Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

5/29/2022

One of Luther E. Vann’s greatest sources of artistic inspiration was the music of jazz. Viewers of his paintings sometimes attempt to describe a certain fusion of impressionistic and expressionistic energy experienced when looking at his work. It may very well be the same energy the painter experienced when imagining himself in a room with Thelonious Monk seated at one piano and himself at another, the two of them trading riffs and solos “straight with no chaser.”

At the awards ceremony held in the Jepson Center for the Arts, where Vann was recognized as the Telfair Museum Juneteenth Artist of the Year 2015, former Savannah State University radio station manager and Coastal Jazz Association president Theron A. “Ike” Carter spoke of the painter’s passion for the music. He recalled with some pride how Vann once said part of the reason he felt he could remain in Savannah after years of living in New York was because he had heard Carter play Monk's "Coming On The Hudson" on one his broadcasts.

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

During his stewardship over radio station WHCJ 90.3-FM for more than two decades, Carter became what might be described as a Jazz Griot. He consistently promoted jazz as African America’s “classical music” in a variety of shows, including: Impressions, Jazz by Popular Demand, Masters of the Art, Outside the Box, and Listen Here.

In fact, through the accumulated treasury of transmissions documenting the personalities, moments, instruments, and movements that composed the history of African-American classical music, Vann could do more than commune with Thelonious Monk as an influential muse. He could hang out via the southern airwaves with jazz masters like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louie “Satchmo’ Armstrong, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker,” “Sassy” Sarah Vaughn, and Nina Simone as peers providing reassurance from another era.

Screenshot of a Google search result for books exemplifying ekphrasis, or collections of poetry based on visual art, placing Luther E. Vann's and Aberjhani's ELEMENTAL at the top of the list.

Moreover, upon the artist’s passing, Carter dedicated a special broadcast of Listen Here to Vann. The show’s format follows that of a round-table discussion in which guests share and comment on favorite jazz recordings. Participants in the tribute to Vann included painter Suzanne Jackson, sculptor Jerome Meadows, and Lisa Jackson.
Suzanne Jackson recalled first meeting Vann in New York at a gallery where they had work in the same show. Later, they were equally surprised to learn both had relocated to Savannah.
“I believe people,” said Ms. Jackson, “are going to be very grateful to Luther for painting scenes in Savannah that no longer exist.” (Check out: Suzannian Algorithm Finger-Painted on an Abstract Wall)

The music generally provided a Harlem-New-York-City atmosphere in the comfort of his studio (first maintained inside his home and later constructed as the infamous Barn behind it). As he had done while growing up, he could once again combine creative input from the North and the South within his singular being and transfer vibrant interpretations of the experience directly onto canvas. There are some direct homages to music in the pages of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love––for example “Christ Listening to Stereo,” “Night Dance,” and “Musical Delight”–– but it is more evident in the 2011 exhibition, Songs of My People.

Cultivating Individual Distinction

What makes any artist exceptionally notable are not outstanding influences or even history-shaping movements with which one might be associated. Those elements play their part but individual distinction derives from how an artist combines different external components with personal experience to communicate statements endowed with elevated meanings.

The different meanings that color images created by Luther E. Vann are not always apparent. That is both as he intended it to be, and for him, the only way it could be.

He generally advised people to spend time with art––not just his but that of any serious artist––and allow it to possibly introduce them to a new experience or empower them in unexpected ways. That is exactly what different forms of inspired expression did for him throughout his life. Those who have collected his work or viewed it in exhibitions over the years have often validated Vann’s words with their own comments. Newcomers to his painted multiverse could find themselves doing the same.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

Marking a Savannah Milestone
The 2017 Rise of Multicultural Voices
Ukraine, Russia, and the Art of Being Human
Discovering the Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man
Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to a Black Poet in America
Commemorating 100th Anniversary of Black Wall Street Riots

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National Poetry Month 2022: Taking Flight on Wings of Early Morning Light

