A Visual History of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
(with Darol Olu Kae, 2026)
Leave it for the Children: A Visual History of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra blends new and archival images and ephemera to highlight the ongoing legacy of the renowned community jazz organization.
The book explores the sixty-plus years of the legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, the community music ensemble formed in Los Angeles by Horace Tapscott. Through a deep and sustained relationship with a wide range of visual material connected to the Arkestra—personal and sourced photographs, album covers, poster art, music sheets, international newspaper clippings, concert flyers, documentary and feature films, and collected ephemera — this publication traces the history of The Ark and its ongoing iterations, and speaks to Los Angeles’s shifting social and political landscape. Punctuating these archival materials are series of texts from musicians, poets, historians, writers and artists, including Robin D. G. Kelley, Kamau Daáood, Jayne Cortez, Greg Tate, Arthur Jafa, Moor Mother, Lauren Halsey and more. These contributions—from poetry and essays to interviews and first-person reflections—create a visual document based on, and serving as a testament to, The Ark’s sixty-plus year living history of music and community art.
ANGEL CITY PRESS’ WEBSITE
(with Chuck D, H. Samy Alim, and Tabia Shawel, 2026)
A profound meditation on hip hop’s transformative power, In the Hour of Chaos takes us deep into the mind of the genre’s most unabashed revolutionary.
This book is not an autobiography. It’s not a manifesto. It’s a razor-sharp investigation into hip hop and rap music by searing lyricist and global music icon Chuck D of Public Enemy.
Engaging with some of the world’s leading thinkers on hip hop, “Professor Chuck” sets out on a journey that celebrates fifty years of hip hop and charts paths forward for its future. Exploring the intersections of hip hop with Black radicalism and feminism, media and technology, and globalization and politics, this curated collection shows the power of culture and the arts not only to bring people together but to bring about political change in this current hour of chaos.
Features conversations with leading thinkers, including Robin D. G. Kelley, H. Samy Alim, Jeff Chang, Davey D, Scot Brown, Cheryl L. Keyes, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Bryonn Bain, Maya Jupiter, Adam Bradley, Joan Morgan, and more.
UC PRESS’ WEBSITE
Anthropologie des musiques électroniques (2016)
“Electronic music” is less a fixed genre than a shifting category that gathers together diverse sounds, practices, and audiences. Rather than trying to define it, this book approaches electronic music through the specific contexts in which it takes shape.
It focuses on Los Angeles, a city more often associated with rock or hip-hop than with electronic music, yet central to the emergence of the “beat scene” since the mid-2000s. Blending hip-hop and electronic production, the beat scene developed through a network of independent venues, record stores, and artists operating within an underground ethos. At its core was Low End Theory, a club night that helped forge a tight-knit local community before gaining international recognition.
Tracing the scene’s growth, the book examines how local practices in Los Angeles became connected to global circuits of electronic music, including influential labels and media. It explores how a musical genre and a city co-produce one another: how Los Angeles became a key reference for the beat scene, and how the scene itself reshaped the city’s musical identity.
BOOK’s WEBPAGE