News & Music

AJASS Documentary Wins Seven Festivals and Counting

Louise Dente’s award-winning film, AJASS: Pioneers of the Black is Beautiful Movement is a documentary of historical cultural significance that shows how the founders of African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) started out doing jazz concerts in the Bronx for the Black community to producing Black is Beautiful & Naturally shows that spearheaded a growing collective consciousness of Black pride and equality that single-handedly impacted American culture through media, music, fashion and politics more than any other entity in history.

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Nzondi is interviewed in the film and speaks about his father, Chris Acemandese Hall. As a painter, illustrator, comic book artist, poet and songwriter, Hall spawned a few culturally significant pieces of works himself. He created Little Zeng, the Boy King, the first black superhero (1963), published three years before Marvel's Black Panther was created. Chris Hall worked for Terrytoons, inking Mighty Mouse and created the Huggy Bean Doll that became the first major-selling black doll with favorable features. Among his books and illustrations, Little Zeng’s ABCs, Melanin and Me, the Lost Books of the Bible and his work painting Hannibal, and other African Kings featured in the Anheuser-Busch Kings of Africa Series, Hall has a tremendous amount of collective work. He also wrote the lyrics to the classic jazz hits So What, sung by Eddie Jefferson, Bitches Brew and Chameleon.