Juke Joint

Juke Joint is a dynamic interactive, multimedia traveling installation depicting my father’s illegal liquor house and my childhood recollections of the patrons of "Little’s Grocery" in the late 60s and 70s. I describe like snapshots of life, the sights, sounds and smells of the people whose existence is engrained vividly in my memory. I utilize artifacts, distressed walls, surreal sculptured mannequins, and a blues- filled audio track (where I become the characters) to breathe life in to a warm, humorous, sometimes seedy, yet real depiction of a slice of rural life...

• Hear - Margaret Washington and Amos Langley argue over the significance of John 3:16.
• See - Miss Beaulah in the middle of the floor-hips thrust out as if dancing, screaming “Owww, I sho’ nuff feels good!
• Feel - the wooden grocery store countertops frozen in 50s hayday fashion.
• Smell - the aroma of butter cookies in a brown paper bag or pickeled pigs feet filled in a greasy glass jar.

All this, while in a 350 square foot tarpaper shotgun shack—a tableau frozen in the late 60s- early 70s—a childhood memory of artist Willie Little. This shotgun shack was his father’s grocery store by day and illegal liquor house at night. Margaret and Amos were just 2 of the many patrons that frequented Little’s Grocery. The artist becomes many of these characters as their voices emanate from the Wurlitzer Juke Box under a blues- filled audio track.

The installation is a slice of life, a historical and cultural work that documents a fading part of a rural lifestyle. In the tradition of the griot (wise African storyteller) the work preserves history through vibrant story. It also brings the stories to life through the visual arts medium. (Installation)

Juke joints were an anomaly particular to the Black experience. During the day, my father’s place was known as Little’s Grocery. But when night fell, so did its mask of civic purpose. People stole in from across the county for a little gin, a little dancing, a little romancing. “The Store” was a physical metaphor for the masks upon masks that people of color have always had to wear in a country that actively relegated their existence to the darkest corners, the darkest hours.

The juke joint was more than a liquor house. It was a meeting place, a place of refuge and solace where black folks unbottled their joys and pains, served them with a 50 cent shot of gin and shared how to make the bitter twist of life easier to swallow, if not sweeter to the taste. The installation is a cultural microcosm of the trajectory of origin, movement, adaptation and transformation. Its existence embodies the core elements of what it means to be of the African Diaspora. The desire to survive, adapt, and thrive in the context of historical events that displaced, misplaced or simply placed Africans in a particular environment is an evident underlying theme.

The installations’ goal is to facilitate the viewer’s experience of the characters’ vivacity, their passions, and their desperate drive to not merely exist, but live joyfully and thrive despite the tragedy of a marginalized existence.

The installation began as a series of four vignettes made possible through a 1994 Regional Emerging Artist Grant. The work became a full- scale installation through an Artist Project Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council Project Grant in 1996 and originated in a shotgun house at the Afro American Cultural Center in Charlotte, NC. The exhibit has traveled to several venues throughout the country since 1997 and in 2003 received a special grant from the Arts & Science Council and traveled to the Smithsonian Institute where over 305,000 visitors experienced the installation at that venue alone.

The exhibit has traveled to over a dozen venues throughout the United States. In 2003 Juke Joint traveled to the Smithsonian Arts & Industries Gallery where audiences swelled to over 305,000 in its three- month run. The original two- month run was extended due to the exhibits popularity.

The Smithsonian exhibition was well- received, reviewed by Richard Paul of the Washington Post on September 29 and discussed in African American Art and Artists, a revised edition, by Samella Lewis, PhD, both in 2003.

• Paul praised the exhibit for “its ability to materialize memory—the installation is soaked in affection, music and celebration.”
• The esteemed artist and art historian, Samella Lewis states on page 316 “like the Harlem Renaissance artists Melvin Gray Johnson, Palmer Hayden and William Henry Johnson, he (Willie Little) depicts ordinary people.”  These artists have found the beauty and the honor that elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary.

When the installation traveled to the Charles H Wright African American Museum in Detroit in 1998 over 100,000 visitors poured into the gallery, many of them repeat guests.

• During the Detroit venue, the installation was reviewed by over a dozen Detroit area newspapers. (see vitae for list)
• The artist has made radio appearances to promote the successful installation on NPR’s The Todd Munce Show in Detroit in 1998, KERA , Dallas in 2000 and WUNC, Raleigh in 2002.

According to the artist Willie Little, I have discovered that as I tell my personal stories, many people from various backgrounds tell me I am telling their stories. Even a visitor from Lome, Africa glowed with emotion, exclaiming that as she walked in the shotgun shack she felt at “home”… “You took me back home to the Shabeens in my native Togo.” Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“Juke” a common pronunciation of “joog” a word meaning disorderly, which is found among Gullah Geechie blacks in South Carolina and Georgia. “ Joog” may ultimately derive from “Dzugu” a Bambara African word meaning wicked. Juke is applied to African American liquor houses throughout the rural south (Otto, John S. and Augustus M. Burns, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture).

1. Eshu and Glory- were inseparable lovers who always fought and made up. At the age of seven, I caught them “ making up” behind our house. My sisters and I laughed until our stomachs hurt…

2. Mr. William Godley-  tall, lanky and scraggly bearded man with two long, yellowing walrus teeth. That man did love to dance. In his own little world, in the middle of the floor, he played and air harmonica.

3. Miss Beulah- “Oww, I sho’ feels good” Miss Beaulah has been doing 50 cent shots and that washer signature growl . Her laugh was almost like the down-shifting of an old car’s transmission, gears just a grindin’- hhhhheee…After a few 50 cent gin shots, she would jump out in the middle of the cup her breasts smoothly down to her teenie waist, down to the expanse of her tribal hips, then back to rub the roundness of her ample butt, all the while her hiss and growl just prominent. She knew she was something then…Mister Charlie, I’m goin down to the Pactolus Inn if you aint got no gin- hhhheee-just messin with you Mister Charlie.”

4. Sara Caroway- “would stroll through Pactolus sporting a parasol no matter the weather. She was shaped like an ostrich….”

5. Margaret Washington- “a dark, slender, dignified Gullah/Geechie woman who smoked a million packs of cigarettes a day and whose voice ratted like engine- knock when she spoke. Miss Margaret in her Gullah tone asked the  Lord ‘… to change me and make me a different person from what I am today…and in a swift turn, argued with Amos Langley over the significance of John 3:16…”

6. Romie Dee- had a golf ball-sized goiter on the left side of his jaw. He suffered from an ailment my sisters and I referred to as the “ vomit cough”. We would mimic the cough on command.

Image of two characters near juke box are:

Miss Odell and Miss Beaulah, Lifesize mannequins with sculptural matter, 1996