The New Orleans Jazz Museum in the Book Talk of Walkin Blues with Kalamu Ya Salaam and Michael Allen Zell on Wednesday, February 12th at 2:00 PM CDT inside the New Orleans Jazz Museum. 

This program takes place inside our third floor Performance Center, listening room. Admission is free and open to the public, seating is limited and offered first come, first serve.

Enjoy Jazz Music from home with the New Orleans Jazz Museum! Join the Jazz Museum online for our daily Live-Stream Concert Series, in which dynamic musicians perform live from the Jazz Museum! Tune in at 2pm on facebook.com/nolajazzmuseum/live to watch for free.

Kalamu Ya Salaam

Kalamu Ya Salaam is a writer, editor, photographer, and retired educator. He was born Vallery Ferdinand III in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes and the civil rights movement, Salaam became interested in writing and organizing for social change. He was a founder of BLACKARTSOUTH and changed his name to Kalamu ya Salaam, which is Kishwahili for “pen of peace.” Salaam was also a founder of NOMMO Literary Society and Runagate press. Among many things, he has been Executive Director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, a DJ on WWOZ, administrator of the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Health Center, and the editor of The Black Collegian magazine. He blogs at kalamu.com/neogriot

Michael Allen Zell

Michael Allen Zell is a New Orleans-based novelist, screenwriter, freelancer, and playwright. His most recent book is The Last Shadow. He is best known for his crime fiction series featuring Bobby Delery, a Tulane University Criminology professor, who is forced to right wrongs on the streets of New Orleans. The L.A. Review of Books praised with, “Zell demonstrates a gallows humor and a fine ear for entertainment…like the best crime fiction, the story invests deeply in setting, and it succeeds by virtue of its author’s palpable love for New Orleans and the people who live there.” Susan Larson in The Times-Picayune said, “What really keeps us turning pages is Zell’s authorial voice, his insights into human nature, and the dark sense of humor that comes out of observing city life.”

About the Book:

WALKIN’ BLUES, the new novel by Kalamu ya Salaam, is a speculation and meditation on the life and legend of bluesman Robert Johnson. It is a hero’s journey, largely set in 1930’s Mississippi. Johnson takes his sweet time rambling across the state and singing for his supper in jukes as he encounters curious women, jealous men, ugly racism of the time, the aftermath of the 1927 flood, and much more. He’s a man who is walking to think and walking to forget. WALKIN’ BLUES is ruminating as revolution by a writer who, for over 55 years, has had one eye on the telescope, the other on the microscope, and the forthrightness to speak on it as strongly as anyone in our era. WALKIN’ BLUES is the first published novel by Salaam.

Kalamu ya Salaam's first published novel, Walkin’ Blues, takes us into the mind, soul, and short life of the legendary blues songmaker, singer, and guitarist Robert Johnson with a magical realism of voice not previously imagined. The mysteries of Johnson’s spirit, life, and music remain. None of his many followers have mustered the vernacular cultural voice or social and emotional knowledge that Salaam brings in creating the blues hero’s intimate thoughts and actions in his life’s journey. The reader won’t hear the songs or think of Robert Johnson the same way again. 

Contacts:

MBW: 201 S. Murat St., New Orleans, LA 70119

Instagram: michaelallenzell & kysalaam

Email: michaelallenzell504@gmail.com