Decatur, Georgia — Blitz Bazawule didn’t look like a person carrying the weight of a multi-million dollar movie on his shoulders.
On Saturday afternoon earlier this month, artist, musician and filmmaker Bazaul was here at his home, away from overseeing the adaptation of the new film musical for “Color Purple.”
In a few hours he will head to the film’s editing session. But for now, when a fragrant candle is burning at the table in the room where he was sitting, he warns that the quiet atmosphere and his gentle attitude do not tell the whole picture of him. did. “I have a great poker face,” he said.
Born in Ghana for the past 20 years, Bazaul, 40, has shed relentless and creative tears. He has recorded and performed around the world as a hip-hop stage name Blitz Ambassador. He directed the music video and the reputed debut feature, “Burial of Cojo” I was the director of Beyonce’s visual album “Black is King.. When he seeks a break from these projects, He draws a picture..
And this month, he publishes his first novel, The Scent of Burnt Flowers. It will be released by Ballantine on June 28th.
Bazaul greatly expanded the range of his output. “I’m one of those who go,’I must be able to do that,'” he said. “I’m often wrong, but sometimes I’m right. I have to be right a few times. not.”
The “burnt floral scent” makes a compelling claim that Bazaul is not a literary diletant. Set in the mid-1960s, the novel tells the story of a black couple, Melvin and Bernadette, who fled the United States to Ghana after Melvin murdered a racist perpetrator in self-defense.
In Ghana, they want to seek help from the embarrassed president, Kwame Nkrumah, who was a classmate at Melvin’s university. But when they cross the road with local musician Kwame Nkrumson, who has his own dream of going to America, their efforts to reach Encar are complicated.
The novel is swaying, romantic and solemn, always keenly aware of the historical forces that shape the character’s destiny, and is fascinated by the culture shock experienced as it travels between continents.
As Bazaul explained, “No matter how informed you are, you have nothing to think about. When you land, you always learn things.”
Growing up in Accra, the capital of Ghana, Bazaur is a fan of World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations football and has been fascinated by hip-hop culture represented by American groups like Public Enemy.
“I remember seeing “Fight the Power” video, Filmed in Brooklyn, and going, that’s where I want to be, “he said. “Whatever that energy was, I wanted to be in it.”
But when he became interested in global culture and moved to Ohio to study at Kent State University, Bazaur saw how others see the diverse African nations as an undifferentiated whole, or He said he was disappointed to know that he had completely ignored their contributions.
“It is immeasurable how much the world loses every day by deliberately eliminating Africa, whether it is a creative endeavor or science. It is sad because it is a loss of the world.” He said.
Bazaul added: “I’m optimistic. I hope the world is more in harmony with each other and richer from experience.”
He has sought to fill these gaps with his work, such as the album “Diasporadical” that accompanies the short film series released in 2016. “Diasporadical Trilogia” Triptych of installment payment Accra, New York When Salvador, Bahia, Brazil..
In 2018, Bazaur announced “The Burial of Kojo”. It was written, directed and self-funded by him. The film takes a Ghanaian girl Eshi (played by Cynthia Dan Kwa) and her and her wife Ama (Mamuri Jiangma) from a rural village to a bustling city, with a dangerous economic outlook and a long time. Face the secrets of a restrained family.
With a patient, quiet and mystical story-telling style, “Cojo’s Burial” was highly acclaimed. Glenn Kenny, who reviewed the New York Times movie, called it “a masterpiece, emotions, nuances, a feast of beauty, and an amazing feature to make a debut.”
Filmmaker and producer Ava DuVernay said the grassroots success of “The Burial of Kojo” demonstrates the importance of seeing new talent beyond traditional means.
“I didn’t attend a major festival without quotes,” said Du Vernay, who bought “The Burial of Kojo” in the distribution company Array Release and adopted Bazawule in the television series “Cherish the Day.”
“When I think of Blitz, I think of all the other Blitz that don’t have that bridge,” Duberney added. “Most film presses only point in one direction. This guy came from a completely different direction.”
The success of “Cojo’s Burial” will be an opportunity for further production of Bazaul, such as “Black is King” released at Disney + in 2020 and “Color Purple” based on Alice Walker’s performing arts. I was connected. It is a novel and is planned for 2023.
