Mono Space presents Gallery Hours as curated by Gem Nwannem. The DJ, writer, collector, and host of "Afternoon Jump Radio" on KFFP 90.3FM, describes their upcoming program as an exploration of “the African diaspora as a living archive, as a conversation between sacred music, folk philosophy, and collective memory.”
Expounding further on their curatorial approach, Gem adds “It opens in sacred resonance and closes in communal release, tracing how devotion becomes groove, and how groove returns to spirit. Through deep listening, it asks what it means to preserve movement, to translate displacement into connection, and to find wholeness inside fragmentation.”
Featuring:
Missa Luba, Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin
Church of Kidane Mehret, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
No Condition Is Permanent, Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National
Ogadiliginma, Nelly Uchendu
Synchro Sound System & Power: Made in Lagos, Various Artists – Nigeria Fuji Machine
FLEE Issue No. 1 – Benga Music, Various Artists (FLEE Project)
Agadez, Etran de l’Air
Special Biennale Du Mali: Le Jeune Chansonnier Du Mali, Ali "Farka" Toure
Irakere, Irakere
The Wild Tchoupitoulas, The Wild Tchoupitoulas
The Circle of Time, Amina Claudine Myers Trio
BASSically Yours, World Bass Violin Ensemble with Brian Smith as Music Director
Afrosonica (MEG Archives), Various Artists
Constitution, Asher Gamedze & The Black Lungs
Heavy Heavy, Young Fathers
About Gallery Hours
On Saturdays throughout each season, Mono Space presents a program for curious listeners and readers alike. Guests are welcomed into the gallery to experience the OJAS sound system, gift shop, and library from 11am to 5pm. Each Gallery Hours is centered around a thematic set of recordings curated by special guests. This program is free and open to the public.
Photo: Guarionex Rodriguez Jr
About Gem Nwannem
Gem Nwannem is a DJ, writer, and collector digging through the history of West African highlife and the global sounds it inspired. Through “Afternoon Jump Radio”, they trace how highlife evolved into jazz, disco, boogie, and funk. Records that once crossed oceans in crates and carry-ons, now resurfaced in new conversations on the airwaves.
Their sets are anchored in physical media: worn labels, handwritten catalog numbers, and the quiet persistence of analog sound. Gem’s love for physical media runs deep. As the founder of Neesh, a project expanding the reach and impact of independent print, they spend as much time flipping records as they do flipping through magazines.
For Gem, every mix and every page tells a story about how culture moves, how it’s carried, traded, and kept alive through the people who care enough to pass it on.
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