Imagining the Otherwise

Saidiya Hartman on the minor musics and diasporic traditions behind her latest 'performed discourse'

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‘MINOR MUSIC at the End of the World’ is a performance in three movements, made in collaboration with actor André Holland, performer Okwui Okpokwasili, and artists Arthur Jafa, Precious Okoyomon and Cameron Rowland. It takes its inspiration from two of my essays, “The End of White Supremacy: An American Romance’ [2020] and ‘Litany for Grieving Sisters’ [2022]. I don’t think I would ever have come to the idea of it being a performance if not for invitations from others. The first came from the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, to have André read “The End of White Supremacy’. Hearing him read was an entirely different experience than reading my words on the page. It no longer felt as if they were solely mine. They became something else.