Daniel J. Watts’ @dwattswords light has shined in brilliant Broadway shows, #Hamilton, #Memphis, #AfterMidnight, #Motown, In The Heights amongst them. The pandemic turned the Bway lights off, and the world changed forever in an instant. An invisible enemy of COVID19 began disproportionately taking the lives of Black people and highlighting existing racial disparities. As summer approaches the virus couldn’t cover up a centuries-old visible enemy of racially motivated killings of innocent Black people. In the middle of this chaos, Daniel has become the shelter in place star that we didn’t know we needed. His show The Jam was brought to IG Live and was dedicated to the senseless modern day lynchings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. He channeled the recent tragedies into his art with a poetic spoken-word-hip-hop-dance tapestry uniting those deaths with all the long history of racist murders before them. He brilliantly shares his near death experiences as a Black man. Seamlessly marrying his pain with our need to make sense of it all. Turning our feelings of helplessness into a call to arms. Into a movement. That’s what makes Daniel so dope. Like a rare old school performer, a dancer, singer, poet, writer, teacher, performer, activist. Which may explain why he was recently able to incarnate the great show stopping performer and Civil Rights activist Sammy Davis Jr. in the smash theater experience hit Lights Out.
“Blacks did not build this country out of the goodness of our hearts. Out of the goodness of our hearts, we have yet to burn it down.”
Daniel J. Watts
A few years back, I met Daniel, at a social gathering at mutual friend’s brownstone when I was the social columnist for Uptown magazine. He was at the time killin’ it in the game changing Broadway musical Hamilton
. I was told by a fellow performer that Daniel was a beast. One night in the East village at Webster Hall, I got my chance to witness this multidisciplinary performer bring his one man masterpiece The Jam; The Only Child to life. The Jam, an homage to his great grandmother who made homemade jam, and always gave what she couldn’t eat to others. Accompanied by a band, he quickly acknowledged in the audience seated amongst us his most important supporter, his Mother, professing to her and us to be Mamas Boy. With poetry, spoken word, dance, tap and a few stomps he took us on a journey through his life, exploring his fatherless childhood pain, his Black boy joy, leaving his soul laid bare all the while managing to continuously keep it funky. We would meet up again under quite different circumstances protesting the murder of Trayvon Martin. In one of many nation wide protests Daniel and I along with a handful of defiant protesters lay face up arms locked in the mIddle of 125th street stopping traffic in front of the world famous Apollo theater in Harlem. Our peaceful act of civil disobedience would be headlined by Daniel who gave the cold bitter night heated words of unity and resistance against the oppressor. Turning that frigid night under one of the most iconic marquees into something memorable. But that’s what he does best, leaving his imprint on the all his roles, on Broadway in Memphis, HBOs Vinyl, The Last OG or a feature on a Tituss Burgess track produced by Raphael Saadiq. Or even still make you sympathize with one music’s most disliked icons Ike Turner in the hit Broadway musical Tina Turner the Musical at Broadway, the show he was starring in when COVID -19 turned Broadways lights off. One thing is for certain whether slaying a stage or leading a movement he’s ready. His Mama raised him right
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