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Gallery Talk with Musician Joseph Darensburg
Wed, November 29th, 2023 at 12:30 PM - 1:00 PM
Join us in the galleries each Wednesday for weekly talks with artists, curators, and other special guests. During these casual conversations, we’ll take a close look at different works currently on view at NOMA.
In celebration of Creole & Indigenous Heritage Month, musician Joseph Darensbourg will sing a few Kouri-Vini (Louisiana Creole) songs and read Atakapa Ishak poetry in the Great Hall.
Free with museum admission. Louisiana residents receive free admission to NOMA on Wednesdays courtesy of The Helis Foundation. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the front desk for directions to the appropriate gallery.
To book your ticket in advance, click the link above and select the day for the gallery talk you’d like to attend.
About Joseph Darensbourg
Joseph is a native of Bulbancha (Choctaw for “place of many tongues,” aka New Orleans) from the Faubourg Treme, the oldest free people of color neighborhood in the country (predating the US itself). This neighborhood of Gens de Couleur Libres is a tri-racial ethnic blend comprised of Native Americans, Europeans, and African ethnic Creoles who speak a lingua franca known as Kouri Vini as well as Colonial Louisiana French.
A performer of ethnic folk musics, Joseph is a singer, violinist, and percussionist member of Les Cenelles ensemble, which specializes in music inspired by resistance and protest poetry and Les Cenelles Gens de Couleur Libres, civil rights activists opposing the Code Noir during US Reconstruction. Joseph focuses on the Bayou Ballads plantation songs (1840s–80s).
A bookbinder by trade—trained at the oldest bookbindery in the US (Harcourt, Boston)—Joseph is also a visual art alum of NOCCA, as well as a member of the oldest early music ensemble in the America, New Orleans Musica da Camera (founded in 1965, as was Joseph).