Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. (Courtesy Warner Bros.)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton’s all-time classic from 1988 gets a sequel after 36 years. Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deets, the goth girl of your dreams now all grown up. She’s the host of Ghost House with Lydia Deets, and the mother of Astrid (Jenna Ortega), a teenager who is just as gloomy as Lydia once was. When they return to their old home in Winter River, Astrid discovers the portal to the afterlife in the family home’s attic, and releases Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton). Catherine O’Hara returns as Delia, Lydia’s art dealer stepmother, and Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Justin Theroux are along for the supernatural ride.
The Front Room
Brandy returns to the big screen as Belinda, a mother-to-be who is expecting her first child with her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap). But just as the couple is building their new nest, they have to take in Solange (Kathryn Hunter), Norman’s stepmother who was long estranged from his family. Now, they will realize why she has been estranged, and deal with the shocking consequences. Max and Sam Eggers, brothers of The Northman’s Robert Eggers, direct this A24 suspense film from a short story by Susan Hill.
It Ends With Us
Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom in this hit adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller. Lily is caught between Ryle (Justin Baldoni) an intensely emotional neurosurgeon, and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), her old flame. Can she stop her family’s generations-long cycle of abuse?
“Mama’s Sundry”
On Thursday, Sept. 12 at Crosstown Theater, a new collaboration between Memphis filmmakers Brody Kuhar and Joshua Cannon will make its debut. “Mama’s Sundry” is a 15-minute documentary about Bertram Williams and Memphis musician Talibah Safiya‘s neighborhood garden project.
We all know it takes a village — to raise a child, tend a garden, or create art — but first someone has to make the village. Talibah Safiya, the Memphis singer-songwriter with a recording career now spanning almost a decade, is one of those people, drawing scores of collaborators around her by dint of her vision and voice, pulling disparate threads together to craft her unique neo-soul/trap hybrid music.
That sonic identity seemed to arrive fully formed with her 2015 debut single, “Rise,” and is just as powerful today, her collaborations only growing deeper and wider. Not only does her 2024 album, Black Magic, feature some notable co-producers, she’s worked with even more since its release in February, as several remixes, the latest of which dropped last Friday, have shown.
And, as she points out, she’s been “working mostly with producers who have Memphis roots, even if some of them don’t live here anymore,” proving that you can still go big while going local. One case in point: “I worked with Brandon Deener, who is from Memphis but based in L.A. He’s actually an incredible visual artist who is currently working on a solo show in Paris that’s happening this summer. But he’s a producer as well.” Indeed, his painting was the focus of The Guardian’s profile of Deener last year, where he was called the “former producer for hip-hop and R&B royalty such as Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Lil Wayne … now known more as a visual artist.”
Black Magic, the latest album by Talibah Safiyah.
Yet the album’s title song proves Deener is still in the music game. A bold opening shot, it builds on a vintage loop of stinging, soul-blues guitar before Safiyah’s voice decries, “We come from a Black-ass city/Black Magic … We said our pledge of allegiance/To the capital of Egypt!” It’s an anthem of sorts for Safiyah’s hometown, and the vintage soul stew loop only puts a finer historical point on it.
Deener also worked on “Jack and Jill” and “Have Mercy” (the latter featuring Marcella Simien), and both also play with locally-derived samples of roots guitar. Those flavors were very intentional, growing, Safiyah explains, from her time as artist-in-residence at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music last year. “The Rudi Scheidt School has the High Water Recording Company catalog, and I did a deep dive into some of that music, singing along with my guy Brandon Deener at Ari’s studio.” That would be producer/engineer Ari Morris, profiled in these pages last year as “Memphis music’s secret weapon,” who was also deeply involved in Black Magic.
“That was when I first met Ari, and how Ari and I ended up locking in,” Safiyah adds, “but I found myself really inspired by, firstly, R.L. Burnside’s ‘Bad Luck City.’ That song had me really immersed in the sound of R.L. Burnside’s voice — it sounded to me like he was improvising the song, and I loved that. It sounds like he was just making it up on the spot. And it got me thinking about Memphis. So I was super inspired by ‘Bad Luck City,’ which we sampled for the single ‘Black Magic,’ and that’s how the whole project got that name.”
Another High Water artist that Safiyah found inspiring was Jessie Mae Hemphill, though her music was not sampled for the project. “She was my guiding light for the energy of the composition of music,” Safiyah says. “My husband Bertram and I were at A. Schwab’s and he bought me a book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, by Angela Y. Davis, which talks about how Black women have freed up the way we tell our stories through the blues.”
