Black Joy Experience

As Black queer communities continue in the lineage of the political and cultural mandates woven into black radical tradition, black organizers across the United States came together to release an album, The Black Joy Experience. This musical compilation of original Black freedom songs and liberation chants seeks to uplift Black activism and political participation through a message of joy, healing and holistic energy. “Let’s be clear. Without joy, we won’t win in 2019 or beyond. Without joy, we won’t survive. Without joy, we will never heal. And without joy, we can’t love radically. But through the experience of Black joy, we will conjure up dreams of freedom that our ancestors will be proud of,” said Jonathan Lykes, the founder and co-producer of The Black Joy Experience.

The Black Joy Experience seeks to build holistic energy praxis in movement and organizing spaces as a mechanism to cultivate joy, love, healing, resiliency and a commitment to envision the next 50-100 years of Black and Brown cultural, political and economic futures. These themes are critical to the survival of Black and Brown bodies during an era where the very support for our humanity is being stripped away, as the historical pattern of white supremacy dehumanizing the lives of the truly disadvantaged continues. The Black Joy Experience Tour is a series of place based events hosted across the globe, towards the goal of teaching, building and sustaining political participation centered around joy. The Black Joy Experience tour aims to engage people of the diaspora in four sessions: (1) political education around a shared history, (2) holistic energy and healing praxis (3) cultural production through interactive performance, and (4) centering joy in our collective aims toward liberation.