Wrote “Another Starr Production: The Time at 40” for Rock and Roll Globe
In this article, “Another Starr Production: The Time at 40,” for Rock and Roll Globe, I am grateful for the opportunity to further reflect beyond the hilarious #1plusplus1is3 symposium roundtable about 40 years of The Time’s debut featuring Richard Cole, Eloy Lasanta AKA Prince’s Friend, Marc Wiggins AKA Big Sexy, Ricky Wyatt & Michael Dean of the Podcast on Prince!
Contributed to Jill Jones #PrinceTwitterThread
The #PrinceTwitterThread is a curated series by Edgar Kruize and Deejay UMB. Jill Jones was their 5th #PrinceTwitterThread. De Angela was honored and grateful to be able to discuss sampling Jill Jones: https://twitter.com/polishedsolid/status/1418650050801061895.
IF you want to read this Twitter Thread on one web page instead, here you go. To read previous #PrinceTwitterThread series, visit Edgar Kruize’s purplepicks.net.
Moderated & Designed Flyers for IASPM-US Research Seminar
On June 7, 2021, I moderated a one-hour, virtual, IASPM-US Research Seminar, “Say It Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies.” The seminar featured presentations by Drs. Brittnay L. Proctor, Matthew D. Morrison, Elliott H. Powell, Kimberly R. Mack, and Daphne A. Brooks about their respective research / book projects in Black music studies, followed by a Q&A.
I also designed the event flyers for various social media platforms.
Here are a couple of the flyers De Angela designed in reverence to the original James Brown “Say It Loud” promotional buttons.
Presented & Moderated at Prince 78-88 Conference
On 3 June 2021, De Angela presented, "Conjuring The Prince Mystique" at the virtual 3-day Prince 78-88: The First Decade, a 2-day Interdisciplinary Conference, 3-5 June 2021, organized by Dr. Kirsty Fairclough, Dr. Mike Alleyne, and Kristen Zschomler. She also moderated the excellent Under The Cherry Moon panel, also on 3 June 2021.
Presentation Abstract:
Before the symbol and the color purple, Prince’s key visual signatures were the trench coat and smoke. Both were prevalent beginning with Dirty Mind and reaching their peak during the Controversy and 1999 eras. This talk will concentrate primarily on how the ubiquitousness of smoke from fog machines, combined with light, present in music videos and album art would come to symbolize how Prince was ultimately evoked–mysterious, otherworldly, and bewitching.
Please note that the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson is not affiliated, associated or connected with the Prince 78-88 conference, nor has it endorsed or sponsored it. Further, the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson has not licensed any of its intellectual property to the organizers or speakers.
Presented at Pop Conference 2021
C. Liegh McInnis, Kamilah Cummings & De Angela presented a panel, Prince: Disrupting Notions of Blackness, at Pop Convergence 2021 on Friday, 23 April 2021. Our panel was moderated by Michaelangelo Matos.
Pop Conference 2021— the longest-running music writing and pop music studies conference of its kind—brought together the world’s leading pop scholars, journalists, writers, musicians for three days of virtual events exploring pop music’s role in mirroring and shaping one of the most chaotic and disruptive moments in modern global history, from 22 to 25 April 2021. The conference was hosted by NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and Tisch School of the Arts and was free and open to the public.
De Angela presented "Controversy: The Blueprint of Prince’s Musical Transformation and Disruption." Kamilah Cummings presented “Purple, Lace, & Race: Prince and the Art of Protest.” C. Liegh McInnis presented “The Art of Double Disruption: How Prince Worked in the Tradition of Jean Toomer and Richard Wright to Rebel Simultaneously against White Supremacy and Black Self-Limitation.”
Our Panel Description:
Prince’s legacy as a Pop music icon is undisputed. His influence on popular culture is endless. In addition to being one of the greatest entertainers of all time, he was a groundbreaking songwriter, musician, arranger, composer, producer, and entrepreneur. Prince was also the ultimate disruptor. In a career that spanned five decades, Prince challenged systems, spaces, and sounds. In the process, he disrupted widely held notions about what it meant to be a black artist, activist, and, ultimately, a black person in a society that remains at odds with its own concepts of blackness, freedom, and equality. Through analysis of his music, lyrics, and individual acts of protest, this panel seeks to expand the discussion of Prince’s legacy by examining his role as a disruptor.