Hemphill would be a prime example of that process, but she has modern-day analogs. As part of her village, Safiyah enlisted a current feminist hero of the local neo-soul/hip-hop scene, MadameFraankie, for the track, “Papa Please!” Even that was touched by R.L. Burnside.
“For ‘Papa Please!’ specifically, I played Fraankie ‘Bad Luck City.’ That song is such a huge influence on a lot of the songs on the project, even if everything didn’t sample it. So I told Fraankie about a friend of mine and her relationship with her dad. I gave her a whole visual story and played her ‘Bad Luck City,’ and she went off and made the beat for ‘Papa Please!’ And when sent me that track, I was inspired right away. I wrote the song immediately, sang it for her, and that was the first one that we composed for the project.”
The track features MadameFraankie’s trademark liquid rhythm/solo guitar, but that’s not all. “She played the bass. She played the drums. She did everything on that song, there’s nobody else playing,” Safiyah enthuses.
Meanwhile, there are still more collaborations going down as Safiyah issues remixes of the album’s key tracks. The first was a brilliant reimagining of “Jack and Jill” by another soon-to-be-iconic Memphis figure, Jess Jackson, aka DJ BLINGG, who originally built a name with her sisters in the band JCKSN AVE. And as of Friday we have the album’s closer, “Delicious,” remixed by A.N.T.E. “He plays the keys and he’s done a couple other remixes for me,” notes Safiyah. “It’s really fun, and has a soulful, jazzy kind of vibe. But it feels totally different than the other version.”
True to form, “totally different” is something Safiyah will always be pursuing as she taps into her very disparate networks. “My theme throughout has been genre-bending,” she says. “I grew up listening to a lot of different types of things, and I love a lot of different types of music. I don’t think that they should be separate.”
“You’ve got to live the life you sing about in your song,” goes the old gospel tune, and Talibah Safiya is doing just that. When the Mama’s Sundry crew she helped assemble appears at the Frayser Connect Center as a part of the Frayser Summer Concert Series this Friday, August 19th, there will be more than a performance by one of the city’s most inventive neo-soul singer/songwriters.
Well before the band counts off, Safiya and her cohort will be launching their new podcast, Mama’s Sundry Presents: Kitchen Talk. The podcast aims to be a conversational series discussing the cultural nuances of wellness, and its basis in “relationships with self, people, food, and the environment.” Tonight’s conversation on “Food Apartheid” will be recorded live at the Frayser Connect Center, beginning at 6 p.m. And to take things beyond mere kitchen talk, they’ll walk the walk with a vegetarian meal served to all attendees.
For the singer, it’s part of her new efforts to embrace all of her creative impulses at once, from her musical, to her political, spiritual, and gastronomic creativity. The Memphis Flyer got in touch with her to hear more about Mama’s Sundry and tonight’s performance.
Memphis Flyer:What’s Mama’s Sundry, exactly?
Talibah Safiya: It’s a company that includes my husband Bertram [Williams Jr.], myself, my mother, who goes by Mama Sadio, and our good friend Niki Boyd, who is a sustainable wardrobe stylist and blogger. We all came together in 2020. I make oils and skin care products, and we have other friends who make things we love. We wanted to offer their stuff to folks too. But we wanted to reimagine how we could offer people great, non-toxic products, but not necessarily always trying to sell them. From there, we started to not only offer products locally, but organize local events.
What kinds of events?
One event was called Pot Liquor, that we organized with our friends at Everbloom Farm in Millington. We made soups with their crops and fed the people. That was last year, and this year we’re going to be doing it for a second time. We’re also did a swap meet, where people swap their used clothes with other people in the community. We’re really just trying to get creative about not over-consuming, with things that can be reused again and again and again. Another campaign we did was a tote bag made with the Neighborhood Print Company, and we called it the “BYODB tote,” the Bring Your Own Damn Bag tote. That campaign was about getting people to take their own bags to the grocery store. So, those are the types of things we’re focused on.
Mama Sadio, Talibah Safiya, and Niki Boyd (Credit: KeaShundrea Donald)
And Friday’s event focuses more on cooking and food?
We are going to be collaborating with the folks at the Frayser Connect Center. Our company Mama’s Sundry is releasing a podcast where we’ll be talking about food, wellness, sustainability, and just how to stay mentally and physically well here. We’re going to be having a community conversation about that starting at 6 p.m. Friday. And we’ll be trying to get everyone in on this conversation. Everyone is welcome. We can all be empowered and learn how to grow food for ourselves, make products for ourselves, and things like that. And then afterwards we’ll be doing some music, of course. They have a little sanctuary in the space and it is really cute. So I’m really looking forward to playing some music.
So urban farming is big part of Mama Sundry’s mission, too?
