WAIL
Commissioned by DiverseWorks
Funded in part by Bold Ventures, through the Helen Gurley Foundation
Recipient of the Black Spatial Relics Grant, 2021
WAIL is a digital film + ritual theater performance documentary conceived by Candice D’Meza that engages the broader Houston community in the co-creation of a grief ritual to honor the 95 Black persons who died at a Sugar Land, Texas convict leasing camp between 1877-1912 (known as the ‘Sugar Land 95’). The performance itself is informed by the funerary traditions of Blacks in the Antebellum South, the Dagara of Burkina Faso, the Bakongo of Angola, the Yoruba of Nigeria, and Haitian Vodou.
Film directed by Nate Edwards. Musical scoring by Lisa E. Harris.
WAIL
watch the film now (case-sensitive password: Wail)
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The Interviews*
Absolem Yetzirah, Karankawa native, Councilmember of the Five Rivers Council
Kofi Taharka, Chairman, National Black United Front
Naomi Reed, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southwestern University
Jay Jenkins, President and Co-Founder of the Convict Leasing and Labor Project
*The interviews will be apart of an ongoing interview project that will be updated with new interviews.