Photo by: Dan Gutt
A platform/ project and art collective founded by Christopher Udemezue (@NeonChristina), RAGGA NYC connects a growing network of queer Caribbean artists and allies working across a wide range of disciplines—including visual art, fashion, poetry and more—to explore how race, sexuality, gender, heritage, and history inform their work and their lives.
RAGGA NYC is a hybrid of ideas that began as late night conversations over familial island roots, current social politics, empanadas vs. beef patties, pum pum shorts, scamming and a longing for a party that provides for queer Caribbeans and their kin. RAGGA NYC has shown at a variety of galleries and museums, including the New Museum, PS1 MoMa, and Mercer Union (Toronto). In June 2017 RAGGA NYC completed a residency with the New Museum "All The Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another" that has continued to foster an extended family that makes space for solidarity, celebration, and expression, with deep commitments to education and grassroots organizing.
Defining the Sound of RAGGA NYC:
The sound of Ragga can be defined as the pairing of music from the greater Caribbean with electronic music originating in Detroit, being remixed across the African diaspora, and returning to the queer night clubs of New York City. At the nexus of these genres and various sub-genres is a shared lineage/universal narrative that, by allowing the marriage of, RAGGA expands the notion of what scenes can be in community with one another. RAGGA is the setting where queer folks can openly enjoy dancehall and reggae, where Black people can rejoice and re-stake claim to electronic music, and where the embrace of countercultures further inspires innovative sounds that reflect the multitude of identities in which they stem from. At no point does the sound reflect a basic exchange or one-to-one trade off of dancehall to techno, soca to club, kompa to house, etc. When properly conducted/curated, the sound of RAGGA echoes an arrangement of acknowledgements of the identities and their associated music that encompasses the community that RAGGA strives to serve.