However, Bazaul’s peers and admirers do not consider him a dedicated careerist, stating that his interest in multiple forms of art is equally sincere and equally valid.
Maori Karmael Holmes, Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of BlackStar, said: , An organization that promotes film and media work by indigenous peoples and people of color.
Holmes, who chose The Burial of Kojo at the Black Star Film Festival and the 2019 Whitney Biennial, described Bazaul as “the perfect artist trying to put everything he has into everything he’s working on.” I explained. She said it was his desire to “imagine a radical new vision of the world and different paths to world building” that would connect his different works.
Bazaul is one of the few directors who contributed to “Black Is King” and is most characteristic, like the image of a pop singer who travels with Beyonce in Africa and confidently embraces a giant snake. Helped create a targeted and dreamy visual.
He said he felt the film was fulfilling as a show of Beyonce’s cultural influence and how he conveyed his freedom from studio-level interference to his colleagues.
“We were just allowed to work,” Bazaul said. “It wasn’t until the end, oh, this is what it would be. She could cut it as she wanted. She liked it. I was able to call. “
But in March 2020, when a pandemic prevented him from shooting any more in the film, Bazaul wondered what to do next.
“We were dispersed,” he said. “Sit down for a few weeks and go and understand what’s going on and what I just want to do what I’m not doing.”
Bazaul set the goal of painting and writing novels in isolation. The novel was shaped by all the music and myths he absorbed in his life and captivated him as he told what he called the “Fugitive Story.”
“We know a lot about how people run away, whether they run away or not,” he said. “We don’t always know what happens when you go out.”
Placing a “burnt floral scent” in the 1960s, an era of the American civil rights movement and postcolonial democracy in Ghana, seemed obvious to Bazaul. As he explained, “The world we live in now, for better or for worse, was specially shaped by that era.”
This allowed Bazaur to include a fictitious version of Nkrumah. It was an advocate of the Pan-African movement, and the president began with hope and ended with capsizing and asylum.
Like the author, Nkrumah was educated at an American university, and Bazaul said he was fascinated by how his ex-classmates felt about climbing Nkrumah after graduating from college. He’s the president of a new, independent country, like when someone you know from under the block gets to the NBA, “he explained.
Bazaul encrypts other details and observations from his personal history in the novel. From Baton Rouge, Bernadette found that the humid climate of Akra was strangely familiar, just as Baton Rouge traveled to Louisiana.
And the misfortune of Kwesik Weyson, a tour musician who transports Melvin and Bernadette across Ghana, comes more or less from Bazaul’s own experience. “Sweat, frustration, band members who don’t get along-it was a lot of direct knowledge,” the author said. “My drummer wasn’t that crazy, but it’s always a drummer.”
Ballantine’s chief editor, Chelsea Johns, who got the “scent of burnt flowers,” said he responded to it as both a historical novel and a human story. “History is very important and very needed,” Johns said. “We still have evidence of what happened in America and Ghana at this time, but for the story of a couple trying to find themselves when America is no longer safe for them. I’m here. “
“Scent of burnt flowers” Acquired by FXBazaul, who is developing the novel as a miniseries, will get more attention with “The Color Purple” to be released next year. But Johns said she was fundamentally interested in him as a writer who cares about his technique.
“Blitz was in a good place in his career and made a huge investment in books, which was of utmost importance to us,” she said. “This is not a one-off project. This is a great first novel and we plan to add more in the future.”
The room in his house, where Bazaul was sitting, was adorned with notes, photographs, and visual references that he once used when writing “The Scent of Burnt Flowers.” Now, only a few sheets of paper are taped to the wall, with the simple motivational slogan “one step at a time.” “Resting is resistance.”
As Bazaul explained, the way he manages many of the demands of a thriving career is to not consider them competing with each other. “I will do my best not to separate them,” he said. “I see it all as an extension of the same thing, and when I do that, I’m not compartmentalized and I’m not overwhelmed.”
“When I work, I work a lot,” Bazaul added. “And when I’m not doing the most, I’m doing the least. That’s it. I don’t drink, I don’t do anything. I’m at home. I sleep. many.”
