Blitz the Ambassador Headlines Richmond's National Day of Racial Healing 2020
Samuel “Blitz” Bazawule aka Blitz the Ambassador is making his mark known far and wide. A multidisciplinary artist from Ghana, Blitz has rocked stages across the world for the past decade - well loved for an abundant live sound that blends hip hop, highlife, jazz and soul music. An independent artist who has been largely self-funded, Blitz dreams deep, plunging into passion projects that carve out spaces to unleash his artistic abilities. Not only is he an accomplished musician but also a TED Fellow, composer, visual designer, writer, lecturer, and filmmaker. In the last two weeks alone, Blitz the Ambassador became the first Ghanaian up for a Golden Globe nomination (the 2020 Award for Best Foreign Language Film).
Blitz “The Ambassador” Bazawule sits with Ava DuVernay at the ARRAY office.
His first full-feature cinematic work, The Burial of Kojo, was released in March 2019 through Ava Duvernay’s ARRAY label on Netflix and received sweeping acclaim. This is a story of survival in Ghana told through a magical realism lens of life and death. The film explores the relationship of a young girl to her father and her father’s troubled relationship with his brother. The Washington Post describes The Burial of Kojo as “a visionary fable drenched with vibrancy and lyricism”; while The Los Angeles Times calls it “wonderfully atmospheric and culturally enriching…truly qualifies as a spellbinding experience”; and The New York Times states that the film is "a near-virtuoso work, a feast of emotion, nuance and beauty, and a startling feature directing debut.”
In January 2020, Initiatives of Change USA is honored to announce that Blitz the Ambassador will be the headline artist for our annual National Day of Racial Healing event. This nationwide event, created by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, comes under the thematic approach of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT). Initiatives of Change USA is leading this process in Richmond, one of 14 U.S. cities funded by Kellogg to implement racial healing work. National Day of Racial Healing is a coordinated effort to broaden awareness and activation about ongoing structures of racism, trauma, loss and injustice as well as the resilient journeys we take to making restorative justice, expansive freedom practices, and transformative communities.
We invite you to join us
for National Day of Racial Healing 2020!
On Monday, January 20th, 3-5pm (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day), we kick off with the screening of two films by Blitz the Ambassador - Diasporadical Trilogia (10 mins, 2016) and The Burial of Kojo (80 mins, 2018) - followed by a Q&A at the Institute of Contemporary Art -VCU (ICA) Auditorium.
On Tuesday, January 21st (National Day of Racial Healing), Blitz the Ambassador returns to the ICA for a full concert performance with his 6-member band, The EMBASSY Ensemble, beginning at 7pm. Doors open at 6:30pm with a pre-party in the ICA Forum space.
Tickets for this event are free but they will go fast! Be sure to reserve your space for the screening and the concert.
A special thanks to our partners for this event, the Institute of Contemporary Art-VCU and Afrikana Independent Film Festival.