“It was so important to be apart of community. To find strength in each other. To know that on the days when I can’t move forward, someone is going to take up the baton and move forward for me. “ Professor, Lawyer and ACLU President Deborah Archer sat down to speak with me about some of her earliest moments and how they shaped her desire to fight for equality. Deborah N. Archer is a Professor of Clinical Law and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of ...
Sep 08, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 34
“That's been one of the hardest things to really heal from. Has been the grief of knowing that my choices and the way that I live my life, which I love means that I am isolated from my community.” Liliana Maria Percy Ruíz, radio producer and founding member of On Being with Krista Tippett sat down to talk about identity, her definition of faith and the complexities of family. Born in Cali, Colombia, Liliana Maria Percy Ruíz immigrated to Miami with her family at the age of four. She studied Engl...
Sep 01, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 33
"The positioning of being kind of on the edge of the room looking in? That's the position of a journalist." Jad Abumrad, co-Host and creator of Radiolab, joined Helga to talk about the beginnings of his career, the impact of family and how he works with doubt. The son of a scientist and a doctor, Jad Abumrad did most of his growing up in Tennessee, before studying creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Following graduation, Abumrad wrote music for films, and reported ...
Aug 25, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 32
"It split me. In one instance it split me in two. Because I had never thought of using my different voices to do different things." Opera singer Davóne Tines joined Helga to talk about his path towards a career in classical music, how he's tried to bring his whole self to his work and the impact of feeling like he can't. Davóne Tines is a pathbreaking artist whose work not only encompasses a diverse repertoire, from early music to new commissions by leading composers, but also explores today’s p...
Aug 18, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 31
"I love to hear humans just gathering and talking and being and making lots of noise. I like to do that too...just being, and making yourself known and present." Author and performing artist Karen Finley spoke with Helga Davis about the evolution of her early work and what she wants to give her audience now. Karen Finley is an artist, performer, and author. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, text, sound, music, poetics, film and video, installation, public and social prac...
Aug 11, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 30
“Everything I know about gender politics or gender identity as it's changed and continues to change and shift and be named in all these glorious and intricate ways, have come from 16 year-olds. Thank God for them.” Youth author Jason Reynolds joined Helga Davis to talk about what it means to make work during the pandemic and how important it is to make space for the next generation. Jason Reynolds is an award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Jason’s many books include Miles Mora...
Aug 04, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 29
"How exactly do we listen to images? We listen by feeling. We listen by attending to what I call 'felt sound'." Helga Davis invites Scholar and Author Tina Campt to explore her relationship to her practice and her family, centering the conversation on the power and pleasure of listening to images. Tina L. Campt is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art. She leads the Black ...
Jul 28, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 28
"I’m curious about how we work. Why we’re here. What we’re doing to each other, with each other. And I know on a fundamental level that I am so much more capable than I can imagine." Actress & Disability Advocate Marilee Talkington sat down with Helga Davis to talk about her journey towards a life in theater, how she continues to innovate in that space as a low vision actress, and how important it is to be a resource and voice for her community. Marilee Talkington is a professional actor, wr...
Jul 21, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 27
"When I look outside, when I go to the front door. That is my new canvas. Today. It's not really what happens in the studio. It's what happens outside of the studio." Visual Artist Nick Cave joins Helga Davis to talk about the evolution of his sculptural work, his community collaborations, and how to move from Black sorrow to Black excellence. Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, MO; lives and works in Chicago, IL) is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing...
Jul 14, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Artist, performer and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga: The Armory Conversations. This season, in partnership with Park Avenue Armory, she continues to draw the listener into her profound and intimate conversations with creative people, famous and lesser known. Artists, scholars, and cultural change-makers join her to share the steps they’ve taken along their paths. Where they started, where they are and where they’re going next. These inspiring...
Jul 07, 2021•1 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Musician, teacher, community member, and caster of musical spells, Esperanza Spalding joins Helga mere weeks before her most recent Grammy win to talk about what it means to truly be a part of a community and how to find the “the yum” in things. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
May 08, 2020•58 min•Season 3Ep. 24
Poet and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation President, Elizabeth Alexander joins Helga to talk about what it means to live a life alongside words, how we maintain relationships with one another, and what the world looks like after loss. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
May 05, 2020•37 min•Season 3Ep. 23
Guitarist Clay Ross and Charlton Singleton are 2/5th of the Gullah band, Ranky Tanky. As they bring that music and its history forward into the present day, most recently on the Grammy stage, they wrestle with what it means to the communities they come from and what the art form can be in the future. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
May 01, 2020•37 min•Season 3Ep. 22
Pastry Chef, Maury Rubin, is the owner of well-known New York establishment City Bakery. He joins us just a few months after it shuttered to talk about his unexpected foray into pastry, how he made a place for himself in New York and what this next season of life might bring. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apr 28, 2020•32 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Musician and activist Judy Collins shares the story of her decades long career in music. Alongside loss and addiction she maintains a clarity of voice, of passion and of vision as a conduit for the music. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apr 24, 2020•35 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Activist, entrepreneur, and former model Bethann Hardison recounts moments from her unconventional life. She shares personal stories from the past 60 years in the fashion industry and how she sought to hold the powers that be accountable for their actions. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apr 21, 2020•29 min•Season 3Ep. 19
Visual artist and colorist, Stanley Whitney talks about his life as an artist and as a person. He uncovers what it means to be a black abstract painter, firmly rooted in the United States. Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apr 17, 2020•30 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Krista Tippett talks about her life as a mother, daughter, lover and leader and the ways that all of those roles converge in her work as host of the podcast, On Being . Subscribe to Helga, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apr 14, 2020•56 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Artist, performer and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga. In Season 3, she continues to draw the listener into her profound and intimate conversations with creative people, famous and lesser known. Musicians, visual artists, writers, and chefs join her to share the steps they’ve taken along their paths. Where they started, where they are and where they’re going next. These inspiring conversations expand our world and our imaginations as we explore...
