INFORMATION FOR
Radical Reversal, an experimental poetry band that explores how art can play a pivotal role in social justice while providing pathways for artists to give back, will perform at William Paterson University in Wayne on Friday, September 30 at 1:00 p.m. in the Shea Center for Performing Arts on campus.
Admission is $10 for the general public; there is a 10 percent discount for WP alumni and senior citizens. WP employees and students are admitted for free. For information, call the Shea Center for Performing Arts Box Office at 973-720-2371 or visit wp-presents.org.
Cofounded by poet Randall Horton and composer Devin B Waldman, Radical Reversal performs original music and poetry that addresses social concerns with a focus on the criminal justice system, inspired by the past experience of Horton, who is the only person in the United States with seven felony convictions and now has academic tenure at the University of New Haven. Their group’s sound crosses many boundaries of music and spoken word. Other members of the band include Melanie Dyer, Taru Alexander, and Brendan Regan.
Randall Horton is a writer, poet, artist, and an associate professor of English at the University of New Haven who originates from Birmingham, AL and currently resides in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the recipient of the 2022 Creative Capital Award, the American Book Award for Oral Literature, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, a Poet-in-Residence at the Civil Right Corpse, and a Soze Foundation Right to Return Fellow. He is the author of Hook: A Memoir (2018), recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction; a poetry collection {#289-128} (2020), and Dead Weight: A Memoir (2022). Horton is on the Advisory Board of Pen America’s Pen Prison Writing Program. He is also a member of the band Heroes Are Gang Leaders, a group whose unique blend of blues, jazz, funk, hip hop, go-go, R&B, soul, classical music, poetry, dramaturgy, and prose continues the legacy of Amiri Baraka.
Devin B Waldman is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music producer. He leads the group BRAHJA and is a co-founder of the groups Notable Deaths and Diva of Deva Loka; and a member of the bands Heroes Are Gang Leaders, Land Of Kush, MoE, and Malcolm Mooney & The Eleventh Planet. Waldman has performed with artists such as Abiodun Oyewole, Patti Smith, William Parker, Nadah El Shazly, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thurston Moore, Hamid Drake, Janice Lowe, Mette Rasmussen, Charles Hayward, Yoshiko Chuma, Daniel Carter, James Brandon Lewis, Luke Stewart, and many others.