4/2/2022

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The late Luther E. Vann (Dec 2, 1937–April 6, 2016) and I worked as hard as we did to complete ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, because we hoped the end results would help inspire people to employ healing creative vision, rather than destructive violence, to resolve various forms of conflict. I’ve thought about that a lot since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine. I thought about it further after seeing beloved actor Will Smith’s now forever-infamous assault upon comedian Chris Rock during the live broadcast of the 2022 Academy Awards. (Will Smith since then has reportedly resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)

The poem below, “Wings of Early Morning Light,” was published in ELEMENTAL and I am posting it at this time for several reasons. One is to celebrate National Poetry Month 2022. Another is to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Luther’s death. It is also to continue the Poems for Ukraine series begun with Angel of War and the Year 2022. And, finally, the fourth is to reaffirm at a time when the world can use such reaffirmations, ELEMENTAL’s major themes: creative problem-solving respectful of life as innately sacred, mindfulness strengthened by compassion, and coexistence anchored by the power of illuminated love.

The first public announcement that the late artist Luther E. Vann and author Aberjhani had begun working on ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, appeared in the former weekly Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) Newspaper called The Georgia Guardian on June 25, 1993.

Wings of Early Morning Light

Gliding above the ruins of the world’s broken soul
destruction and mutation speak in parables of the
ignoble history that dragged us here, and glittery
prophecies promising kingdoms and glories to come.

A man traveling on wings of early morning light
(this man, that man, the man that a woman is)
suddenly captivated by a group of children gathered
around a fire. Away from this circle an infant
pinned to an oak tree, knives and daggers crucifying
every possibility it managed to bring to this world.

“We’ve learned,” said an elder child,
“to rid ourselves of life before it can hurt us
too bad. That way we hurry up to the next existence
where beauty hopefully will join us.”

“But do you pray before you act? Or have you
taken barbarism for your imam and your prophet?”

“Prayer is a chasm of delusion for the hopeless.
Wouldn’t you agree our good wise brother?”

“No, I would not little brother.”

A volley of blades and arrows cripple his flight.
The man traveling on wings of early morning light
gathers into his soul visions of exultant sorrow
and sorrowful joy. From his spirit blood drops
like petals of night and bright crimson rapture.

The rocks below split like ancient wombs opening
to the language of an unwritten history, to the
lights and music of a city we’ve yet to create.
Six billion people shout one new soul into the universe.
Dawn opens the sky like prayers from a god just waking up.
(from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love)

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on National Poetry Month and War in Ukraine
Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War Poem with Video
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Angel of Peace 2022
Ukraine, Russia, and the Art of Being Human
Angel of War and the Year 2022
Voices of Poets on War and Peace

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Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Race Riot

5/16/2021

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While the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, which the late Dr. Clement Alexander Price referred to as “that most brilliantly lit terrain,” has been rightly celebrated as the focal point of the Harlem Renaissance, there were a number of other communities where African Africans managed to thrive during the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s. One such community was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and May/June 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of its racially-motivated destruction.

This commemoration is in honor of those Black strivers whose lives and homes were demolished by hate but whose legacy still inspires.

Revelation of a Tragedy

What is now described as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 is something I knew nothing about until I began conducting research on an article about Tulsa for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. In the course of that research, I was fortunate to connect and correspond with one Dr. Gregory E. Brown. At the time, Dr. Brown was director of an organization called the Black Holocaust Society and described himself as “The Angry Black Man.” He made me aware of America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, founded in 1984 by lynching survivor Dr. James Cameron.

He also pointed me towards a cache of images in the public domain which had been culled from “movie reels in the National Archives” and other photographs previously collected by Bob Hower, author of Angels of Mercy (a book on the Red Cross’s response to the riots).

