Mahlet Cuff

Drawing from archival footage of ballroom, voguing, juke, footwerk, dancehall and dance practices across the African and Black Queer diaspora, and using music from electronic duo Drexciya, What if We Kept it Between Us? works towards re-centring genres of Black music that have been appropriated. Pushing against extraction and offering gatekeeping as a way to protect and preserve Black music and dance ethnographies.

why some people be mad at me sometimes is a single channel experimental film that cites the mother of Dancehall Sister Nancy singing her song bam bam in dialogue with Maya Angelou’s performance of the poem The Mask. The video is a meditation on the misappropriation of Blackness within music, and how often Black folks are told to not criticize but to smile and be grateful. All while tracing the filmmakers' relationship to Dancehall and Afro Caribbean culture through archival footage of themselves as a young person dancing at Folklorama. Folklorama has the intention to be a space for sharing diverse cultures but oftentimes a space of cultural consumption that erases the colonial history of the countries that are on display.

Drawing from archival footage of ballroom, voguing, juke, footwerk, dancehall and dance practices across the African and Black Queer diaspora, and using music from electronic duo Drexciya, What if We Kept it Between Us? works towards re-centring genres of Black music that have been appropriated. Pushing against extraction and offering gatekeeping as a way to protect and preserve Black music and dance ethnographies.

why some people be mad at me sometimes is a single channel experimental film that cites the mother of Dancehall Sister Nancy singing her song bam bam in dialogue with Maya Angelou’s performance of the poem The Mask. The video is a meditation on the misappropriation of Blackness within music, and how often Black folks are told to not criticize but to smile and be grateful. All while tracing the filmmakers' relationship to Dancehall and Afro Caribbean culture through archival footage of themselves as a young person dancing at Folklorama. Folklorama has the intention to be a space for sharing diverse cultures but oftentimes a space of cultural consumption that erases the colonial history of the countries that are on display.