(bright music) - [Jade] Jahniah Kum strives to amplify voices in her art.

(upbeat music) Catch the acting bug with Aaron Moore.

(upbeat music) And see a performance from Johnny Swain.

It's all ahead, on this episode of AHA, A House for Arts.

- [Narrator] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox beach philanthropic foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fisher Malesardi.

The Alexander and Marjorie Hover foundation and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T bank we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(bright music) - Hi, I'm Jade Warrick, and this is AHA.

A house for art, a place for all things creative here's Matt with today's field segment.

- [Matthew] I'm in downtown Albany on my way to the Albany barn to chat with artists Jahniah Kum, let's go.

- I am a contemporary artist.

My mediums that I work with are paint, photography and fiber.

So a lot of oil painting and photography, those two kind of go hand in hand a lot for me and my work.

And just recently I picked up fiber art.

I was born in Albany, but I grew up back and forth from Jamaica and Albany.

So Montego Bay Jamaica is where I grew up and here in West Hill in Albany, New York.

And it gave me a unique experience of growing up as a kid 'cuz I have both memories of growing up here but also growing up in the Caribbean and they're two different type of like upbringings.

I come from two big immigrant families, and one I think very essential piece of just like our story as a family was documenting a lot, and that's where my love for photography came in my first camera was a polaroid.

At first I didn't see it as a medium 'cuz it's something I've always been around and seeing other people doing as a kind of thing to save a moment or a memory.

And it wasn't until 2020 where I started doing things or making work as sort of like a memorialization of a memory.

So I have a painting called mothers before me and when I was working on it I didn't realize that I was memorializing my mom in that portrait, my late mom.

So that sort of became the first step in me realizing, okay I can use photography in this way and this is how it intertwines with painting.

There's one actually in the room of me it's not done yet my birthday's next month, so I plan on sharing it with everyone then but I had this like really bad birthday and automatically I had like this image of myself in my head like my mom was always the person to help me celebrate and feel real special on my birthday.

And my last one just wasn't that great so I was like, you know what?

I need to put this somewhere.

Like I, and at first I didn't know that it was gonna be a painting but when I had like the image in my head I was like, oh, I'm gonna paint this.

My love for texture came into the painting so I decided to add a embroidered frame into the portrait.

In the frame is a photo transfer of my baby self.

The painting is actually gonna be framed itself.

So it's a frame within a frame.

When it's done it's gonna have a birthday cake into the composition as well.

And I wanted to kind of mess around with texture literally but also texture painting wise a bit differently.

I wanted things to clash.

I wanted some things not to make sense 'cuz I think that's how I was feeling around that time.

I had an idea to do a body of work called white noise and it was supposed to invite a lot of white space, a lot of use of negative space in my compositions to kind of allow me to think more about what exactly I wanna like emphasize in a portrait.

The first body work of that series is a stop sign that was memorialized with images and stuff.

It just talks- it kind of talked a lot about like what my neighborhood is actually like and it's not a pretty story but it's also something that encouraged me to do these portraits the same way, where a lot of these people these are our younger images, these are images of my family members who have passed and the white space is inviting because it's black and white it's very simple.

And it allows people to kind of just see what's there and not anything else.

Typically if I add color, you know somebody would probably say, "Oh these flowers are really pretty", and not actually focus on the person and the portrait.

I had this polaroid project I started in 2018 because of my mom.

When she was here she was so full of life, she was about family, she was kind of like the glue to our family, and she would always say "You have to practice being comfortable, having people around you.

It's so good to have people around you."

I would meet one new person each day and just say hello because what I needed was someone to kind of say hello or do that.

I didn't know that I was grieving.

And what that project did was introduce me to so many amazing people over like the years.

And it's something that I kind of wanted to publish to encourage others to either do the same, or just to say hello to to anybody who may look like they need a hello.

I think everybody should have this feeling of like wanting to be kind to others because like it's these moments that I think people should really cherish.

- Aaron Moore is an actor, director playwright and educator living in Albany.

After studying theater at SUNY Potsdam Aaron realized his goal was not to become a famous actor, his goal was to create, inspire and educate.

So how does he do that?

I spoke with Aaron to find out.