Visiting Dr. Brown’s Black Holocaust Society website while working on the encyclopedia in 2002, I was stunned to read this statement: “Between 1824 and 1951 there were over 300 events classified as ‘White Race Riots’ in which entire white communities turned on Black Americans and destroyed entire Black communities and murdered Blacks in mass. There were 26 such major events in major cities across the US during the summer of 1919 alone. This period has been tagged by historians as ‘The Red Summer of 1919’ because the events all happened from May to October of that year and the blood of their victims literally painted the streets of America.”

No less stunning were the images he sent me of charred bodies, bombed buildings, and Black people standing or sitting outside as they wondered what to do next. How could something so monumental have been omitted from the classes on American history I had taken in high school and college?

That I had been selected to co-author (with Sandra L. West) Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, and the article on Tulsa fallen into a section for which I was responsible, made me feel obligated to make sure the massacre could never be forgotten again. This is a short excerpt on what made the community so exceptional:

“Prior to the massive waves of African Americans exiting the South to head North, many had been lured to the state of Oklahoma as early as the end of the 19th century in hopes of cashing in on its growing oil industry. By 1921, the state could boast the distinction of having more than two dozen towns populated and governed by blacks. Within Tulsa, approximately 15,000 African Americans made up the city’s district of Greenwood. Forced by segregation to rely upon their own means and resources, the citizens of the community became so successful that the district became known as ‘Black Wall Street.’

“Despite the active presence of the Ku Klux Klan, frequent lynchings and regular ‘whipping parties’ during which Blacks were assaulted for sport, Greenwood maintained 600 businesses, a post office, a hospital, 21 restaurants, a library, a line of buses, a bank, two movie theaters, 21 churches and 30 grocery stores. Jazz and other forms of African American music was a strong part of the community’s culture…” (Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Facts on File/Infobase Publishing)

An Expanding Black Wall Street Film Archive

Since the publication of the first edition of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance in 2003, a number of important completed and projected film projects have helped raise awareness about the destruction of Black Wall Street. Among the most acclaimed is the HBO TV mini-series The Watchmen (2019), for which actress/director Regina King won a 2018 Emmy Award.

Other film projects ensuring the massacre and its consequences are never forgotten are: Resurrecting Black Wall Street (2015), Greenwood: 13 Hours (2017 short film), Black Wall Street Burning (2020), Dreamland: The Rise and Fall of Black Wall Street (documentary announced in 2020), and Black Wall Street: An American Nightmare (2021).

A thorough documentation of the 1921 Tulsa riots is only one benefit of the media now devoted to them. Another is the opportunity they provide to study how and why residents of an American city reached such an explosive deadly boiling point. Much of it, we know, had to do with both fear and envy of the economic progress which African Americans were making in Tulsa at the time.

It matters because even though we cannot, in 2021, point to the destruction of a single community of African Americans spanning blocks within a specific US city, the world has borne witness repeatedly to African Americans killed by White police officers in situations which did not have to end with their deaths. Similar hate-fueled incidents have happened in regard to Latinos/Latinxs and Asian Americans as America transitions from a country dominated by a White population to one with a larger population of diverse “minority” groups. The change, clearly, is not one to which many Whites have been adjusting calmly.

Just as the social customs and official laws of the Jim Crow segregation era contributed to the violence of The Red Summer of 1919 and the Black Wall Street massacre two years later, so have various legislative policies and racial biases contributed to the violent deaths of African Americans over the past two decades. Bearing that in mind, it may be that this 100th anniversary of Tulsa’s deadly riot should commemorate something more than the pain and horror of what occurred. Maybe it could serve as a renewed commitment to making good on America’s promise to provide equal opportunities for all its increasingly-diverse citizens. It might also help us to remember, during this time when wars and rumors of wars once again dominate news headlines, we can gain a lot more striving for harmonious coexistence than we can by giving in to hate-filled rage and fear-driven ignorance.

