Nikki Williams grew up in the section of Harlem known as “Sugar Hill” during the 60s and 70s, joyfully dancing with neighbors outside her public housing complex to the music of Smokey Robinson, James Brown and the Jackson Five.
For nearly 60 years since that time, she has managed to hold onto all of those 45 RPM vinyl records of her childhood, carefully preserving them and carrying them through the ups and downs of her life journey until today.
Now, she’s bringing back the soul and sounds of that time to Macon Branch Library in Bedford-Stuyvesant, on August 22 and August 29, from 6:0pm - 7:30pm, as part of a travelling art show and workshop series called "Spreadin’ Joy, Jam & Jive– A Sweet R&B Ride on the Soul of my 45s."
“Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, the youthful and effervescent Jackson Five, and the gospel tongue of Aretha Franklin … those 45 records spun our hopes and our dreams,” said Williams, a playwright, poet and visual artist. “It’s a celebration of the music of my era– the time when Blacks were into Blackness, and a time when I believed I could fly. I’m bringing it back for those people who were also impacted by this music.”
“Pass the Peas,” the title of a 1972 funk instrumental by the JB’s, is also the name of the literary workshop she will lead, which will include prose, poetry and performances celebrating the music of that era.
Williams took photographs of her collection of more than two hundred 45 vinyl records, interspersing them with photos she’s been taking of Black people in NY as a collage she displays as art: “Lord knows how they’ve sustained my many moves over the years,” she said, “but they made it! So spirit placed it in me to create art work using the images.”
So far, Williams has 70 pieces of artwork, some of which will be displayed in the window of 5Myles Gallery in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in September.
“Those of us that are seniors from that generation, we may not remember what we did yesterday. But when I throw out a title like, ‘Stop the Love you Save,’ it just opens a grin, because it was such a joyful time,” Williams said. “And even if you weren’t born then, you remember your mother or father or your grandparents playing the music.”
Although she is still Harlem-based, she said it was during her time working in Brooklyn that she got the inspiration and encouragement to re-engage her artistic side.
“In my opinion, Brooklyn has so much creativity going on right now,” she said. “I see an arts renaissance going on here.”
Williams acknowledges she’s of a certain age and generation where technology isn’t necessarily “her thing. But she refuses to retreat from life– from the joy she experienced when music was the soundtrack to a simpler time; a time when people gathered outside, in-person to sing, dance, create and heal from life’s challenges.
And on Thursday, September 8, at the Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park, located at 679 Riverside Drive at 145th Street in Harlem, from 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Williams will host a “Soul-a-Thon,” where she is inviting anyone from any generation to come out and share a narrative story of what the music of the 60s and 70s evokes for them, followed by a sunset dance party.
“My ministry is to uplift artists of color who need recognition and self-repair,” said Williams. “It’s mandatory that we repair ourselves as artists. And I see this as another way for us to come together in joy and love and repair ourselves.”
