Juba Kalamka (born July 12, 1970) is an African American bisexual artist and activist recognized for his work and founding member of homohop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the micro-label sugartruck recordings.[1]
Juba Kalamka | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 12, 1970 Chicago, Illinois |
| Origin | Chicago, Illinois |
| Genres | Rap, Electronic, LGBT music, music, |
| Instruments | Voice, drum machine, sampler |
| Years active | 1988–present |
| Labels | sugartruck recordings Kill Rock Stars |
| Website | http://jubakalamka.com |
Kalamka has coordinated the release and promotion of five critically successful D/DC albums, the Outmusic Award winning solo debut of former Sister Spit member Rocco "Katastrophe" Kayiatos, and the distribution of the work of numerous other artists in the homohop community.
Kalamka's personal work centers on dialogues on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, gender, sexuality and class in pop culture. He has written and illustrated several articles for pop culture magazines and journals, Kitchen Sink, ColorLines, and the now-defunct bisexual issues magazine Anything That Moves.[2] [3]
He has been a speaker, panelist, and curator for numerous organizations and conferences, among them the San Francisco Black Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, GLAAD, Hip Hop as a Movement at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Burning Closets/Working Our Way Home at Oberlin College. In November 2005, Kalamka was chosen to be one of six plenary speakers at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's 2005 Creating Change Conference and received a Creating Change Award for his activist work in queer music community.
Kalamka served as Festival Director for the now defunct East Bay (Oakland, California) Pride in 2003 and the curator/director of PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival which ran annually from 2001 through 2007.[1] The success of PeaceOUT inspired the creation of three now-defunct sister festivals; Peace Out East in New York City, Peace Out South in Atlanta, Georgia, and Peace Out UK in London, England.
Kalamka appears extensively in Alex Hinton's 2005 documentary Pick Up the Mic, an active survey of the scene through documentation of homohop artists on tour and in performance at the various PeaceOUT festivals.
In 2003, Kalamka continued his personal and artistic dialogues on sexuality and race with appearances in three sex films; Good Vibrations/Sexpositive Productions G Marks the Spot, Joani Blank's Orgasm: Faces of Ecstasy, and the unreleased Radio Dildo Libre (David Findlay/Blissful Itch Productions). In 2005, Kalamka was contacted by artist and sex worker advocate Annie Oakley (whom he'd met at the Olympia, Washington queer arts fest HomoAGoGo) and accepted an invitation to tour with The Sex Workers'Art Show, a month-long cross-country cabaret-style theater event featuring current and former sex worker artist/activists. Deep Dickollective's fifth and final disc, On Some Other was released on Sugartruck in June 2007. [4]
In December 2006, Kalamka completed the MFA program in Poetics (minoring in Queer and Activist Performance through the schools Experimental Performance Institute) at New College of California in San Francisco.[citation needed] An essay/interview with Kalamka and former bandmate Tim'm West appears in hip hop writer Jeff Chang's collection Total Chaos: the Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop (Basic Civitas Books). He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Queer Cultural Center (producers of the National Queer Arts Festival) and the Strategic Committee of sex worker advocacy organization Desiree Alliance in 2011. He joined the board of national bisexual advocacy organization BiNet USA in 2018 and was elected vice president in 2019. Kalamka resigned as vice president in August 2020 and left the organization in October 2020.
On January 18, 2022 Kill Rock Stars announced the release of the first single and accompanying music video(directed by media artist John Sanborn) by queer rap rock/nü metal collective COMMANDO, featuring performances by Kalamka, The Living Earth Show, former Tribe 8 lead singer Lynnee Breedlove and RuPaul’s Drag Race performer Honey Mahogany, with a full-length album to be released on March 4, 2022.