This Frayser Connect Center is a former church that’s associated with the Frayser CDC, and they have a community garden started by our good friend, Camille James of Halls of Ivy. She works with folks in the neighborhood, gives crops away to folks. She started pickling and making tomato sauces and stuff, and she always provides really delicious juices at our events.
We do similar work in South Memphis with our home garden. We share food with folks in our neighborhood and we’ve been working on pickling and canning as well. We’re new to it so we’re just seeking to learn, share what we’re learning, and learn with folks. I think it’s a great thing to be having this conversation while we’re learning, so people don’t feel like it’s inaccessible. We’ve only been doing it for a couple years. It’s the type of work that’s easy to tap into, and you continue to grow every season, so we wanted to share that journey with people.
Is your South Memphis garden a community garden as well?
We’re just growing stuff in our front and back yard, which is not huge, but we had a really big cucumber crop, a big tomato crop, a bunch of peppers, and we’ll be able to use the peppers from our garden in the meal we’re sharing with folks Friday. We’re going to feed the people a vegetarian meal during our community conversation.
It sounds like you got more into gardening and canning when the pandemic started, like a lot of people.
Yeah, that highly influenced us being a part of that work. You know, people started fear mongering at that time, but sometimes that inspires you to get empowered, get knowledgeable and get active. And that’s what we did. My husband, Bertram, got his hands in the soil and started learning things. And I do my thing from the kitchen, learning how to use what he’s growing. I’ve always loved cooking, so it’s really cool to be able to share that part of my creativity, and for him and me to share that part of his creativity. Since we both spend so much time in the stage space, performing space, it’s a different aspect of our creative expression, and we love it.
Is Bertram in the arts as well?
He’s an actor. He’s on the show, P-Valley, on Starz.
You started out in theater as well, didn’t you?
I started out in theater, yes. We actually first connected in high school theater classes.
You all seem to have a very collaborative approach to your Mama’s Sundry work.
We’ve been able to collaborate with a lot of friends who are also gardening in the city. Black Seeds Farm in North Memphis, and Everbloom in Millington, and our friend Camille in Frayser. All of them are going to be there on Friday. We’re just building a really intentional community.
There’s a way your music reflects all of these things, isn’t there?
Definitely. For me, one of the focuses in my own heart and mind has been realizing that I had been compartmentalizing the different aspects of my creativity. The music is talking about healing, whether it’s “Healing Creek” or “Ten Toes Down,” I’m often talking about healing from an emotional and spiritual standpoint. The consumption of food that is alive also positively influences your emotional and spiritual health. So if I’m going to be having that conversation, I can’t have it holistically without talking about food. To me it has made sense to put those things together. Because in my own personal wellness journey, food has been in the forefront of how I stay well. I just want to share what I’ve been learning with people. And I have people around me who understand that, luckily. We’re all using our talents to push forward what we believe in as it relates to food. And health and autonomy. And holistic wellness.
Talibah Safiya (Credit: KeaShundrea Donald)
Mama’s Sundry Presents: Kitchen Talk, with a performance by Talibah Safiya and band, will be presented at the Frayser Connection Center, 1635 Georgian Drive, on Friday, Aug. 19th, 5:30-9 p.m. $10 Advance, $20 Door.Tickets
Until 2017, Fourth Bluff Park in Downtown Memphis hosted a Confederate monument. After the removal of the statue’s last remnants, as over 30 trees were planted and connective pathways were installed, the space began to transform. That transformation has only been gaining steam, as evidenced by “The Peace Project,” a new sound installation produced with Memphis River Parks Partnership with actor, producer, and Deep Water Media CEO Bertram Williams and genre-bending songwriter and performer Talibah Safiya.
Readers may recognize Williams as Woddy from the Katori Hall-helmed drama P-Valley. He’s a native Memphian with experience working with community development, arts, and nonprofits. “I’ve produced, with my team, several concerts and tours,” Williams says. “I’m turning a corner in this exploration of sound healing. I say now that I’m a producer and I am dead set on exploring sounds and experiences that help people feel better.”
Bertram Williams
Williams’ partner, Safiya, is a Memphis-born singer, songwriter, and performer. “The Peace Project” is far from her first collaboration with Williams, though it may be their most ambitious work to date. “Last year, we did a 10-city tour,” she says. “This partnership with Memphis River Parks is a continuation of that work we started last year.”
The work of the most recent project was no small task. It required partnerships and communications across mediums and between different organizations. The work itself is a microcosm of what Williams and Safiya want the park to be — a meeting place for Memphians from all walks of life. “We’re told about the dark stories of our past and our city’s history of racism,” Safiya says. “We haven’t been given very much instruction on how to move forward, what it would look like to get healthier as a city. So the opportunity to have some form of guidance to be in the park that once had a Confederate statue, this is laying the foundation of what we expect to be for the future of Memphis. It’s really beautiful to be a part of.”