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

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Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

4/17/2021

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With April 2021 being the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month, it is also the perfect time to share a shortened re-post of the article ‘Tis the Season for the Magic of Poetry Part 2: Angels and Poets. It was first published in 2014 as part of a series for my AXS National African-American Cultural Arts column.

When considering the recent shooting deaths of 13-year-old Adam Toledo and 20-year-old Daunte Wright, as well as mass shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Atlanta, Georgia, poetry might seem to lack any real kind of serious significance in 2021. But as pointed out in the original first part of this series: One important reason poetry matters is because it often helps to expand humanity’s capacity for putting brutal and sublime experiences alike into usable, meaningful, contexts.

A Significant Utilitarian Role

The publication of an anthology such as Black Gold (compiled and edited by the late Ja A. Jahannes) is always an important event for a number of reasons. For one, it contributes to the preservation of a powerful literary tradition which has served to document the diverse poetic voices of different eras. Another is because it helps secure a niche market known to make traditional publishers somewhat nervous from a business perspective when it comes to investing in that same market. However, this being the digitalized information age, new traditions have formed in which established poetry organizations such as the Academy of American Poets will email subscribers poems on a daily basis.

In addition, online publications like Poetry Life and Times, edited by Robin Ouzman Hislop, publish contemporary poets on a fairly regular weekly to biweekly basis. Moreover, its sister digital venue Poetry Lifetimes, edited by Sara Russell, delivers poetry titles and headlines on a daily basis via the popular Paper.li content aggregation platform. Each of these, and others like them, demonstrates the significant cultural and utilitarian role that poetry continues to play in the lives of numerous individuals, organizations, and communities.

Angels and Poets

The book The River of Winged Dreams has gained some popularity since its publication in 2010 partly because more than half a dozen of the poems take their themes, and sometimes titles, from different holidays and other special occasions. The following, however, is presented at this time for its evocation of grace and compassion, two of humanity’s better qualities which even those who are fairly humbug on the holidays can appreciate when extended to them:

The Poet-Angels Who Came to Dinner
(from The River of Winged Dreams)

1.
Neither had been invited but both were welcomed.
They spoke through wordless intuition, cool nods of
“Peace-Be-Still,” and, “As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life.”
Their quiet burned my brain with inklings of wonders
to come––as I set my table with what I had:
half of a cheese sandwich left over from a lucky day.

2.
From the eyes of one, my meager offering drew
liquid letters and symbols that splashed into goblets
until they overflowed with flavors of wine.
The second stranger laughed. As he howled, their
sorrow and their joy set my table anew—laid it heavy
with glazed yams, marinated dreams, and aromatic breads.

3.
Then their wings spread and revealed feathers painted
with the names and words of poets known and unknown.
Echoes of vows and prayers exploded blinding songs of light.
By the time I could see again, my guests had gone.
I stared at the bountiful table they left, too stuffed
with awe, to feast on the generosity of their grace.

4.
A knock at the door made me think they’d returned.
It was instead an old grandfather, homeless, with three
children whose parents had been lost to war and disregard.

They had not been invited but all were welcomed.
I nodded through tears of wordless intuition:
“Peace-Be-Still,” and, “As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life.”

Also Check Out for National Poetry Month 2021:
‘Talks Between My Pen & Muse’ An Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole
Where to Find Poetry Fine Art Poster

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Rediscovering the Writings of Kahlil Gibran in the Age of COVID-19

1/3/2021

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(“Blossoms of Freedom for Kahlil” art graphic by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions C2021)

All controversies and debates over wearing face masks to the side, medical science played a powerful role in the ability of people around the world to survive the tumultuous rollercoaster of cataclysmic events now forever known as the year 2020. Although less spectacular when it came to taking over news headlines, the comfort provided by the timeless voices of cherished literary heroes also helped us endure mandated and self-imposed quarantines. Included among such voices was that of the Lebanese-American poet and artist Khalil Gibran (January 6, 1883 - April 10, 1931).

