family Animation. Walt Disney Animation Studios. “NOCCA 2020-2021 Audition Requirements for All Departments.” n.d. NOCCA. (website). Accessed May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/nocca-achievements/. “NOCCA Achievements.” n.d. NOCCA (blog). May 6, 2020. https://www.nocca.com/noccaachievements/. “REVIVAL: Millennial Re-Membering in the Afro-NOW” Novemeber 14 - 16, 2020. https://taps.stanford.edu/revival/. Seiber, Celine. Celine Seiber Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. January 20, 2020. Seiber, Ceylon. Ceylon Seiber Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. January 20, 2020.

Simmons, LaKisha Michelle. 2015. Crescent City Girl: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans. Gender and American Culture. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=965079&site=ehostlive&authtype=ip,sso&custid=s4392798. Tabor-Smith, Amara. 2019. REVIVAL: Millennium Re-Membering in the Afro-NOW. Ritual Performance and Dance. https://taps.stanford.edu/revival/. Taylor, Diana. 2006. “Performance and/as History.” TDR (1988-) 50 (1): 67–86. Turner, Richard Brent. 2017. Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans, New Edition: After Hurricane Katrina. Vol. New edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1421659&site=ehostlive&authtype=ip,sso&custid=s4392798. Walker, Daniel E. 2004a. “Imagining the African/Imagining Blackness.” In No More, No More, NED-New edition, 105–32. Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsm5m.7. Walker, Prinsey. Prinsey Walker Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. February 6, 2020. Zeno, Zenobia. Zenobia Zeno Oral Narrative. Interview by Author. February 19, 2020. Negromancy can apply in areas other than the arts, but I haven’t applied my research methodologies outside of the arts. Yet. ii Not all Black students pursue the arts professionally after high school. There are also different ways students can continue being artists other than going to college for art (ie. major or conservatory). Many students decide the structure of arts education at NOCCA isn’t a healthy structure for them to create art and go straight into working in their preferred industry. iii The admission decision for Asali’s son has been intentionally withheld. If he wasn’t accepted, then he was another victim of NOCCA’s anti-black regulations. If he was accepted, he shouldn’t be used as some redemption story of overcoming NOCCA’s racist system. iv It wasn’t until I was writing this thesis that I learned the school’s website has a page dedicated to its accomplishments that is organized by era. The sections for 2000-2010 and 2010-Present showcase a wide variety of accomplishments incorporating arts and academic success. The three sections for 1973-1980, 1980-1990, and 19902000 (the founding years and years where the school was a predominantly Black public school) are left minimal and blank. i