Safiya and a team of musicians recorded new music for the project at Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. with Scott McEwan. “I was able to sit in on some of the recording sessions,” Williams says, “watching her guide this group of musicians, some of whom had never worked together, to tap into a specific energy, one that is aligned with healing. Listening to the final product, I find myself feeling all the feelings but also nodding my head ’cause it’s good freakin’ music.”
Williams explains that Safiya maestroed an energy-guiding session with the musicians before they began recording. “We wrote some new ‘I Ams’ and ‘We Ares’ to create an experience of inspiration in the park,” Safiya remembers. “We also collaborated with some other writers in the city — some poets and storytellers — and made new content for this project.”
The team is trying to strike a balance between the sense of bliss music can convey and a healing force for introspection. “We’ve been joking throughout the process that we’re putting the medicine in the Kool-Aid,” Williams laughs. He explains that accessibility is important. Hence the public park setting.
“We spent a lot of time [in the park], even before the project,” Williams continues. “We know that space is frequented by our unhoused population. In this endeavor, too, we’ve been thinking about how to create something that would be a support to them.”
The speakers installed for “The Peace Project” are permanent additions to the park. They expect the individual recorded programs to have roughly three-month-long “seasons,” then to be cycled out, hopefully with new music from Safiya as well as new submissions from other local artists. “We imagine this being like a living organism,” Williams says.
“We need, now more than ever, to be able to gather, and to be able to do it safely. So if we can add an additional layer of love and healing, I think we’re on the right track.”
Talibah Safiya is feeling grateful in these days of quarantine, despite having her latest ambitions curtailed by the ongoing pandemic. The Memphis native has been performing her own songs around town for nearly a decade, but had clearly started an upward arc recently, culminating in her win, with director Kevin Brooks, of the Indie Memphis Hometowner Music Video award for her song “Healing Creek” last fall. Since then, she says, “I’ve been working on an EP that I recorded at Memphis Magnetic Recording. Because it’s all on tape, that shifted my focus a little bit. We weren’t able to get into the studio, with the social distance practice.”
But you couldn’t really say she’s putting on the brakes, as she continues to drop new songs, all startlingly original, every month. The most recent have been “Up and Down,” “The Great Disguise,” and “Golden Egg,” which came out on her birthday, April 23rd. The latter track, equal parts earthy soul goddess and Memphis trap seductress, should resonate deeply with local hip-hop fans. “That was a Soundcloud exclusive,” she notes. “Because I’m singing over a classic Memphis trap beat that DJ Paul and Gangsta Boo did, a ’94 drop called ‘Cheefa da Reefa.’ I only put that on Soundcloud because I was using somebody else’s beat.”
Taja Janel
Talibah Safiya
While that’s standard practice these days, Safiya is more comfortable creating her music from the ground up. “I’ll start to craft the songs while I’m performing them. That’s how they start to get super musical, because we’re exploring it a lot in rehearsal. It comes together, birthing in a live space.”
The intuitive, open-ended process has made her music hard to pigeonhole, and that’s just how she likes it. “I’m a genre-hopping musician. I say that it’s diasporic music because it’s every form of music that black people have explored. Some of them sound kinda bluesy or folk-inspired. Some of them are totally R&B, and then one of the new releases sounds super hip-hop. So … I do everything.”
She puts it down to growing up between two worlds, in a sense. “Orange Mound and South Memphis is where I grew up, and I would say there was a duality to the way I grew up because my neighborhood became more ‘street’ over time. When I first got there, it wasn’t like that, and then it started to change. It had different personalities in it. I was growing up with my mom, reading a lot. So I had this kinda duality. Also, my dad loved freestyling with us when we were kids. So my brother and I still freestyle together, all the time.
“My parents are great. My dad was a DJ on 103.5, so my relationship with music was so deeply informed by his relationship with music. The whole classic blues love that I have in my music comes from growing up listening to that every day on my way to school.”
For anyone who’s heard Safiya’s unique blend of strength, sass, and melodicism, it’s no surprise that her principal inspiration is Nina Simone. “She’s the ultimate storyteller, through music. And she’s another genre-hopping artist who is good at many kinds of music.” And Safiya, like Simone, can inhabit her characters fully. It’s also no surprise that she was a theater major in college, before dropping out and moving to Brooklyn. “But ultimately, home gives me the cradle that I need to create as my best self,” she notes, describing her return to Memphis.
