Multimedia exhibit honors the global impact of Houston’s music scene

IN 1968, DURING the summer months of the Vietnam War, as musicians across the country gleefully pushed the boundaries of funk, rock and psychedelia to express the fears, hopes and dreams of a generation in age to serve, the number one jam on Black and White radio stations was “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell and the Drells.

Once the needle hit the vinyl, the listener was treated to a ridiculously funky two-chord bass pattern, followed by drums, electric guitar, and the words “Hey everyone.” I’m Archie Bell from the Drells from Houston, Texas! ” followed by a directive inviting listeners to dance the Houston-born dance, “Tighten Up.”

“Archie Bell helped put Houston’s music scene on the world map,” says artist Tierney Malone, whose multimedia installation BLACK STEREO, a tribute to Houston’s music culture and history, is on display at the Hogan Brown Gallery until August 11.

The exhibition, co-curated by artist Robert Hodge and Community Artists’ Collective executive director Michelle Barnes, is part of the Community Music Center of Houston’s annual Legacy Project, a month-long series of programs celebrating musical artists , educators and facilitators who come from or have ties to Houston’s Third Ward.

“Stereo Sound” by Tierney Malone

Black Stereo Reference Source Collage Installation by Tierney Malone

“Anita Moore” by Tierney Malone

BLACK STEREO’s June 9 opening featured a performance by the H-Town Orchestra upstairs in the Eldorado Ballroom. Originally built in 1939 and once known as the “House of Happy Feet,” the Eldorado Ballroom is where local talent such as Milton Larkin and His Orchestra and crooner Horace Grigsby regularly performed for audiences full rooms of dancers. A free artist talk by Malone and a performance by Grigsby, who turns 90 this year, will take place at the Hogan Brown Gallery on Saturday, June 22 from 2 to 4 p.m.

For Malone, born in 1964 in Los Angeles and raised in Mississippi and Alabama, the musical history of Houston is a never-ending source of inspiration for his artistic creation. In 2016, while artist in residence at Project Row Houses, he literally built Houston’s Jazz Church from the inside out, remodeling the interior of a shotgun house to create a 30-seat venue that was part of an art installation and history museum. and a juke joint.

BLACK STEREO is a natural extension of The Jazz Church, featuring Malone’s instantly recognizable ephemeral collages of photos and music – alongside paintings and works on paper of words and fonts taken from album covers and posters jazz, R&B and classical music – cut up and remixed to poetic effect. New to Malone’s oeuvre is a series of cobalt blue digital collage cyanotypes, in which vintage photographs of jazz luminaries Arnett Cobb and Jewel Brown are rendered as fully equipped astronauts, pioneers in the fields of space and time, who marked history through the ephemeral art of music. (Each cyanotype is assigned to “JET”, an acronym for Malone’s wife Jehn, their daughter Essie and Tierney.)

“Black music is a connection to our past and a source of inspiration,” Malone said in a press release, “a space-making force that encourages and engenders dreams for the future.”

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