Each month, September–December 2020, we offer gifts—music, thoughts, meditations, and visual testimonies of resilience—inspired by James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”—James Baldwin
“This is my offering to you. This is a different experience so I hope you have an open mind or at least an open heart. I see James Baldwin as an Orisha, his writing as the living word. I wanted to pay homage to him and to the time and effort it took to sit, to physically and emotionally fill the page with a truth that made my own sorrow feel less lonely. He put me on a path of empathy and humility towards my parents. It humbled me towards my mother born in 1944 and my father born in 1939—a time I can’t imagine living in while black.”—Meshell Ndegeocello
Register here to receive the toolkits in the mail
1. Call: dial +33 08 05 54 30 99 (toll-free from France) or +33 6 44 60 74 72 (international) or visit the international call page for international dialing and discover songs, meditations, and chants to ease your mind any time, day or night (in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Yoruba, Japanese, Arabic and English)
2. See: Experience visual testimonies of Baldwin’s text, with original music created by Meshell and artistic collaborators, including Suné Woods, Nicholas Galanin, and Charlotte Brathwaite.
3. Read: Sign up for our monthly broadsheet, featuring Baldwin’s words and calls to action, available by mail on demand and pdf online
Coproduced by Festival de Marseille