Welcome Aaron, welcome to AHA.

- [Aaron] Well thank you.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- Give us a little bit of background of your background in theater.

- Sure.

So actually it started my aunt, my aunt Wanda, she did a lot of theater here in the area.

She directed plays and shows and whatnot in the area.

And she was a theater person herself.

She went to the university of Buffalo for theater and out there she was like this renaissance woman like she did with like she was like her her friends living out, just being working artists.

She was a makeup artist, she was a lounge singer, she did, she did theater herself, she directed theater, she wrote plays - Wow.

- All sorts of things.

So when she saw that I might have the knack for it she kind of put me in, in everything, dance class, singing, acting, she put me in her place.

So I've been acting since I was geez, about eight - Long hauler.

- Yes.

And like full on professional plays so, it started there.

And then in high school, I kind of fell back in love for it.

And the theater program there where I met Gregory Marsh and Ward Dales and they were sort of my theater mentors and yeah.

And then from college I majored in majored in theater in college, went to SUNY Potsdam and sort of found, but I found like, okay, I love theater but this is what I want to be or who I want to be in theater through college.

So very a transformative experience.

And then I went, took it and went to New York and did theater, a lot of theater out there and kind of started teaching out there and then came back, came back here.

- Oh wow.

So it's been a long journey for you in the theater world.

- Long journey.

- What exactly in you said college is where you got your spark again?

- [Aaron] Yeah.

- What exactly in college happened?

- I realized that I was the, like I think it was myself and one other person black person that was in the theater program.

And we had like good professors that were very, that some you know, were very aware of the situation and kind of gave us our freedom to kind of create what we wanted in theater, in that department.

And I just was like I kind of immersed myself in like black plays and like, wow these people look like me and kind of came where I come from and they created this magic.

They created these worlds and these characters.

So I would say that that where my spark kind of reignited for theater again.

- Beautiful, beautiful.

- [Aaron] Yeah.

- So I know you have a little thing called acting with Aaron.

Why don't you give us a little bit about that?

- [Aaron] Yeah - What is acting with Aaron?

- Yeah, so acting with Aaron is a arts education company where our motto is we bring the performing arts to underserved communities and it started back in 2014 when I was living in the city, New York city.

And I had friends of mine who wanted to get into acting there.

And they were like, what?

Like I want to get into it.

But you know, obviously New York city is the mecca for acting, but it was just the, the the classes were just $1000, $800, $700 and they wanted to get into it.

So they would, you know, I would just kind of talk them up and like, well, you know, try this, do this for an audition.

You have an audition coming up, maybe try it like this way.

And I would read scripts with people and then I would give them scripts and things of that nature.

And people were like, well, you should just you should just be a teacher.

And so, and that's where kind of came out of there.

And then when I came back here I realized that the arts weren't fully in neighborhoods where people that look like me are in don't really have reach, aren't really there to be reached.

So I decided to kind of take that sort of modeling and thinking from city back here to Albany where to provide people, young people, youth to adults and opportunities to educate themselves in the world of the performing arts and at a, you know, affordable rates.

And, you know, we artists gotta eat - Yeah.

(Jade laughs) - But it was, it was like, you know, I just I wanted to make it tangible and reachable.

So that's where the idea of acting with Aaron came from was the idea to provide the arts for everybody that everybody deserves to have their to have their stake in the art.

- Everybody deserves to have their space.

And have it accessible as well.

- Absolutely.

- So I'm seeing some recurring themes as seeing people like you or in black spaces, do you not do what do you think about Albany theater's scene or the black community within the theater scene in Albany?

Is it present?

Are there any thoughts?

- Ah, man, it's a whole other show.

(laughs) I'll say that for a long time, our voices, I would say multicultural voices in the theater world up here were very silent.

Not silent I don't say that excuse me, I would say unheard.

Cause we were, we were talking and for a long time, we were sort of put in a box of like a lot of theaters where every few years would do like a black show quote unquote.

And then that's when like, alright we'll give you a shot or we'll give you a chance or you know, we'll give you, here's your opportunity.

And then, then we would have to do it.

Then after a few years, same thing would happen.

Like, okay, we'll do it and it was like the same groups of shows, you know, plays.

