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TONI BLACKMAN
Toni is an international champion of hip-hop culture, known
for the irresistible, contagious energy of her performances and for her
alluring female presence. An award-winning artist, her steadfast work and
commitment to hip-hop led the U.S. Department of State to select her to work as
the first ever hip-hop artist to work as an American Cultural Specialist. She
has already served in Senegal, Ghana, Botswana, and Swaziland where her
residencies include performance, workshops, and lectures on hip hop music and
culture. She recently toured Southeast Asia with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s
Musical Ambassador program and has shared the stage with the likes of Erykah
Badu, Mos Def, The Roots, Wu Tang Clan, GURU, Bahamadia, Boot Camp Clic,
Me’Shell NdegeoCello, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Jill Sobule and even Rickie
Lee Jones. Her first book, Inner-Course was released in 2003 (Villard/Random
House). Toni has performed in Eve Ensler’s V-Day Festival, the DODGE Poetry
Festival, in Spain at the Barcelona World Social Forum, featured in the CUTTING
EDGE Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, featured at SENERAP International Hip Hop
Festival in Dakar and toured South Africa as a headliner on the URBAN VOICES
Festival alongside the legendary Linton Kwesi Johnson. Toni has collaborated
with a host of highly esteemed musicians including Craig Harris, James “Blood”
Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Jay Rodriguez and master kora players Papa Susso and
Yacouba. She continues to work with artists from around the world.
Highly respected as the founder and director of Freestyle
Union, a cipher workshop that uses free styling as a tool to encourage social
responsibility, Blackman’s work has held great influence in the world of hip
hop activism. This former Echoing Green Fellow has also been a fellow with the
Open Society Institute. Toni most recent efforts involved the Freestyle Union
initiative I Rhyme Like A Girl which is run in partnership with the New School
University’s Institute for Urban Education. Toni has done an extensive amount
of work with the Girl Scouts of America and was instrumental in launching “The
Girls Hip Hop Project” at the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, Maine
(a program that provides workshops for teen girls from the Sudan, Somalia,
Eritrea and many other places). Her latest efforts are as a teaching artist at
Brooklyn Communication Arts & Media High School (BCAM) where she teaches
“The Art of Emceeing”.
This multi-talented woman has been listed in ESSENCE
Magazine’s listing of “30 Women to Watch,” participated in the 2006 ESSENCE
Music Festival, featured in SAVOY Magazine, BOOK Magazine, Newsweek Japan, The
Washington Post, and in The New York Times. NHK-Global Japan Television produced
a full-length documentary on her work with hip-hop airing it to 11 million
viewers on national TV in Japan. She and her work have been highlighted several
times on BET, as well as on FOX News and VH1, featured in UPSCALE, VIBE, HONEY,
appeared in Tokion magazine and appears in numerous award-winning documentaries
including Furious Force of Rhymes, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and Freestyle.
Third World Newsreel and J.T. Takagi produced a documentary short “She Rhymes
Like A Girl” exploring Toni’s work.
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