CCH Pounder and Delfeayo Marsalis Lead a Jazz Conversation About the Diaspora

“Focus on the African Diaspora has truly come to the forefront these past few years and for me, the arts have been a tremendous platform in this direction…”

CCH Pounder

“ADC revises the narrative created by European colonizers to one that embraces the greatness of people of African descent…”

Delfeayo Marsalis

Actress CCH Pounder and Music Legend Delfeayo Marsalis to Headline October “Jazz Conversation” at Celebration of the African Diaspora in New Orleans

Culinary historian Jessica B. Harris and film director Cecile Emeke will lead teach-in for educators from around the world 

They work in different spheres, but actress and art collector CCH Pounder, composer and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, and documentary filmmaker Cecile Emeke are committed to enlightening the world about the African Diaspora – the 400-year global odyssey of African-descended people whose ancestors were taken forcibly from their homeland.

The four are the star attractions at a three-day gathering (Oct. 3-6), organized by the African Diaspora Consortium (ADC), celebrating the confluence of art, education and activism in nations that are home to the 1.2 billion people who constitute the Diaspora. New Orleans, where enslaved peoples shared music, art, food and other aspects of their cultures, is the host city.

The annual ADC Conversation and Concert, featuring Delfeayo Marsalis and CCH Pounder, will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday evening, October 5th, at New Orleans’ Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Tickets are available at Eventbrite. Press Contact: Conan N. Louis, 202-494-0324, clouis@adcexchange.org

Jessica B. Harris and Cecile Emeke will lead workshops at Gallier Hall for more than 100 educators on incorporating African Diaspora content developed by ADC in an Advanced Placement (AP) Seminar©. The workshops, which will be held in New Orleans’ historic Gallier Hall on Saturday, October 5th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., are open to the media.

Highlighting the festivities will be ADC’s fourth annual Conversation and Concert, which this year will feature a “jazz conversation” about the Diaspora featuring Pounder, recipient of the Visionary Leadership Award in Performing Arts from the Museum of the African Diaspora and The Cacique’s Crown of Honour of Guyana, and Marsalis, an NEA Jazz Master and Grammy Award recipient. The conversation will also feature the visual artist and print maker Katrina Andry, ADC’s Global Visual Artistic Director, and moderator Jamaal Finkley, ADC Board member and CEO of Black Tree TV, a leading provider of diverse entertainment content. 

ADC Chair Hon. Paula Cox, former Premier of Bermuda, will co-host the evening. “New Orleans and her people are known for their resilience and steadfastness,” says Fox. “They have weathered hardship but stand strong. Their rich cultural tapestry and traditions are a source of pride, and the ADC community’s upcoming weekend in New Orleans promises to be an enriching experience for us all – a banquet for the senses, tastes and intellect.”

Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra will premiere new theme music composed for ADC.

Workshops on teaching the Diaspora will be led by Harris, whose book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America became a four-part Netflix series; and Emeke, creator of the globally acclaimed documentary series Strolling, which recorded conversations with people across the Diaspora.  

“ADC revises the narrative created by European colonizers to one that embraces the greatness of people of African descent,” says Marsalis, ADC’s Global Music Artistic Director, a member of New Orleans’ legendary Marsalis jazz family, and a central figure in connecting African-descended artists and educating the public about the historic traditions shaping their efforts. “But ‘African Diaspora Consortium’ is a mouthful, so I wanted something that would make people understand what’s really going on here.” Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra recently released the album Crescent City Jewels, a tribute to the music of New Orleans. 

“Focus on the African Diaspora has truly come to the forefront these past few years and for me, the arts have been a tremendous platform in this direction,” says Pounder, who is widely recognized for her work in productions devoted to the Diaspora, African culture, and the experience of Black Americans. “Education is one of the most important tools we have to offer, and I’m pleased to participate in ADC’s Conversation highlighting their mission to reach a global audience.” 

Pounder’s credits include key roles in projects such as Go Tell It On the Mountain, and Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives, and, more recently the Netflix film Rustin and Hulu’s Black Cake. She has also appeared in films such as Avatar, Postcards from the Edge and Bagdad Café.  Her TV roles include Dr. Loretta Wade on the CBS series, NCIS: New Orleans and her Emmy-nominated performances in ER, The Shield and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Pounder also co-founded Artists for a New South Africa and serves on the board of the African Millenium Foundation. In 1992, she and her husband, the late Boubacar Koné, founded and built the Musée Boribana, the first privately owned contemporary museum in Dakar Senegal, which they gifted to Senegal in 2014. Pounder’s own collection of paintings inspired by stories of the Diaspora was exhibited in Chicago by the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in 2023. Current exhibitions featuring Ms. Pounder’s collection are running at The Charles H. Wright African American Museum in Detroit and The African American Museum in Philadelphia.

The African Diaspora Consortium (ADC) educates the world about the resilience among Diaspora populations, their contributions to cultures around the globe, and the connections they share across time and distance.  “The Diaspora is a story so central to an understanding of history, cultures, and human experiences that it just has to be examined and told,” says ADC Founder and President Kassie Freeman, an internationally acclaimed scholar on the diaspora and comparative/international issues in higher education. “Our efforts are guided by the African proverb that ‘until the lion learns to speak, the tales of the hunt will always favor the hunter.”