My Presentation Abstract:
In the 15 November 1981 Baltimore Sun article, "Whites Are Missing Good Rock By Blacks," Geoffrey Himes proclaimed, "As young and talented as Prince is, he has a better opportunity to demolish the rules about black rock 'n' rollers than anyone else." Not only did he accomplish this three years later at the pinnacle of his commercial success with 1984's Purple Rain film and its accompanying soundtrack, but Prince would also go on to create a genre of music labeled the "Minneapolis Sound." However, by 1988's critical masterpiece Sign O' The Times, Prince was his own genre, often copied, but never duplicated.
While Sign O' The Times would encapsulate everything Prince was as a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer, the linchpin of Prince's discography is 1981's Controversy. The album is the perfect amalgamation of Prince as a disruptor. Although its predecessor 1981's Dirty Mind would shock fans and critics alike with Prince's sexual explicitness and sociopolitical awareness, while adopting punk's aesthetics and ideologies, Controversy is where all the themes that Prince would revisit throughout the rest of his career–race, sex, gender, politics, spirituality, duality, and love—and a bricolage of musical genres–rock, pop, soul, r&b, new wave, and rockabilly—were woven together in a quilt of his authentic voice and sonic palette.
In this talk, the deconstruction of Controversy reveals that the album as a whole would ultimately anchor the trajectory of Prince's career, while also serving as the blueprint of constant transformation and disruption for the rest of it.
Featured in an article written by Jon Bream for Minneapolis’ Star Tribune
I was beyond thrilled to be featured in this article, “Prince: Five Years Later,” written by the one and only Jon Bream in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune on 18 April 2021. Jon Bream covered Prince's career from the very beginning. He's been writing about Prince for almost 40 years. I've read so many Jon Bream articles over the DECADES that it's totally surreal to see my name in one. His book was the very first Prince book that I purchased in real-time. So to say that this was a big deal is an understatement.
There are a couple of corrections I need to make to the article. While I have spent a lot of my own money on my Prince symposia and other events, I personally haven’t spent $10K. If you’ve ever put on an in-person event, you should understand how costly they can get. I ask several, generous NYU sponsors for money in order to make these events happen. I am EXTREMELY grateful for their continued support. I couldn’t do these symposia without them. Otherwise, I would definitely have to start charging.
While I want to keep these events FREE as long as I can, they are not cheap, not even the virtual ones. They come with a lot of sacrifices, particularly from the speakers. The biggest sacrifice being their time. They spend hours upon hours, having to field A LOT of email or slack messages, texts, or phone calls, crafting their presentations, showing up for the tech checks (even though despite tech checks, tech issues still arise), getting themselves ready and finally participating! Again, I am EXTREMELY grateful for their continued support. There would be no symposia and other events without the speakers.
I listened to Dirty Mind on the floor of my Aunt's house, not my grandmothers’. However, even more important than that, it was a vinyl record, as opposed to a cassette :)
Even though I did purchase 1999 on cassette, twice, I played the first cassette so much that the tape shredded. However, I eventually got the vinyl. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson, but I also bought a cassette of Graffiti Bridge, which I still possess as I am an archivist as Steven G. Fullwood would want me to say.
If you watch this 6 minute video which was filmed in MPLS at the Guthrie Theater in 2016 about my record collecting habits for the EYEO Festival, hopefully, you'll understand my love of vinyl and why that distinction is important to me.
Eyeo 2016 Ignite! – De Angela Duff from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.
This talk is not very representative of my normal delivery as this was super stressful. I don't know if you know about the ignite (aka Pecha Kucha) talk format but the slides advance automatically: 20 slides, 15 seconds each... So I was trying to make sure I said everything I wanted to say before I ran out of time. I'm much calmer and measured when giving “normal” talks.
Even though I did purchase 1999 on cassette, twice, because I played the first cassette so much that the tape shredded. However, I eventually got the vinyl. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson, but I also bought a cassette of Graffiti Bridge, which I still possess as I am an archivist as Steven G. Fullwood would want me to say.
Words fail to express how grateful I am for Jon Bream’s Prince coverage over the years and even now! A mere, “Thank you so very much, Jon Bream!” will have to suffice!
Contributed to Prince Five Years Later on soulhead.com
De Angela was honored to be featured in the article, “Five Years Later: Members of The Prince Community Reflect,” by Miles Marshall Lewis on soulhead.com!
