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Toshi Reagon

Artist in Residence, 2020–2022

 

Toshi Reagon wears a blue button-down shirt. Her hair is closely shaven, and she wears a hooped earring in her right ear. She looks relaxed and directly at the camera. Her right hand rests on the strings of her acoustic guitar as if she is about to play.

Toshi Reagon is a versatile singer, composer, musician, curator, and producer with a profound ear for sonic Americana, from folk to funk, blues, and rock. While her expansive career has earned her residencies at Carnegie Hall, the Palais Garnier of the Paris National Opera, and Madison Square Garden, Reagon can also be found performing at a music festival, intimate venue, or local club. Reagon knows the power of song to focus, unite, and mobilize people. Her latest projects include The Blues Project with Dorrance Dance, the opera Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, Meshell Ndegeocello's Can I Get a Witness? The Gospel according to James Baldwin, and the recording SPIRITLAND. Reagon was a 2015 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, a 2017 Andrew W. Mellon DisTIL Fellow, a Carolina Performing Arts Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and a 2019 Andrew W. Mellon Creative Futures Fellow, Carolina Performing Arts, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her band, BIGLovely, has been performing since 1996.

Photo by Desdemona Burgin

 

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Residency Projects

Freedom, a music video by Toshi Reagon

Commissioned by The Met for the Park Avenue Armory’s 100 Years | 100 Women Project, celebrating the centenary of some women’s right to vote, Freedom is a film that was made during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in response to the protest movement following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 by police. It is a film in the form of a music video with a protest narrative, set to the tune of Toshi Reagon’s original composition, Freedom.

 

 

The Civic Practice Project is made possible by The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.