Meet Shirlette Ammons
Writer and musician Shirlette Ammons is not afraid of intimacy. Her poems and songs are like diary pages that she invites audiences to flip through at their leisure. Ammons is used to sharing her personal space. She grew up in a rural country home with a twin sister and dozens of cousins. After she left home for college, she started to explore her race and sexuality and used the power of the pen to document her self-discovery.
Her first collection of poetry, “Stumphole: Aunthology of Bakwoods Blood,” was published in and followed by the more recent “Matching Skin” (Carolina Wren Press/). Ammons is a musical artist as well. She’s the frontwoman of Mosadi Music, a hip-hop band based in the Triangle, and she just released an EP called “And Lovers Like,” with Chapel Hill blues rock band The Dynamite Brothers.
The Durham-based musician&#;s latest album, Spectacles, explores identity and features cameos by lots of local talent.
by David Menconi
In life as well as art, Shirlette Ammons is a multi-hyphenate polyglot who crosses all kinds of borders and boundaries. A self-described Black queer Southern truth-teller, she is a poet, community activist and documentary film producer as well as a musician. And if you want a sense of her range of sounds and influences, all you have to do is check the credits of her brilliant album Spectacles, which was released in April.
Ammons’ collaborators on Spectacles include Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn from Grammy-nominated electronic duo Sylvan Esso; rappers G. Yamazawa and Kane Smego; Justin Robinson from the Grammy-winning old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops; and players from The Veldt, Dante High, Hiss Golden Messenger and other rock bands. For good measure, students from Durham’s Central Park School For Children contributed a vocal cameo on one song.
It’s quite an all-star team that speaks to Ammons’ status as a connector.
“I kinda just don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” she says of her collaborative ways. “I’m like a little p
In addition to her music releases, Shirlette served as a producer on Emmy and Peabody Award-winning PBS series A CHEF’S LIFE as well as SOMEWHERE SOUTH which also aired on PBS. Shirlette is the recipient of Black Public Media’s Pitch Black Prize which awarded funding towards completion of the THE HOOK, a documentary short that explores Black maritime history through the plight of chef Ricky Moore. She also served as producer on acclaimed music documentaries MAY THE LORD WATCH: THE LITTLE BROTHER STORY and STAY PRAYED UP, which debuted at Telluride Film Festival in September as well as THE SEEDS WE KEEP (Oxford American). She is also an award-winning poet and a Cave Canem Fellow whose body of work includes two collections of poetry (MATCHING SKIN and STUMPHOLE: AUNTHOLOGY OF BACKWOODS BLOOD).
Shirlette Ammons is a Black queer southern truth teller. She is a poet and musician who has also served as producer on Emmy and Peabody award-winning TV & film projects. She is also an identical twin who hails from a tiny, wonderfully-named pocket of eastern North Carolina earth called Beautancus.
– Grayson Currin, Music Writer
Given this wild set of identifiers, the thou
Shirlette Ammons explores visibility, identity and relationships in 'Spectacles'
Stacia Brown
Stacia L. Brown is a writer and audio storyteller who has worked in public media since , when she partnered with the Association of Independents in Radio and Baltimore's WEAA to create The Rise of Charm City, a narrative podcast that centered community oral histories. She has worked for WAMU’s daily news radio program, 1A, as well as WUNC’s The State of Things. Stacia was a producer for WUNC's award-winning series, Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon and a co-creator of the station's first children's literacy podcast, The Story Stables. She served as a senior producer for two Ten Percent Happier podcasts, Childproof and More Than a Feeling. In early , she was interim executive producer for WNYC’s The Takeaway.
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