“May We Forever Do Our Thing”
Last Thursday, Baltimore celebrated as TT the Artist’s Dark City Beneath the Beat launched on Netflix. The documentary “captures the irrepressible bounce and infectious beats of a Baltimore club scene that demands to be seen and heard.” I recently spoke with Olu Butterfly Woods, long-time cultural curator in the city and Program Director of DewMore Baltimore to reflect on her life’s work, the art scene’s evolution, and what she hopes viewers will take away from the movie.
As the daughter of a dancer and jazz musician, one might say that Olu Butterfly Woods was destined for a life in the arts. More evidence lies in the fact that after moving around, her family returned to Baltimore during a major cultural renaissance: the emergence of the Baltimore club music movement.
“I initially took the movement for granted,” Olu says as she reflects on her younger self. “But looking back, it was really special.”
As a college student, Olu was heavily immersed in the local hip hop scene in between her mechanical engineering classes. She had a “whole other life outside of campus” and surrounded herself with fellow artists who “spent all of their waking hours creating.”
They eventually began hosting and performing together, with the first incarnation of Organic Soul Tuesdays taking place at Club Intellect (now Club Oxygen) on South Calvert Street. Organic Soul Tuesdays was initially started with co-founder James Collins of Fertile Ground to create a platform to develop artists, and for audiences to peek into Baltimore talent and expand their palate and appetite. These events were affordable and packed — everyone knew it was the place to be on this particular weeknight.
Before social media, they grew an impressive following through DIY flyers and word of mouth. The goal was to gather people at places they had never been. Some of the early venues included Maryland Art Place, Gallery 409, and The Bank among others. Even as venues opened and closed, the community they built around the arts remained vibrant and persisted.
Their event’s motto was “there’s no music that’s dead; everything’s alive here.” People got to really see each other. Outside of those walls, they may have focused their own creative energies on cultivating or listening to specific types of music. But through these events, Olu says people were able to “open their ears” and celebrate a multitude of genres that transcended what they knew.
Organic Soul Tuesdays is currently on hiatus with several offers to renew the series. The event ran weekly for 11 years then scaled down to running on a quarterly basis. What kept the spirit of celebration going so long? Olu says it was important to begin with herself: she couldn’t treat the events like someone was making her do the work.
“You’ve gotta find a way to bring your joy and energy into the space.”
Dark City Beneath the Beat is “a musical, documentary reimagining the narrative of Baltimore City through its home grown sound and dance known as Baltimore club music.” It launched on Netflix last Thursday, April 15. With global and national coverage of Baltimore being heavily informed by David Simon’s “The Wire,” Olu says the film offers a refreshing and truer reflection of the city she knows and loves.
Tedra Wilson aka TT the Artist, the talented creative and director behind Dark City Beneath the Beat, was an early attendee of Organic Soul Tuesdays. Olu shares that even before the film project formally launched in 2018, she got to know TT the Artist on a more personal level through other events around the city.
“I always appreciated her energy,” Olu starts. “ I saw TT continue to embrace Baltimore and express her voice as a very powerful woman.”
This sentiment of seeing one another as powerful women who embraced the city seemed mutually reciprocated. When TT received funding to create Dark City Beneath the Beat, Olu shares that she “really appreciated” receiving a call from the filmmaker to get involved. “I imagined it was because TT saw me as a curator of Baltimore arts and that she wanted to involve that energy into the film.”
“[And I was excited that] something so interesting and precious was in capable hands.”
Check out the film’s preview on Netflix and you’ll see Olu in her element. In the film, she’s wearing 1940’s classic clothing to pay homage to the different legacies in Baltimore arts. It’s a summer day on the historical intersection of Charles Street and North Avenue. The scene is intended to be reminiscent of an evening at a forties-era jazz nightclub. Except this time, the performance takes place under the blistering sun and is open for onlookers to enjoy.
“If you want to change and grow things, [artists] have the imagination and a lot of the tools that everybody needs to thrive.”
Olu performs a poem called “An Artist’s Prayer,” which she describes as “an ode to artists to keep creating.” Asked how the way she shows up in the film relates to her work today, Olu says her role is more generally about taking care of artists. One way Olu practices this is by empowering youth through DewMore Baltimore, which “aims to leave individuals and communities in a more actualized, engaged, and connected condition.”
At its core, her work is grounded in the deep importance of nurturing what she describes as “cultural continuity.” It’s rooted in a personal recognition that she inherited some skills and talents from her lineage as diaspora of Nigeria and the African continent at-large. And in her lifetime, there is room for her to contribute to collective wisdom for future generations of artists to similarly build upon.
She draws from her mechanical engineering background to explain how this process can be done. In Olu’s eyes, cultivating culture lies at the intersection of problem-solving and joyful expression: the idea that we each have the capacity to solve our own problems in unique and valuable ways.
On that note, we return to the broader topic of her life’s work as a cultural curator in Baltimore. “Even as a leader, I love that I recognize new stuff and I can become small again,” Olu says. “There’s all these different things that are evolving at the same time.” Speaking of her father’s generation, Olu says the idea that overshadowed the arts scene he knew was that “people needed to leave the city to make things happen.”
“What I hope [people get out of the movie] is that there’s more hope,” Olu says. “Baltimore is very interesting and marvelous. This is a film from somebody showing love and telling a story of Baltimore.”
“I hope this trend of hope and knowing our worth a little more is one that will continue.”
Additional Readings & Resources
Olu will be re-releasing an original collection of poetry titled, “Revenge of Dandelions’’ and a new book titled, “Jupiter Memoirs’’ soon. Follow Olu on Instagram and Facebook for the latest updates.
Watch Dark City Beneath the Beat on Netflix.
Read more and support DewMore Baltimore’s work in the city.