Here on native ground, she’s found a crew of musicians and others who can follow her every turn on a dime. One of her latest collaborators has been Kevin Brooks, and it goes far beyond last year’s award-winning music video. “Kevin Brooks traveled around with us while we were on the road last year,” she says. “He was always in the corner, catching all the cool shit. I’m so excited to show how raw that journey was, and how much we learned along the way. It’s called A Deep Water Sound.”
Look for the new EP and the film this summer. In the meantime, Safiya will keep working through the pandemic. “Luckily I had some raw tracks, and I have things to work with on my computer at home. I have a decent mic. And I’ve been finishing things by myself, learning to produce more, and just trusting my skills, so I can continue to share and not feel like I’m on pause.”
The Memphis Flyer is proud to feature music videos from Memphis artists on Music Video Monday. Judging from the mind-bending difficulty of putting together this top ten list, 2019 was a good year. I scored the year’s videos on concept, song, look, and performance. Then, I shook my head at all the ties and did it all over again. It was so close, it was an honor just to be in the top ten, and I had to include three honorable mentions. Congratulations to all our winners!
C. Louise Page’s “Future Runaway Bride,” directed by Joshua Cannon and Barrett Kutas, will get you to the church on time, but what happens then is on you.
TOP TEN:
10. PreauXX – “Steak and Shake ft. AWFM”
The Unapologetic crew gets behind the counter of a sandwich joint in this video from director 35 Miles. This is one of those videos where you can just tell that everybody had a great time making it, and the fun is infectious.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019
9. Uriah Mitchell – “Might Be”
Everything is wound up tight in Waheed AlQawasami’s video of a surreal night at the club with Uriah and his friends.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (2)
8. Heels – “King Drunk”
Director Nathan Parten transforms Midtown into a D&D fantasia in this incredible animated video for Memphis’ hardest rocking duo.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (3)
7. Talibah Safiya – “Healing Creek”
Director Kevin Brooks brought out Talibah Safiya’s beauty and charisma in this spiritual video, which won the Hometowner Music Video award at Indie Memphis 2019.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (4)
6. Sweet Knives – “I Don’t Wanna Die”
Shannon Walton is outstanding as a stranded aviator in this video by director Laura Jean Hocking for the reunited veterans of the Lost Sounds, led by Alijca Trout.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (5)
5. The Poet Havi – “Shea Butter (Heart of Darkness)”
Director Joshua Cannon and cinematographer Nate Packard took inspiration from Raging Bull for this banger from The Poet Havi, who clearly has more and better dancers than Martin Scorsese ever did.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (6)
4. Impala – “Double Indemnity”
Director Edward Valibus and actress Rosalyn Ross created a heist movie in miniature for the kings of Memphis surf’s comeback record.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (7)
3. John Kilzer – Hello Heart
Memphis lost an elder statesman of music this year when John Kilzer tragically passed away in January. Director Laura Jean Hocking created this tone poem in blue for his final single.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (8)
2. Al Kapone – “Al Kapeezy Oh Boy”
Director Sean Winfrey knows how large Al Kapone looms in Memphis music, and he finally blew the rapper up to Godzilla size in this video for one of Kapone’s best jams since “Whoop That Trick”.
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (9)
1. Louise Page – “Harpy”
When this one dropped in October, MVM called it “an instant classic.” Animator Nathan Parten transformed Louise Page into a mythological monster and sending her off to wreak havoc on Greek heroes. Don’t feel sorry for Odysseus. He got what he deserved. Memphis, look upon your best music video of 2019:
Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (10)
If you would like to see you music video on Music Video Monday, and maybe in the top ten of 2020, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. Happy New Year!
Have all you cinephiles recovered from Indie Memphis yet? I’m done fighting that post-fest funk, and now it’s time to take stock. Today on Music Video Monday, we’re presenting the winners of the two video awards.
An incredible 44 videos screened to a party atmosphere at Black Lodge last Sunday night. The winner of the Sounds Music Video Award, which covers American and international entries, was DarriusTheGreatest & Ttropicana’s dancehall-inflected “Got It, Got It.” In true Indie Memphis tradition, the it’s a low-budget scrapper the prevailed over videos made with lots more resources.
Music Video Monday: Indie Memphis Winners (2)
The Hometowner Music Video award went to Talibah Safiya’s “Healing Creek,” directed by Memphis wunderkind Kevin Brooks. Shot Super-8 style, this simple, beautiful visual concentrates on bringing out Safiya’s considerable natural charisma.
Music Video Monday: Indie Memphis Winners
I’ll have more on this year’s Indie Memphis tomorrow. If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Taja Janel 