Kalamka's first poetry collection Son of Byford was released by Nomadic Press in July, 2022. [5] [6] [7]
Discography
editwith Deep Dickollective
edit- 2001 BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo sugartruck recordings
- 2001 Independent Sounds:Amoeba Music Compilation Vol. III Hip Hop Slam
- 2002 Phat Family Compilation Volume One:Tha Dozens Phat Family Records
- 2003 Them Niggas Done Went And Said... sugartruck recordings
- 2004 Azadi!: A Benefit CD For RAWA (compilation) Fire Museum/ElectroMotive Records
- 2003 Movin' b/w Straightrippin'(C-Phlavormix) (7" single) Agitprop!/sugartruck
- 2004 The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes sugartruck recordings
- 2004 Phat Family Compilation Volume Two:Down 4 Tha Swerve Phat Family Records
- 2005 Live at Wildseed and Mo sugartruck recordings
- 2007 On Some Other sugartruck recordings
- 2012 With The Key(Sissies):The Very Best of Deep Dickollective sugartruck recordings
as Juba Kalamka
edit- 2012 Ooogaboooga Under Fascism sugartruck recordings
- 2012 This and That (Instrumental/s) sugartruck recordings
- 2014 Codeswitchings (Black Things Tomorrow?) sugartruck recordings
as The Joe Louis Milk Company
edit- 2020 You Don't Have To Be (instrumentals) Motisa Methods/sugartruck recordings
with Rainbow Flava
edit- 2001 Family Business Phat Family Records
with Leroy F. Moore Jr. (as JKLM)
edit- 2018 Invalidations, Volume Too sugartruck recordings/KripHopNation
with Marvin K. White (as Black Ellipsis...)
edit- 2020 Tth Spc Btwn...A Seminary Avenue Motisa Methods/sugartruck recordings
with He Who Walks Three Ways
edit- 1994 Me, IBM and The Baby Jesus (self-released demo) Biglip/WGBL? [10]
- 2020 Technology Delivered 91/94 Motisa Methods [11]
with COMMANDO
edit- 2022 Hotel Essex (single) Kill Rock Stars
- 2022 COMMANDO (album) Kill Rock Stars
- 2023 EMET(Izdis Hymn?) (single) Kill Rock Stars
- 2023 Diet Soda (single) Kill Rock Stars
- 2023 Four (single)Kill Rock Stars
- 2023 Big Big Black
(single)Kill Rock Stars
- 2023 Luggage n’Umbrage:The Skeebo Sides EP
(EP)Kill Rock Stars
Filmography
edit- 2003 G Marks The Spot:The Good Vibrations Guide to the G-Spot Sexpositive Productions
- 2004 Orgasm!The Faces of Ecstasy Joani Blank, dir. Blank Tapes
- 2005 Pick Up The Mic (as himself) Alex Hinton, dir. Planet Janice Films
- 2006 Making It (background music) Sobaz Benjamin, dir. National Film Board of Canada
- 2007 Godspeed (Weed Man/Dime Bag Dealer) AltCinema Productions
- 2008 La bisexualité: tout un art? (as himself) Laure Michel and Eric Wastiaux. dir.
- 2010 That's So GAY! (as himself) KB Boyce, dir. QPOC Artists and Mass Media
- 2011 The Craving (prod., additional music) Val Killmore Castro, dir. Hellfire Cinema
- 2012 Heavenly Spire: Juba (as himself) Shine Louise Houston, dir. Pink Label
- 2013 Sins Invalid (producer, additional music) Patty Berne, dir.
- 2014 Fuckstyles 2 (as himself) Trouble Films Courtney Trouble, dir.
- 2014 Fucking Mystic (as himself) Trouble Films Courtney Trouble, dir.
- 2019 Is Friendship Legal Ms. Zoe Kat and Salty Brine, dir.
- 2019 Whores On Film (aka The Celluloid Bordello) (as himself) Juliana Piccilo, dir.
- 2020 The Shock of Gary Fisher(w/COMMANDO) music video John Sanborn, dir.
- 2021 The Friend (as St. Fractious) John Sanborn, dir.
- 2022 Hotel Essex(w/COMMANDO) music video John Sanborn, dir.
- 2022 Prince(w/COMMANDO) music video Daniel Foerste, dir.
References
edit- ^ a b Aidin Vaziri (February 7, 2006). "Black History Month: Artist Profile: Juba Kalamka". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
- ^ Juba Kalamka (1999). "We Are Family?". Anything That Moves. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
- ^ ColorLines (2004). "How Can I Be Down? A bisexual Black man's take on "the down low"". ColorLines.com. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
- ^ Queer Cultural Center (2020). "Board of Directors". QueerCulturalCenter.org. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
- ^ BiNetUSA (2019). "BiNet USA". binetusa.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on 2019-12-30. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
- ^ "Twitter". Retrieved 2020-08-21.
- ^ "On Some Other". Allmusic.com. 2007. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
- ^ kill rock stars (2022). ""New signing announcement:COMMANDO single and video."". killrockstars.com. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
- ^ Nomadic Press (2022). ""Son of Byford"". nomadicpress.org. Retrieved 2022-09-07.
- ^ "He Who Walks Three Ways – Demo (1994, Cassette)". Discogs. 1994.
- ^ "early Chicago hip hop group He Who Walks Three Ways share two 90s demos". 21 July 2020.