Robert G. O’Meally and Anto Neosoul in Conversation

Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for thirty years. Director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, O’Meally is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, The Romare Bearden Reader and Antagonistic Cooperation: Collage, Jazz, and American Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2021. His edited volumes include The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, Living With Music: Ralph Ellison’s Essays on Jazz, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, History and Memory in African American Culture), among others. For his production of a Smithsonian CD set called The Jazz Singers, he was nominated for a Grammy Award. The curator of exhibitions at Jazz at Lincoln Center (2006-2012), O’Meally also has co-curated exhibitions for the High Museum in Atlanta and for the Smithsonian Institution. He has held Guggenheim and Cullman Fellowships, among others. According to his sons, Mr. O’Meally plays the soprano saxophone “for his own amazement.”

Anto Neosoul is a musician, television host, and radio presenter who was named as one of 100 most influential Kenyans by Avance Media. A socially engaged artist and mentor, he has participated in a number of international workshops and conferences such as: the Mashariki Creative Economy Impact Investment Conference, Copyright X at Harvard Law School, and the GoDown Arts Centre Connect for Culture 2020. His debut album Starborn was released in 2014 and his sophomore album Welcome to My Soul will be out in 2022.