make custom gifts at Zazzle
BOOKING (performance and/or lecture)
[email protected](510) 496-3449
GENERAL INFO:
info(at)sugartruckrecordings.com
ADD Juba's homohop group DEEP DICKOLLECTIVE and its members at their individual MYSPACE pages!
DEEP DICKOLLECTIVE
http://www.myspace.com/deepdickollective
TIM'M T. WEST (aka 25Percenter)
http://www.myspace.com/timmwest
JEREE"JB RAP" BROWN
http://www.myspace.com/jbrap
SOLAS B. LALGEE
http://www.myspace.com/solasblalgee
LESLIE"BUTTAFLYSOUL" TAYLOR
http://www.myspace.com/1buttaflysoul
BARAKA NOEL (aka Mushroom Black)
http://www.myspace.com/barakanoel
MARCUS RENE' VAN (aka Mr. ManMan)
http://www.myspace.com/marcusrenevan
SUGARTRUCK RECORDINGS
http://www.myspace.com/sugartruckrecordings
PEACE OUT HOPMOHOP FESTIVAL
http://www.myspace.com/peaceoutfestival
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OK, the cute funny stuff i promised.I was born in 1970 an escaped-working class Afro-American (when they wrote it like that) child to the schoolteachin' son of a Summerlee,West Virginia coal miner (thats Fayette County, near the lonnnng ass New River Bridge) and the actress/community activist daughter of sharecropppers from Coffeeville,Mississippi, if you know where that is.Its close to Grenada.
North Lawndale, the near westside Chicago neighborhood I lived in 'til I was four was a Jewish ghetto that slowly became a Black ghetto during the Great Migration. MLK lived there briefly during the "War On Poverty" days, and the hood blew up and burnt, literally following his assassination. It was already hard livin' that the rioting and years of or benign neglect added even more vacant lots to. I still don't feel quite right without a bunch of vacant lots around...not just open space..vacant lots, with grass and sparkly broken glass and old conduit sticking up.
I attended a Pan-Africanist preschool (one of maybe, five in the city at the time) til i turned seven. While this was happening we bought a house in the far far west side Austin neighborhood, which was Polish and German until the "white flight" of the mid 1970s. I attended elementary and jr. high school in this neighborhood, and went to the then flagship high school (Lane Tech) of the public system, struggled through a horrid freshman year and managed to scrap a B- average the last three.
Ended up at Chicago State University (alma mater of most famously so far, the founding members of Styx...Kanye West attended briefly, but I like Styx's music better so there) to continue my edumacationals and thank you Jesus I didnt go to art school. Played Division I level baseball as a walk-on, started MCing around this time (big househead who listened to hip hop then..it was chicago, the mid '80s and I'm still a Ron Hardy/deep house junkie) with a couple groups in the neighborhood. I met Duro Wicks in 1989 and in 1991 (with a couple of his friends) formed He Who Walks Three Ways, recording two locally distributed EPs between 1991 and early 1994.
So due to young twenty something personal drama (plus wannabe rockstar vs. latent indysavant crap-guess which was me) among other creative differences) that group imploded and we went our ways. I was married briefly, had a son (now 13 and taller than me and handsome as the devil) separated divorced and came out in a space of about two years. Toddled and dawdled around Chicago for a bit, not making any music, but hanging out a lot with visual artists (many from the School Of the Art Institute, Video Data Bank, Randolph Street Gallery and more), teaching school for two years, working art supply retail and for a couple not for profits before moving to the SF bay area, landing in Oakland on January 1,1999.
Me and my then partner struggled mightily with my one job, lived in a christian shelter and bopped around on couches and finally a youth hostel for s steady six months.In this meantime working my Starbucks gig, I met blues/jazz/tech/etc guy Richard"Dick Deluxe" Egner, who to my benefit, saw some boatloads of unrealized potential , gave me a great sweat equity/barter job with his fledgling web company and recorded a spoken word experiment that was the first thing an angry burnout committed to tape in five years...you can listen to that at the aforementioned Mixonic page as well.
After that came writing for Anything That Moves (A bisexuality-focused glossy that ran for about 12 years) ,owning my gigantic penchant for sluttery, joining Rainbow Flava and recording an album, and forming Deep Dickollective after meeting my good judy Tim'm West...as it is said, the rest is the history I'm getting to make.
Recently?
Got a a son in the Chi who's 13 (taller than me!) and a daughter who's 3 of this writing ( September 2007) with my big fat working class mixblood sexy dyke nerd lawyer primary partner, getting paid for writing and performing (sometimes:)), finished an MFA, touring, curating (http://www.myspace.com/peaceoutfestival) showing up in an indy doc (http://myspace.com/pickupthemic) and indy features doing eduporn,slutting around and making more music (and probably making some with, of all people, my old buddy Duro) ,catching up on child support. I do Rapid HIV testing and case management referral (housing,counseling and shit) for an international not-for-profit agency. and having fun.I get along with my parents. Friends and more friends Not a bad life.I'm doing OK.
Thanks for reading this if you did. Add me if I seem interesting.Tell me what you think about my music- really. Nerdy technical comments /questions are encouraged......And if we meet and you flirt with me and I don't respond. it's not cause youre not cute. Its because I a shy dork in a not trying to be cool way.be pedantic. Push a little. I come out of the shell sometimes. there are moments.:)PeaceJubaK
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The Professional BIO
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A recording artist since 1988, Chicago native Juba Kalamka (aka Pointfivefag) is most recognized for his recent work as a founding member of "homohop" crew Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the label Sugartruck Recordings.
Through Sugartruck, Kalamka has coordinated the release and promotion of four critically successful D/DC albums, the Outmusic Award winning solo debut of former Sister Spit member Rocco "Katastrophe" Kayiatos, and the distribution of the work of numerous other artists in the homohop community.
Noted for his dialogues on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, sexuality and class in pop culture, Kalamka has written and illustrated articles for Kitchen Sink, Colorlines, and the now-defunct bisexual issues magazine Anything That Moves.
Additionally, he has been a speaker, panelist, and curator for numerous organizations and conferences, among them the San Francisco Black Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, GLAAD, Hip Hop as a Movement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Burning Closets/Working Our Way Home at Oberlin College. Recently, Kalamka was chosen to be one of six plenary speakers (and was a Creating Change Award recipient) at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's 2005 Creating Change conference.
Kalamka served as Festival Director for East Bay (Oakland) Pride (2003) and is the curator/director of PeaceOUT HomoHop Festival, which marked its seventh year in 2007. The success of PeaceOUT has inspired the creation of sister festivals in Portland, New York City Atlanta, and London.
Appearing in "Pick up the Mic", a documentary about the festival, Kalamka also makes love to the camera in Good Vibrations'"G Marks the Spot", "Orgasm:Faces of Ecstasy", and "Radio Dildo Libre". Deep Dickollective's fifth disc, "On Some Other", was released on Sugartruck in June 2007. His second solo CD "Ooogabooga Under Fascism" will be released in February 2008.
Kalamka holds a BA in Art/Secondary Education from Chicago State University (1993) and a MFA in Poetics/Queer Performance from New College of California in San Francisco (2007).He lives in Oakland with his primary partner, their daughter, and a lovemongering cat. He practices polyamory both locally and globally.