That is not at all surprising considering how generations continue to discover and rediscover the value of Gibran’s shared insights on such subjects as: Pain, Death, Work, Teaching, Joy, and Sorrow. His words embroider with uncommon wisdom and beauty the fabric of life as experienced on levels which transcend single personalities or cultures.

Two Important Titles

With the approach of the 100th anniversary of his classic bestselling book, THE PROPHET (first published in 1923), a number of works by and/or about Gibran were republished this past year. Two of the most important were: Beloved Prophet 2020, The Abridged Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell Her Private Journals; plus, And the Prophet Said: Kahlil Gibran's Classic Text with Newly Discovered Writings, both edited by Dalton Hilu Einhorn. (My own Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah published in 2019 includes a chapter on Gibran and the artists Claude Monet and Luther E. Vann as featured at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia.)

In his foreword to And the Prophet Said, poet Daniel Ladinsky describes the Arabic word “wali” as one which has “a range of meanings: custodian, protector, helper, friend of the Beloved, friend of all, or saint.” He then adds: “A book can become a wali.” It was my good fortune many years ago while working as a bookseller to come across a 11th-edition copy of Beloved Prophet. It became for me a much-treasured wali. I later, around 2008, published a review of it on Amazon (it can now be read on Goodreads). Several years after that, I was pleasantly surprised to receive the following inquiry about it:

Dear Aberjhani, you posted a review on Amazon of Beloved Prophet edited by Virginia Hilu. Virginia Hilu was my mother, and she died at a young age when I was very young. I know very little about this book and wondered if you could share with me your impression on what she did and what was significant about her book. Thanks!

--Dalton Einhorn

The Letter that Became an Essay

Einhorn’s request made me realize how important the book was not only to me but within the expanded context of several important legacies defined by creative spiritual visions of art and love. With that in mind, I responded to his short query with a longer letter which evolved into a personal essay:

Hello Dalton Einhorn--

Sharing my impressions of the full implications of what your mother accomplished with Beloved Prophet would require much more than a single email response. As it is, you might want to print this out and read it at your leisure.

Beloved Prophet’s impact carries a definitive weight in several important areas, including that of my personal life. I first came across the book at a public library in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where I was working on a novel and job-hunting around 1988, shortly after leaving the Air Force. I didn’t get a chance to finish reading it at that time because a family emergency forced me to move back to Savannah. But then more than half a decade later I was working as the sales floor manager for Books A Million and discovered a hardback edition of the book on the bottom shelf of one of our bargain tables. This amazing find came at an extremely important time in my life because Savannah was not where I wanted to be, but then I got to finish reading the book I had started in Fort Lauderdale and toward its end discovered Mary Haskell had also returned to Savannah, and her letters to Gibran from the city along with his to her gave me a sense of purpose and destiny for being there. It also gave me a direct cultural connection to Gibran.

Although there are no references that I recall in Beloved Prophet to Mary Haskell donating to Savannah’s Telfair Museum the largest collection of drawings by Gibran possessed by any American museum, (perhaps of any period) she did in fact do exactly that. Such a collection would obviously represent a major prize for any museum and when scholars lecture on it, they invariably reference Beloved Prophet to verify and even sanctify, if you will, the Savannah/Kahlil Gibran connection. The deluxe brochure entitled “To Discover Beauty, the Art of Kahlil Gibran” begins with one of the letters from Mary Haskell taken from the book. And the footnotes at the end of the brochure’s opening essay do acknowledge the book with your mother’s name in 4 out of 7 notes.

