Lady Jaydee to Appear at Yale Schwarzman Center

LADY JAYDEE TO APPEAR AT YALE SCHWARZMAN CENTER

Afro Pop Queen Performs, Plus Talk with Novelist Chigozie Obioma  

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — September 22, 2023 – Humanities Now, a new Whitney Humanities Center event series that sparks deep thinking, inclusive deliberation, and smart action on current intellectual and social concerns, debuts in The Underground at the Yale Schwarzman Center on September 26 at 4:30 pm with the Queen of Bongo Flava, Lady Jaydee, and Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma discussing their crafts and their global impact. The event includes a musical performance by Lady Jaydee, star on The Voice: Africa, performing songs from her ninth studio album, Love Sentence. This event is free, but space is limited and registration is required: REGISTER

“The Yale Schwarzman Center lives for these moments of synergy. Thank you to our colleagues at the Whitney Humanities Center for approaching us with this rare artistic collaboration: Lady Jaydee’s expansive music and the heartfelt writings of Chigozie Obioma, two talents together in conversation at the intersection of art and culture,” said Rachel Fine, Executive Director of Yale Schwarzman Center.

“We are thrilled to inaugurate the Humanities Now series—alongside the Schwarzman Center—with an event spotlighting the literary and sonic richness of African cultures. A collaborative ethos guides this event, bringing together a gifted writer and a talented musician—Chigozie Obioma and Lady Jaydee—whose respective achievements have mesmerized readers and listeners across geographical scales,” said Cajetan Iheka, director of the Whitney Humanities Center.  “I am grateful to Rachel Fine and her team at the Schwarzman for their support of our shared project and look forward to seeing members of our community at the occasion. It will be a time for audiences to contemplate the productive crossing of intellectual and creative boundaries while embracing a global humanities vision.”

Tanzanian-born Lady Jaydee is widely known as the “Queen of Bongo Flava,” the East African modern pop genre at the intersection of hip-hop, reggae, and Afro Pop. With nine studio albums to her credit—the latest, Love Sentence, just released this year—Lady Jaydee holds the East African record for the fastest-selling album, selling nearly one million copies within a few days of the album’s release. She has won more than thirty local and international awards, including multiple Kilimanjaro Tanzania Music Awards (KTMA) for best female artist, an M-Net Award for best female artist of the year, and a BBC Radio Music Award for best song of the year for “Distance.”

Originally from Akure, Nigeria, Obioma rose to fame with his best-selling novels The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019). Both were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and have been translated into thirty languages. He has received the 2016 L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction, the prestigious Internationaler Literaturpreis, the inaugural FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image Award, and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. His third novel, The Road to the Country, will be published in June 2024. Jaydee is the inspiration for much of Obioma’s work, and this synergy between their artistic creations is the spark for their conversation. 

Presented in partnership with the Whitney Humanities Center and the Council on African Studies.