Apr 09, 2020•1 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Kimberly Drew, also known online as @museummammy, is a unrelenting, taste-making purveyor of art, fashion and culture. Her work has appeared in Glamour and W magazines, as well as Teen Vogue and The Fader . Across her varied platforms, from social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to her powerful blog, Black Contemporary Art, to her influencer Instagram account, Drew strives to shape a brighter future through inspiring art and advocacy. She joins host Helga Davis in this episode to...
Jun 13, 2018•53 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Teacher, author and speaker, David Kyuman Kim shares the concept of "radical love" in halls and on college campuses across the country as well as on his former podcast, Love-Driven Politics . In 2015, David presented a TEDx Talk on the topic at Connecticut College where he is also a Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies and the Peace and Conflict Coordinator. In this episode, David joins host Helga Davis to discuss the role of community and love in this nation during a critical tim...
May 21, 2018•49 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Author Jacqueline Woodson won the 2014 National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming , and this past January began her two-year tenure as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature; her latest book Another Brooklyn was a New York Times best-seller. In this conversation, host Helga Davis sits down to talk with Woodson about family – the alternative one she was born into and the one she made for herself. Finding the ones with whom she can connect has been invaluable for her; here she shar...
May 07, 2018•48 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Director, playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan is widely known for winning the Oscar for best original screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards for his film Manchester By the Sea, and as a co-writer on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York . In this episode, host Helga Davis and Lonergan work through their shared upbringing at the Walden School in New York – exploring memories both charged and powerfully formative – while also exploring daily rituals and what it means to fuel one's creativity...
Apr 09, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Thelma Golden is the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, an appointee to then President Obama's Committee for the Preservation of the White House, and the recipient of the 2016 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. In this conversation, Golden discusses being taught canon revision with her father growing up, her first memories of seeing the world through art, and the rituals she need to get through the day. "I exist perpetually, but also for me, very beautifully, c...
Mar 26, 2018•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Hilton Als is an intellectual omnivore who roots his art and criticism in reality and a search for the truth. A writer, New Yorker theater critic, curator, photographer, director and professor, Als’s work gracefully slips between genres to comment on contemporary American politics, pop culture and the African-American experience and to place the current condition in a longer history. In this tenth and final episode of the first season of Helga, Als and Davis talk about what he learned living nex...
Jan 23, 2017•48 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Playwright and stage actress Sarah Jones dexterously hops from one character to the next. In her one-woman shows, she seamlessly slips into characters of different class, race and gender backgrounds. Her award-winning multi-character performances cover topics such as sex work, post-9/11 America and racism in the healthcare system and illuminate the differences and strengths between one another. Sarah and Helga talk self-worth and self-love in a culture that teaches self-alienation. LANGUAGE ADVI...
Jan 09, 2017•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 9
When soprano Julia Bullock took the stage recently to sing the legacy and history of Josephine Baker, the groundbreaking African-American singer and performer who fought in the civil rights movement, she didn’t dress it up. There was no marcelled hair, no banana skirt. Just a woman using her voice to speak truth to power and telling the story of a woman who paved the way. Her star ascending, the Juilliard-trained singer and Helga talk about what can and can’t be processed through performance and...
Jan 02, 2017•38 min•Season 1Ep. 8
For conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, an attentive and hungry audience is one of the essential parts of creating a transcendent musical experience. That’s why he scatters his Musica Viva choir at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side throughout the church. So the audience is in the middle of the action. In this conversation, Helga and Alejandro talk about the challenges of managing both choirs and audience, the meditative qualities of live choral music, and the capability of music to trans...
Dec 19, 2016•41 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Alan Gilbert believes that conducting an orchestra is a process of “letting go together.” When the energy between a conductor and an orchestra is right, he says, it’s almost impossible to tell who’s leading who. Alan and Helga sat down in the New York Philharmonic music director's office to talk about what he means by serving a community, the moments in performance he lives for, and how maybe he could've benefited from showing his stress more. --- About the podcast: HELGA with host Helga Davis f...
Dec 12, 2016•35 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Solange is determined to express herself fully and with integrity. The musician, singer and songwriter has been writing music since she was in the fourth grade. In this episode, Solange and Helga retrace the pop-star’s journey from being a young mother in Idaho with a major-record publishing deal, to self-autonomy and accountability in the music business. The two also discuss the themes behind her recent album, "A Seat at the Table," of living authentically and of owning your voice, body and art...
Dec 05, 2016•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 5