To put the historical literary impact of Beloved Prophet in proper perspective, I believe one has to recognize that Gibran’s works in the mid-twentieth century, in both the Arabic and English-speaking world, were for many people not just books of literary excellence but spiritual/philosophical texts they employed to help them achieve personal spiritual integrity. In short, he really was a prophet/saint whom they placed beyond human passions and many of those who wrote about him before the publication of Beloved Prophet placed any accounts of would-be romantic relationships in this context as well. Your mother may not have been the one to first discover the letters themselves but her book very gently and yet very firmly destroyed the image of Gibran as a spiritual ascetic who had risen completely above earthly needs or desires––even though many still prefer denial over the reality–– and gave the world the authentic man as well as the real Mary Haskell. Yet I suspect her purpose was larger than this.

The American mind has generally been one in which spirituality and sexuality generated personal ambivalence and conflict. It seems to me that Virginia Hilu wanted to help resolve the conflict by presenting one of the most iconic spiritual literary figures along with one of the most revered educators and philanthropists as human beings who in one sense indulged their passions while in another balanced and channeled their energies to achieve something greater than temporary satisfaction.

Moreover, her portrait of Haskell as a woman in command of the sexual, intellectual, and social choices that shaped her life even as she empowered the life of a major creative artist, a portrait sculpted from the letters she chose and sometimes “telescoped to one or two pages,” is a major contribution to American women’s biography. In more practical terms, a lot of biographers and scholars knew nothing about these letters and diaries until your mother revealed their existence in book form and it’s now virtually impossible for anyone to attempt a serious biography of Gibran without reference to them.

At the time that I acquired my 11th edition copy of the book, around 1995, the resurgence of “New Age” ideology had become strong enough that much of it began to blend into popular culture and Gibran was often cited as one of the early authors of such metaphysical perspectives in America. I happened to be writing in those years a column called Visionary Vibes and Beloved Prophet actually helped me to clarify some of the ideas and issues I addressed in different installments. Ironically, people who attended my open mic poetry readings often commented that some of my poems reminded them of Gibran when the truth is my poetry at that time was more heavily influenced by Rumi and it was my prose that was more influenced by Gibran’s and Mary Haskell’s voices speaking through the letters in Beloved Prophet. If anyone (You?) chooses to republish a hardback edition of Beloved Prophet, I hope you will consider adding an index–– that would be extremely helpful.

Take care,
Aberjhani

In Conclusion

While Einhorn’s Beloved Prophet 2020 has been abridged to accommodate contemporary reading tastes, his centennial edition of The Prophet has been expanded in a way that intensifies the text of the original. Both represent important extensions of the legacies previously noted. Possibly of greatest significance in regard to Beloved Prophet 2020 is the portrait it provides at this time in history of two people whose love and compassion for each other served as a kind of shelter and empowerment when desperately needed. More than a few souls on different continents can attest to the value of such life-saving connections during the age of COVID-19.

Aberjhani

Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

Cultivating Individual Distinction

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

National Poetry Month 2022: Taking Flight on Wings of Early Morning Light

Wings of Early Morning Light

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Race Riot

Revelation of a Tragedy

An Expanding Black Wall Street Film Archive

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact the Author at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

A Significant Utilitarian Role

Angels and Poets

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Rediscovering the Writings of Kahlil Gibran in the Age of COVID-19

Two Important Titles

The Letter that Became an Essay

In Conclusion

Aberjhani

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

​Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

​Cultivating Individual Distinction

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

National Poetry Month 2022: Taking Flight on Wings of Early Morning Light

​Wings of Early Morning Light

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Race Riot

​Revelation of a Tragedy

​An Expanding Black Wall Street Film Archive

AberjhaniCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact the Author at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Reclaiming the Magic of Poetry in a 2021 Time Such as This

​A Significant Utilitarian Role

Angels and Poets

AberjhaniCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Rediscovering the Writings of Kahlil Gibran in the Age of COVID-19

Two Important Titles

​The Letter that Became an Essay

​In Conclusion

Aberjhani

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

Cultivating Individual Distinction

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Wings of Early Morning Light

Revelation of a Tragedy

An Expanding Black Wall Street Film Archive

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

A Significant Utilitarian Role

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

The Letter that Became an Essay

In Conclusion