And it was like, well, there's like thousands of of these plays out here, you know, why are we still doing like the same five ones every three to five years for that.

And people would go, oh I have this great show.

You know, I need a black person.

So would you do it?

Or I have this, you know, and I would go, you know, I'm more than just my color, like I studied at this point four years and then had, you know several other years of experience, you know I can do other things then just be the black butler that you need in your show.

- Yeah exactly.

- Or like the one black character that you need to add.

So it, it was really, it was really tough for a long time for artists of color to kind of shine because we were being we reached a glass ceiling and we were being held back.

Now and with theater companies like Illumina theater with like black, the black theater troop of state New York and Kahilu theater, who's putting on a show right now.

And it's, we're sort of like taking that agency back and saying, well, you know if you're not gonna provide us this, there's this now.

So some of it's changing.

I mean, it's still sort of a lot of still performance allyship is going on within the realms of that.

But I mean, still people are, you know have taken notice and, and decided, you know, and and chose to listen to us and to hear what we, you know are saying and whatnot.

So it, it is changing.

It's not there yet, unfortunately, but you know I think through our, meaning artists of color, wanting more that's where the change is coming from.

- Okay.

Do you incorporate those themes into some of your plays?

- Oh, absolutely.

Anytime I put that I follow a mantra that Ava DuVernay said she said her job is to magnify the magnificence of black people.

And I put that in all aspects of my work and it should, it's part of me it's part of my culture.

I don't run from it.

I don't feel embarrassed to speak about it.

I don't feel, you know, that it's wrong.

You know, a lot of people are like (whispering) shh we can't talk about, cause we're black.

It's like, what's kind of hard to miss.

(whispering) Shh we can't.

No, but I don't, I loved it.

And I love expressing it and sharing that with people and people, you know that aren't black or are aren't, you know, a person of color still connects to it still connects to the piece.

I just did a, I just put on a civic theater in Albany put on a reading of one of my plays and it was all black characters center around black culture and people still loved it.

So and it kind of shows that just because it it exudes blackness doesn't mean it's only blackness and should be like shared and experienced by all.

- I love that.

What's the name of that play?

- So the name of that play was called "On this chosen ground" and actually Paul Kane and Corey Ellis big members here in the capital Ridge community were in it.

I just kind of called them I was like, hey, I got this play.

They're like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it.

And they were just phenomenal and they were, they were really great.

And so it's about two soldiers in world war one world war two, excuse me, that are out in this field and they discuss life and love and music and women and drink and trauma and all sorts of things out in this traumatic environment, you know of bombs and bodies and guns and all that stuff of what war can bring.

These two found each other and found a sort of kinship and brother ship within each other.

- Sounds like a beautiful play, will it ever be on again?

- Yeah, that's what we're hoping to do next year.

You know, this coming year we're hoping to finally put on some more programming now that you know, it's not gone away but the pandemic has sort of calmed down that we hopefully are trying to put on some programming and opportunities for again, actors of color to not only just to be educated but also to perform and be in the love of performing and all that.

So hopefully that's gonna be one of 'em.

We have a few show ideas that we're kind of toying around with to provide people opportunities.

- That's amazing.

And one more question.

- [Aaron] Yeah.

- I wanna ask you, what is one of your favorite plays?

- [Aaron] Oh one of my favorite man.

- I wanna know one of your favorite plays.

- That is- okay one of my favorite plays that's... okay.

One of my favorite plays is called "The colored museum" by George C. Wolf.

And it's one of my favorite plays for many reasons.

It was the first profession play I was ever in, the first play I ever directed.

And it's just, it's a play that that has these exhibits cuz it's a museum, but exhibits of black culture in black life, it was written 1989 so it is a little aged, but I always refer back to it, has one of my favorite quotes that I use all the time and it's "God created black people, and black people created style."

- I love that.

- One of my favorite quotes I use.

So I always like leave it around whenever I can.

So I say, yeah, that's one of my favorite plays.

- That's beautiful Aaron.

- [Aaron] Thank you.

- Well, thank you for coming on AHA today.

It was amazing having you and hearing about it.

And I hope folks follow acting with Aaron and hopefully get a few lessons from you.

- Yeah.

