September 28, 2023
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
At PAMM
Join Pérez Art Museum Miami’s (PAMM) Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) for an evening of Caribbean film and music. Filmmaker Alicia G. Edwards provides an intimate look into the life and work of Walshy Fire, a Grammy Award-nominated music producer and DJ in her short documentary film “Walshy Fire: Pull Up.”
From Walshy’s Caribbean-tinged childhood, where he first experienced the dancehall and reggae music scenes, to his current work as an electrifying producer and performer, discover why audiences pull up whenever and wherever Walshy Fire takes the stage. Edwards is joined in conversation by Walshy Fire and Dr. Patricia Saunders, a writer and critic of Caribbean literature and popular culture.
Alicia G. Edwards is a director based in Miami, Florida. Her love of visual storytelling developed in her early career as a network news producer with work featured on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, and BBC. She has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities Council, and a Special Jury Award from Oolite Arts. She earned her M.A. in Transnational Communication and the Global Media at the Goldsmiths College of University of London, UK.
Walshy Fire is an international DJ, emcee, and producer. He is an ambassador for Caribbean music and culture, and one-third of the influential, reggae/dancehall-inspired EDM outfit, Major Lazer, alongside Diplo and Ape Drums. While performing on some of the world’s largest stages and contributing production to Major Lazer’s albums, he has used his platform to shed light on rising talents within the Caribbean, helping launch the careers of Chronixx, Jesse Royal, and Koffee, whose signature hit “Toast” he co-produced, among others. In 2014, Vice tapped him to host season two of its “Noisey Jamaica” documentary series, exploring dancehall and the “reggae revival” movement then taking the island by storm. When not touring with Major Lazer, Walshy balances his time with solo DJ events around the globe, including his signature Rum & Bass concept, one of Miami’s most popular weekly music events. He released his debut solo album, “Abeng (Mad Decent)”, a groundbreaking fusion of Caribbean and African sounds, in 2019.
Professor Patricia J. Saunders is Professor of Hemispheric Caribbean Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in English at the University of Miami, Coral Gables where she is the Co-Editor of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. She is the author of Alien-Nation and Repatriation: Translating Identity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature (2007) and co-editor of Music. Memory. Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination (2007). Her second book, Buyers Beware: Epistemologies of Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture, examines a range of contemporary Caribbean popular cultural modes of expression to argue that the bonds between consumption and citizenship in the region are stronger now more than ever despite higher rates of unemployment and socioeconomic inequity. Her work explores the intersections between performance, visual art, music, film, literature, and consumer culture in the Caribbean region. Buyers Beware was published in 2022 with Rutgers University Press..