Troy Gua (pop conceptualist, creator of Le Petit Prince art project), KaNisa Williams aka Darling Nisi (creator-host of the Muse 2 the Pharaoh podcast), Tonya Giddens (creator of the Purple Paisley Brunch), Michael A. Gonzales (cultural critic), and Priana Aplin (superstar Prince fam) were also featured.
Interviewed on BBC Manchester Radio about Prince
On 18 April 2021, De Angela was interviewed by Karen Gabay for The People on BBC Manchester Radio about Prince, five years later.
Interviewed on WNYC's The Takeway about Prince
On 12 April 2021, De Angela appeared in a short segment on The Takeaway to discuss Prince's Welcome 2 America new album release. Massive thanks to WNYC for the invitation!
You can listen here: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/how-previously-unreleased-album-could-impact-princes-legacy
The Eddie Oliver Entrepreneurship Spirit Award
Every year since 2008, my family and I have sponsored a small monetary, annual award, The Eddie Oliver Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, for a student in honor of my late grandfather, Eddie Oliver (1924-2006). We have awarded $5,800 to student recipients, so far.
Integrated Design & Media (IDM), NYU Tandon, Brooklyn, NY
Shipon Eunus, 2022
Aryan Easwaran, 2021
Lucas White, 2020
Alexis Zerafa, 2018
B. Edan McDevitt, 2017
Matthew Conto, 2016
Multimedia, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Adam Samson, 2015
Kenny Guglielmino, 2014
Terry DiFeliciantonio, 2013
John Bonaccorsi, 2012
John Waller, 2011
Josh Johnson, 2010
Matt Trigaux, 2009
Travis Mullen, 2008
My grandfather was an entrepreneur, but moreso he believed in having a vision and making things happen! He and his brother built the house (including all the electrical and plumbing) that my grandmother lived in until her passing in 2014. My grandparent's first vehicle was not a car, but a dump truck so that my grandfather could make additional money beyond what he was making as a truck driver. In the 1960s, he created "Eddie's Snack Bar," which was a traveling convenience store that my late uncle, Eddie Jr. ran. When he retired from being a truck driver in 1986, he founded "Eddie's Recycling," a recycling center in Eutaw, Alabama that my grandmother and Uncle Carl ran until 2015. This is only a small sampling of what my grandfather accomplished without ever finishing high school. He always had a plan for the future.
Curated Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Virtual Symposium
#1plus1plus1is3 was a polished solid production, curated & organized by De Angela L. Duff.
#1plus1plus1is3 was a 3-day virtual symposium, celebrating Prince for 40 years of Controversy, 30 years of Diamonds & Pearls, and 20 years of The Rainbow Children, on 26-28 March 2021 (Fri-Sun)!
We had 500 people register on the Airmeet platform from 20 countries including the US, UK, Netherlands, Canada, Scotland, Belgium, France, Germany, Australia, and Denmark. We also had international speakers from the UK, the Netherlands, and Scotland. There was a steady-state of approximately 100 to 200 people at ALL times over the course of 3 days for approximately 8-9 hours per day.
You can find the speakers, abstracts, and schedule on the symposium website. You will also find the video archives that have been edited and posted, so far, in the #1plus1plus1is3 playlist on YouTube. We'll be adding more over the next several weeks in April and May. A couple of the keynotes have also been uploaded to vimeo:
- #1plus1plus1is3 Controversy Keynote with Dr. Fink & Peggy "Mac" McCreary
https://vimeo.com/532632190 - #1plus1plus1is3 Diamonds & Pearls Keynote with Director & DP Scott McCullough
https://vimeo.com/532599504
Registration on Eventbrite was FREE but we kindly requested attendees to consider donating to the PRN Alumni Foundation!
PRN Alumni Foundation, officially formed in 2017, is comprised of former employees of Paisley Park and the international icon Prince. The group’s mission is to continue the generosity of their late boss who supported opportunities for underprivileged youth to grow in music, tech, arts, and education, and helped alumni members in-need. The foundation also supports urban farming initiatives that create sources of healthy foods where they are otherwise scarce.
The Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson is not affiliated, associated, or connected with the ‘Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Symposium,’ nor has it endorsed or sponsored the ‘Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Symposium’ Further, the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson has not licensed any of its intellectual property to the producers, advertisers or directors of ‘Prince Dirty#1plus1plus1is3 Symposium.’
