The Black Catatonic Scream

The Black Catatonic Scream
Harmony Holiday

A digital project, part of Two Ears and One Mouth

Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, and archivist. She’s the author of A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom (2019); Hollywood Forever (Fence Books, 2016); Go Find Your Father/A Famous Blues (Ricochet Editions, 2014); Negro League Baseball (Fence Books, 2011); and The Black Saint and the Sinnerman, an LP composed of sound and speech that assimilates Charles Mingus’s classic 1963 album. She runs Afrosonics, an archive of jazz and everyday diaspora poetics, and Mythscience, an imprint that reissues work from the archive. She is currently working on a book of poems called M a a f a and an accompanying collection of essays and memoirs, Reparations: Thieves Who Stole My Blue Days, as well as a biography of the jazz singer Abbey Lincoln. She has received the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts, and a fellowship from the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program.

“The Black Catatonic Scream” was published as part of Triple Canopy’s Immaterial Literature project area, which receives support from the Stolbun Collection, Agnes Gund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Tags: Essay, Poetry, Sound

26 Two Ears and One Mouth

The Great Equalizer, by Alexander Provan
Omniaudience, by Triple Canopy & Nikita Gale
Parts of Speech at MCA Chicago, by Triple Canopy & Public Fiction
On the Difficulties in Writing the Truth, by Hari Kunzru
On What We Owe, by Astra Taylor & Laura Hanna
On Similitude, by Steffani Jemison with Garrett Gray
On Onomatopoeia, by Tomeka Reid with Taylor Ho Bynum, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu & Mike Reed
On Labor and Management, by Julio Torres
On the Next Economy, by Christopher Kulendran Thomas
Parts of Speech
Rave, by Rainald Goetz
Stereomodernism, by DeForrest Brown, Jr.
Listening, by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
A Cinder Block Falling on Concrete, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan
The Black Catatonic Scream, by Harmony Holiday
LITTLE GIRLS, by Nikita Gale
Second Rate, by Jonathan Sterne & Mara Mills
Table of Visions, by Tashi Wada with Alexander Provan
Proyecto DATA, by Julia Weist & Nestor Siré
Proyecto DATA, by Julia Weist & Nestor Siré

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