Concerts & Events

Join us for the 2nd annual Black History Future Folk Symposium at Old Town School. The event aims to foster open, accessible, and rigorous discussions about the intersections of Black history, liberated futures, and folk practices. Through presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and performance, we will explore Black carnival traditions by revisiting our Global Carnival program that was presented at Millennium Park in September 2024.

Keynote by Makeda Thomas

When Dolls Dance: Black Motherhood, Masquerade, and the Choreographies of Refusal

“When Dolls Dance” explores the radical performance and embodied aesthetics of Baby Doll masquerade in Trinidad Carnival. Drawing from Black feminist performance studies, diasporic imaginaries, and decolonial methodologies, this presentation examines how the Baby Doll mas enacts, resists, and redefines Black maternity as a site of agency, defiance, and transformation. Rooted in Tony Hall's Jouvay Process, embodied ritual, and spectral memory, “When Dolls Dance” invokes the jamette women of Trinidad, the Baby Dolls of New Orleans, and the transgressive, fugitive maternal figures of history and myth. This presentation traces how the Belmont Baby Dolls reimagine mas as a site of unruly femininities, queer futurities, and supernatural intentionality—a practice of care, pleasure, and subversion that contests the colonial archive's erasures.Through archival recovery, performance ethnography, and embodied storytelling, this presentation foregrounds the Baby Doll's capacity to hold space for Black feminist refusal, the politics of belonging, and speculative visioning in diasporic performance traditions. Whether through public provocation or the intimate invocation of spirit dolls, Baby Doll mas navigates the intersections of motherhood, masquerade, and memory, staging a performance of survival, possibility, and radical self-making.

From Second Line to Mardi Gras: The Brass Band Continuum

This interactive session will explore brass band music and parade culture from New Orleans to Chicago. Learn about the history and evolution of New Orleans-style brass band music, and how the sonic tradition has influenced a local movement that is led by the Windy City Ramblers.

Memory Work: Exploring the Global Carnival Archive

This multimedia conversation will feature videographer Jonathan Woods and photographer Tafari Melisizwe. Both artists documented the Global Carnival event at Millenium Park. The discussion will include video clips and images that stitch together the origin, impact, and landscape of Global Carnival.

Carnival Dance Vocabulary: Playing Mas with Soca Sensibilities

Explore how dance, sound, and the sartorial converge to create the Trinidadian carnival tradition, often called the “Greatest Show on Earth!” Team Jukeboxx will transport you to the “road” for an immersive corporeal experience filled with soca, calypso, and masquerade brilliance.

Global Carnival Redux Panel

Join us for a vibrant exchange between panelists who contributed to the Global Carnival program, including Stacy Letrice (Team Jukeboxx), Mario Abney (Windy City Ramblers), Aaliyah Christina (Praise Mother), and Desmond Owusu (Azania Drum). This roundtable will engage with: What made Global Carnival interesting or memorable for you? How was Global Carnival different from previous celebrations produced in Chicago? How was this celebration of carnival unique to Chicago, and why? What are the deeper, rhizomic cultural connections that may not be apparent?