Contributed to Code as Creative Medium book
De Angela is incredibly proud to be a contributor to the wonderful book, Code as Creative Medium: A Handbook for Computational Art and Design by Golan Levin & Tega Brain, published by MIT Press (2021). She is featured in "Part Three: Interviews," where she talks about teaching programming to an intersection of computer science, art, and design students.
She is truly honored to be alongside so many extraordinary educators, artists, and designers, but, most notably, Luke DuBois, who was her Co-Director when she co-led Integrated Digital Media (IDM) with him from 2013-2018.
Co-Organized Learning To Teach Creative Technologies Remotely: A Virtual UnSymposium
Learning To Teach Creative Technologies Remotely: A Virtual UnSymposium on 22-23 Jan 2021 was spearheaded by De Angela with a few of her Integrated Digital Media (IDM) colleagues, Tega Brain, Luke DuBois, Reginé Gilbert, and Kathleen McDermott, as well as IDM friend Ashley Jane Lewis, and hosted by IDM at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. This 2-day event was an opportunity to participate in conversations on how to foster creativity and experimentation within this new teaching and learning landscape. On Airmeet, we got together and shared what worked and didn’t work in our remote and hybrid classrooms this past year, as well as workshopped opportunities and challenges for our pedagogy in the coming semester.
Session topics included:
- Creative Coding
- Physical Computing / IoT / Computational Fabrication
- Beyond Zoom: Getting weird with teaching online. What has worked? What has not?
- Virtual Events (i.e. End of semester virtual showcases, exhibitions, and performances)
- Fostering student and/or colleague engagement and community building
- K-12 Virtual Engagement
- Undergraduate and graduate student panels
Our hashtag was #LTT2021 for Learning To Teach 2021.
The event consisted of 10-minute talks about remote or hybrid teaching and learning from 40+ educators across international universities, colleges, and cultural institutions such as CMU, CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, Eyebeam, Facebook, INDIGital, NYU, School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), Spelman College, The Basel School of Design HGK FHNW, The New School, OCAD, Pioneer Works Tech Lab, RISD, RMIT University (Melbourne), Royal Ontario Museum, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Tech Kids Unlimited, Technologiestiftung Berlin, York University Glendon College, UCLA, University of Technology Sydney, Technological University Dublin, VCU, and others. We also had two panels, undergraduate and graduate, with students from NYU, Ryerson University, and OCAD, moderated and curated by Ashley Jane Lewis.
We had over 400 attendees from all over the world including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA.
A massive thanks to all of our speakers and attendees for an incredible way to begin the spring 2021 semester in community!
To learn more about the conversations and resources that were shared, feel free to visit the event’s discord. A custom zine to commemorate the event is forthcoming.
Learning to Teach Conference Series
Learning to Teach is a conference series for educators teaching in creative fields like computational art and design, creative technology, emerging media, and digital humanities. This year and last we found ourselves in a paradigm shift within teaching and learning as classes continue to be held remotely or in hybrid formats due to COVID-19.
The Learning to Teach conference series (2016-present) was founded at the School for Poetic Computation in partnership with the Processing Foundation.
Documentation of previous Learning to Teach events can be found on the Processing Foundation site.
The 2021 Learning to Teach planning committee consists of:
- De Angela L. Duff || @polishedsolid
- Tega Brain || @tegabrain
- R. Luke DuBois || @RLukeDuBois
- Reginé Gilbert ||@reg_inee
- Ashley Jane Lewis || @ashleyjanelewis
- Kathleen McDermott || @kit_the_robot
Contributed to SOTT Deluxe #PrinceTwitterThread
De Angela contributes to the #PrinceTwitterThread curated by Edgar Kruize and Deejay UMB for Prince's 1988 Sign O' The Times Super Deluxe album.
Her contribution was for the songs, “And That Says What? & It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Lady Sings.” https://twitter.com/polishedsolid/status/1346634372561174528
To see the entire series of Sign O' The Times Super Deluxe threads, visit Edgar Kruize’s purplepicks.net.
Curated 🍑 + 🖤 2 (#SOTTSDC): A Virtual Sign ‘O The Times Super Deluxe Celebration & After Salons
Peach + Black 2 (#SOTTSDC) was not a symposium. #SOTTSDC was a virtual Sign O’ The Times (SOTT) Super Deluxe Celebration on Saturday, 10 October 2020, for the September 2020 box set released by Warner Bros. Records, featuring 45 unreleased studio tracks from Prince’s vault, a full unreleased concert from the Sign O’ The Times era in Utrecht, and 2 hours of unreleased video from a New Year’s Eve benefit concert at Paisley Park on 31 December 1987, showcasing his only on-stage collaboration with jazz legend Miles Davis.
