John Orpheus, SAGA Boy, and revisiting last year’s Blackness & Becoming event

Title Track was honored to present “BLACKNESS & BECOMING” last February with our partners at Northwestern Michigan College. The virtual conversation on Black Memory and Identity with author Antonio Michael Downing, hosted by Title Track board member Kaylan Waterman, was prior to the US release of Downing’s critically acclaimed memoir, Saga Boy. Revisit this moving conversation that was just shared publicly by NMC!

Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming was published by Milkweed Editions last September. “Tracing Downing’s journey from the tropical forests of Trinidad to the stark landscape of rural Canada, Saga Boy is a poignant memoir of transformation. Downing explores the forces that fractured him as a boy—colonialism, trauma, and violent separations—as well as the forces that rebuilt him in all his kaleidoscopic glory, including music, art, activism, writing.”

Downing also performs and composes music as John Orpheus and is beloved by many Michigan friends of Title Track from his captivating performances at Earthwork Harvest Gathering. Keep your eyes and ears open for John’s new single and video dropping this Friday, “House of Cards.”