The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh welcome four unique and insightful voices to take part in Barber Shop Chronicles’ Talk Show, titled: The History, Art and Science of Hair.
Award-winning radio and television broadcaster Gemma Cairney is best known for The Leisure Society (BBC 6 Music), The Sound Odyssey (BBC Radio 4) and multiple documentaries including Island Sounds, Dolly, Dylan or Daft Punk, and Mali Music, all for BBC 6 Music. Her shows Tempted by Teacher and Bruising Silence, both for BBC Radio 1, have seen her awarded two Sony Golds, and her interview of Grace Jones for Amazing Grace (BBC 6 Music) won the Best Music Show Rose d’Or. Gemma’s acclaimed television documentaries include: History of Feminism (BBC Learning), Riots: The Aftershock and Dying for Clear Skin (BBC 3).
Gemma is joined by writer and podcaster Derek Owusu, who edited, collated and contributed to SAFE: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space, an anthology of essays by Black British men, and is due to publish his first fictional work with Stormzy’s Penguin imprint, Merky Books, called That Reminds Me. His podcast, Mostly Lit, is an award-winning books and pop-culture podcast created with Alex Reads and Raifa Rafiq, and was named by The Guardian and the BBC as one of the top podcasts of 2017.
Completing the line up is musician Heir of The Cursed, a caulbearer born of an apparition, a primordial memory, a penny drop. She makes songs influenced by the strange nuances of life, rooted in grief, Scottish weather, the constant and the inconstant. Describing herself as ‘a stoic member of the church of Nina Simone’, the stark guitar-and-voice arrangements prevalent in her music is garnering acclaim across the Scottish music scene, and she was announced as one of the eight recipients of a funded residency as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s starter programme in 2018.
The Talk Show will be hosted by Tommy J Curry, Professor of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh, who joined a post-show discussion at The Lyceum for Lament for Sheku Bayoh earlier this year as part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s Call and Response programme. Winner of the American Book Award in 2018 for The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, Tommy is also the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males, entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males. His public intellectual work earned him the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy’s Alain Locke Award in 2017.