Thursday: Mental and Spiritual Health Panel Discussion, Friday: The Cultural Ecology of New Orleans Speech and Music

Thursday, October 16 6:00pm

Ashe' Cultural Arts Center
1712 Oretha C Haley Blvd, New Orleans, Louisiana 70113

New Orleans has always been full of things to make you well, including traditional and alternative healing practices, and at least equally full of things to make you sick. Where and how do we find relief? What do we each find healing? Join a pharmacist, photographer, two spiritual healers, and a mental health technician for a conversation about mental, physical, and spiritual health in New Orleans. This interdisciplinary program springs from the map “Juju and Cuckoo: Taking Care of Crazy” in Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas and will be moderated by Rebecca Snedeker. In addition to the discussion, we will also have an interactive mapmaking activity.

Panelists include:

Janet “Sula Spirit” Evans – Akan priestess; author, Spirit of the Orisha Book and CD project; co-owner of King & Queen Emporium, Intl

Adam Graff – Mental health technician; member of the NOPD Mobile Crisis Unit

Randall Schexnayder, RPh, MSPH - Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Xavier University College of Pharmacy

Lewis Watts – Photographer, archivist/curator, and professor of Art at UC Santa Cruz; coauthor of New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition

Reza "Cinnamon Black" Bazile - Voidooiene; founder of the Treme Million-Dollar Baby Dolls

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SPECIAL CHAUTAUQUA/LYCEUM FREE LECTURE

Friday, October 17, 7:00-9:00 pm
Location: Loyola University, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, Miller Hall 114
Presenter: Shane Lief

This presentation focuses on the ways that people communicate through everyday speech and musical performances in New Orleans. These patterns of interaction are considered together under the rubric of “vocalization practices,” which reveal the complex history of cultural exchanges in the city as well as throughout Louisiana during the past several centuries. Speech communities including people of indigenous, African, and European origins have all played a role in generating the current patterns of vocalization. With a better understanding of the complex roots of social interaction, we can have greater insights into human communication and how all people negotiate meaning in everyday life.