Brother Malcolm

Part 1 - 3pm - 4:45pm 

We meet up at Mitchel Square |

3975 Broadway, New York, NY 10037 | Train Access: A Train

Part 2 - 3pm - 4:30pm

Brother Malcolm is a walk experience in four movements honoring the centennial of his birth, May 19th. This is our latest Black Gotham Experience that aims to add a fresh composition and value to the classic, recent, and forthcoming scholarship on Malcolm X. The team behind the project is Kamau Ware, Kei Williams, Asad Dandia, and Najha Zigbi-Johnson. As the title suggests, we center on Malcolm as a sibling rooted in kinship. The premier walk will take place on Malcolm’s birthday, May 19th 2025. 

These initial offerings to honor Malcolm’s birthday will be led by Kamau Ware and Asad Dandia. 

Brother Malcolm is commissioned by The Mellon Initiative at The New School. This work is situated within a context of our ongoing conversations about Harlem in which Malcolm X is already featured. The work is titled Kuzaliwa, was commissioned by the Apollo Theater, and premiered in 2022. Kuzaliwa means birth in Swahili and was a holiday created to honor Malcolm in the year 1966 by Dr. Malauna Karenga. This work is a living act of Sankofa - going back to fetch what was lost. Brother Malcolm is an act of heart, putting the memory of Malcolm in the moving contemplating body where it will live as a listening and oral tradition.

Malcolm was a walker. On video, his presence crackles with rhythm as if he is moving to a Dizzy Gillespie beat. His cadence cut through rooms, interlocutors, and cheers. He was one of one - an enigma born May 19th 1925 whose life has been celebrated and simultaneously reduced to before and after 1952. Malcolm is still on the move. His memory is an orchestra gaining new players and interpreters of the scores.