We'll be doing them next year.

So intro to acting, acting two.

All that.

- [Jade] Awesome.

Well, nice having you today.

- [Aaron] Thank You.

- Please welcome Johnny Swain.

- So this song is er, it's called color inside the lines.

It's a little unique in my repertoire only because I wrote it all at once.

Usually I'll, you know, when I'm writing something I'll write a guitar part and then maybe I'll sit down and I'll write some lyrics and I'll sort of work them together and see how everything fits and go from there and sort of, you know come up with a layout and some sort of construction but this just kind of like 90% of the song really just kind of came out while I was playing it.

The few fans that I have seemed to really like it.

So I, you know, I look forward to playing it for you.

Thank you.

(soft guitar music) ♪My time is precious and ♪ ♪There ain't much left of it no ♪ ♪So many moons have slipped through my fingers ♪ ♪My temper's short and my aim is distorted ♪ ♪And I've gotten more than my fair share of regrets ♪ ♪I thought I knew once what was to be ♪ ♪And yet to come and all is clear is what should've been ♪ ♪I lie awake contemplating each mistake that I make ♪ ♪The only one I can relate to is you ♪ ♪We cannot merely draw down the chain ♪ ♪Lie down in the bed that we've made ♪ ♪All the plans that we've laid won't stay in their place ♪ ♪Oh, the twist and the turns have you learned to observe ♪ ♪Don't step out of line be on time see the sites ♪ ♪Pay the toll at the sign and color inside the lines ♪ (guitar strumming) ♪ Don't get so stressed out ♪ ♪ No there's no way out ♪ ♪ Hold on tight this is the ride of your life ♪ ♪ It's funny this perspective of time ♪ ♪ When you wind it up and you watch it unwind ♪ ♪ All the plans that we've laid ♪ ♪ Won't stay in their place ♪ ♪ All the twists and the turns ♪ ♪ Have you learned to observe ♪ ♪ Don't step out of line ♪ ♪ Be on time, see the sites ♪ ♪ Pay the toll at the sign ♪ ♪ And color inside the lines ♪ (guitar strumming) ♪ Don't step out of line ♪ ♪ Be on time see the sites ♪ ♪ Pay the toll at the sign ♪ ♪ And color inside the lines ♪ (guitar strumming) This next song is called "Dream".

I wrote it a long time ago.

Actually I wrote majority of it on my steering wheel while I was driving down the highway.

Dave Tayo also produced the radio friendly version.

This is a pretty simple rendition but I think you'll like it.

All right I hope you like it.

Thank you I like it.

(soft piano music) ♪I flake away the layers ♪ ♪ That mask the memories of my past ♪ ♪ And I recall precious moments don't last ♪ ♪ So I sit and I stare ♪ ♪ With the TV's glare in my eye ♪ ♪ Wondering how could I have been wrong all this time ♪ ♪ I miss you more and more every day ♪ ♪ I want you more and more every day ♪ ♪ I need you more and more every day ♪ ♪ And I love you ♪ ♪ And I love you ♪ ♪ But it seems so cruel and tasteless ♪ ♪ To waste this moment in my life ♪ ♪ And I dread how many more like it I'll leave behind ♪ ♪ The day is new ♪ ♪ And I knew you'd never lose faith in me ♪ ♪ And you'll never want for the love you knew ♪ ♪ I miss you more and more every day ♪ ♪ And I want you more and more every day ♪ ♪ And I need you more and more every day ♪ ♪ And I love you ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ With no more ♪ ♪ Than a dream to light my way ♪ (piano playing) ♪Led here dreaming a dream that I dreamt awake ♪ ♪ And in my dreams ♪ ♪ Layers have begun to flake away ♪ ♪ How much of this punishment must I take ♪ ♪ I was only dreaming the light is faded away ♪ ♪ And I miss you more and more every day ♪ ♪ And I miss you more and more every day ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ ♪ More and more every day ♪ - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts visit WMHT.ORG/AHA and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Jade Warrick and thank you for watching.

(piano music) - Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox beach philanthropic foundation.

Chad and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fisher Melesardi.

The Alexander and Marjorie Hoover foundation and the Robison family foundation - At M&T bank we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you to do the same.