WELCOME HOME, BELOVED
Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for queer Black creative, cultural and spiritual vitality. From conversations exploring the queerness of the cosmos to the art, activism & intimacies that honour the life made possible by our ancestors, guests on Busy Being Black have surrendered to what enlivens them. Busy Being Black is offered as proof & promise: you are not alone.
LATEST
Busy Being Black is entirely supported by community contributions. From monthly website & email hosting fees, editing & transcription software, food in the fridge and resources for research & learning, your material support is transformative.
Busy Being Black is a soft place to land. Ecosystems are collapsing under the weight of dying empires and the cataclysmic rage of small men threatens life as we know it. Guests on Busy Being Black remind us that we each have our part of the new world to build. In service of that higher vision, we must keep learning to unfurl ourselves to the world again & again: our joy is serious business. You are invited to take your armour off with us.
LISTEN
Da’Shaun L. Harrison on the necessity of nurturing the erotic and world-ending intimacy between us
Kenyon Farrow on demanding more from movements that offer us nothing
Rahim Thawer on learning to love ourselves through deeply intimate relationship with others
Travis Alabanza on the creative and life-affirming work of our radical self-possession
Abdul Aliy-Muhammad on respecting and defending the sovereignty of people living with HIV
malakaï sargeant on the role of art to help us dream beyond carceral geographies
I HAVE CAPACITY FOR CREATIVE projects
Busy Being Black aspires to its inheritance. Busy Being Black is the nephew of the Black gay writers of the 1980s—expressive & defiant men who stared death in the face, took out their pens & wrote themselves into the future. I aspire to their bravery. Our creative & cultural productions, our subtle & grandiose refusals and our efforts to nurture & defend those we love are all contributions to work that started long before us. Claim your jewels & join us with your crown on.
WATCH
LET IT BE KNOWN
Busy Being Black is by us and for us. A world built with our blood & not in our image cannot be the arbiter of our brilliance: Busy Being Black does not petition for seats nor understanding. I am energised by the tenacity it takes to live beyond the limitations of a world that couldn’t possibly support our magnificence. I am exceedingly curious about the shape life takes in the hands of a Black person with something to prove to themselves. Whether we’re encouraging rebellion through eroticism, turning red-hot rage into art that awakens the disenchanted or treating each other as the divine sparks of aliveness that we are, Busy Being Black is an invitation to bear witness: you are the visuals, baby.