#SOTSDC is a polished solid production, curated by De Angela L. Duff.
#SOTTSDC consisted of four roundtable panels about the Sign O' The Times Super Deluxe box set: the original #SOTT30BK panel of Zaheer Ali, Anil Dash, Miles Marshall Lewis, Elliott H. Powell, and De Angela, the live Utrecht show included in the box set, Madhouse Live, and the 1987 New Year's Eve show at Paisley Park, which is the DVD included in the box set. The speakers are international Prince enthusiasts, scholars, and podcasters. Our Prince special guests were members of Prince's band during this era, keyboardist Dr. Fink, saxophonist Eric Leeds, and trumpet player Atlanta Bliss. For more detailed information and video archives, visit the #SOTTSDC website.
Some attendees mentioned that #SOTTSDC was too short. So, for 5 consecutive Saturdays from Oct. 24 - Nov 21, 2020 on YouTube and Facebook simultaneously, De Angela hosted a virtual #SOTTSDC After Salon!
What’s a salon? It’s an informal gathering (often in someone’s living room) of old and new friends engaging in intimate and stimulating conversations.
- 24 Oct 2020 – Vault Tracks 1
- 31 Oct 2020 – Vault Tracks 2
- 07 Nov 2020 – Vault Tracks 3
- 14 Nov 2020 – SOTT Live
- 21 Nov 2020 – SOTT Live Pt. 2 & closing remarks
A very special thanks to Rev3rend for the design and illustration for the event.
Contributed to SOTT #PrinceTwitterThread
De Angela contributes to the #PrinceTwitterThread curated by Edgar Kruize and Deejay UMB for Prince's 1988 Sign O' The Times album.
Her contribution was for the song, “It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night.” https://twitter.com/polishedsolid/status/1276470786858123264
To see the entire series of Come threads, visit Edgar Kruize’s purplepicks.net.
Interviewed on WNYC's All of It with Alison Stewart about Prince
On 2 October 2020, De Angela appeared in a short segment on All Of It With Alison Stewart to discuss Prince's Sign O' The Times Super Deluxe boxset. Massive thanks to WNYC for the invitation!
You can listen here:
https://www.wnyc.org/people/de-angela-duff/
Moderated The Purple Paisley Brunch Presents The Brothas of the Park
The Purple Paisley Brunch Presents The Brothas of the ParkThe Purple Paisley Brunch (PPB) is an annual event created by Tonya Giddens, Founder of Bklyngurl Productions, an event planning company that specializes in private events in the New York City area. This year, PPB is going virtual and will be presented in multiple parts.
De Angela was elated that she was invited to moderate the first two panels, Purple Paisley Brunch: Ladies of the Park Parts 1 & 2 on Saturday, July 18, 2020, and Friday, August 21, 2020, respectively, which both featured Sueann Carwell, Jill Jones, and Ashley Tamar Davis with special guest Jerome Benton.
De Angela is excited to be invited back for a third time to continue the conversation with The Brothas of The Park, Jerome Benton, Wally Safford, and Greg Brooks, but most of all to celebrate Jerome Benton’s birthday on Friday, September 19, 2020, from 8-10 pm EDT. You can purchase tickets here via Zoom.
Prince And Popular Music book review in UK music monthly Record Collector
De Angela was surprised and delighted to discover her essay, “Under the Cherry Moon: Prince as His Most Authentic Self,” highlighted in this book review by Jason Draper (who released his own Prince book in 2016) for Prince And Popular Music: Critical Perspectives On An Interdisciplinary Life, edited by Mike Alleyne & Kirsty Fairclough in the September 2020 issue of UK music monthly Record Collector.
Wrote 30-year Graffiti Bridge retrospective for Rock And Roll Globe
| In this article for Rock and Roll Globe, De Angela was grateful for the opportunity to further reflect beyond the #DM40GB30 symposium about 30 years of Graffiti Bridge!
#DM40GB30 shoutouts to Anil Dash, Monique W. Morris, Arthur Turnbull, and, of course, Jill Jones in the article! De Angela wishes she could have highlighted everyone who participated in the symposium, but she didn't want to lose focus on the album! |