Djali, New York

We spoke to Djali about connecting with the culture in New York, about brands & inclusivity, and about the importance of letting a community speak for themselves. Djali is a film producer and founder and curator of Nueva Yorkinos – a digital archive “dedicated to documenting and preserving NYC’s Latinx culture through family photos and narratives.” Of Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Black heritage, Djali speaks of her deep love for her community, and desire to uplift, champion, and celebrate others and the culture through her work.

What drives you and influences you in your work as a filmmaker, community organiser, and archivist, Djali?

First, my family. I always say that I’m so lucky to come from an artist’s family, especially as a Latina, as a second generation American, as a black woman. My parents just being open and being artistic very much shaped my identity. Next, my community; my immediate community, and just being around immigrants all the time and just seeing the hustle - the immigrant hustle. What I think is so beautiful about the immigrant community in New York and specifically in Washington Heights, is that while you exist as an individual, you also exist as a network, as a collective. You see yourself, and you’re not just Djali. I’m Djali, but I’m also everyone’s friends who have lived in the neighbourhood since the 40’s or 50’s. The collective identity here is something that’s very informative. I’m very proud to be from New York and very proud to be Latina and the two go hand-in-hand. My city, my neighbourhood, the greater city has influenced me just because I’ve seen the beauty and the resilience in every corner, in everybody, in every story.

What a beautiful way to start… Can you tell us a bit about what you’re doing with the Nueva Yorkinos archive?

What the platform is, is that people send me photos or videos of their lives in New York before 2005, and I post them. I chose 2005 because there’s a cultural marker there with fashion, music, but as time progresses, I may up the limit, because 2005 isn’t yesterday, anymore! Throughout the brunt of COVID, for example, people posted about their loved ones that passed away, and there was such a sense of community. There’s so much that separates us, that divides us - whether it’s our nationalism, gun violence, games, whatever it is - so the fact that there’s this project that’s so New York City and where - if you’re Dominican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, Brazilian - everybody is part of the same community… that’s what New York means to me, and the fact that the project is able to mirror that is so beautiful. I love it so much. 

We love it, too! Would you say you’re providing a platform for community storytelling?

I try! It’s funny because my name actually means somebody that collects their village’s history and passes it down through oral tradition. I wrote my whole college essay on that, it’s how I got into college! 

Oh, wow. You were born to do this! What do you love about it the most? What moves you?

What I love about it is the fact that people want to talk and that I was able to provide this platform where people just share their stories. I think my favourite part – and that I just still can’t believe, even though it’s two and a half years into the project - is that I was able to create this platform that people just trust. 

What do you think it was exactly that helps your audience to trust Nueva Yorkinos?

I think it’s that everything is so organic and I’m not mediating it at all. When it comes to a successful archive, it’s really about that; who’s behind it and what’s their mission, their point of view? My point of view is that we’re so dope as New York City Latinos, I just want to celebrate us all the time. It really doesn’t go further than that. Of course, there are the nuances; it’s anti-gentrification, it’s pro-immigrant, it’s pro-New York, it’s uplifting folks who have been marginalised, it’s all of that. But aside from that, it’s about the fashion, the change of cityscape, it’s about the city as a character, a memory. I allow people to keep their images and tell their stories, and that’s so important; ownership of your cultural currency, your familial currency.

That was a really beautiful way to put it. Can you think of other things happening in New York at the moment that are exciting to you?

I was very excited, in terms of the innovation and cultural currency coming out of this city, about Pop Smoke. The fact that this man, who was a Caribbean man, was able to put New York on the map again with a new sound. It was innovative. Similar to how Biggie did, similar to his music as a Jamaican. When Pop Smoke died, the reason it was so hard for New Yorkers and New Yorkers of colour was because he had represented an innovation that we hadn’t seen since the 90s or early 2000s. 

Arguably the last person to give that energy to the community was A$AP Rocky…

I agree, 100%. A$AP Rocky is so Caribbean. Right now there’s such a void in terms of our cultural markers because of COVID. I hope that we’re able to push back.

What are you hoping for or expectant for, specifically, coming out of COVID?

I’m interested in seeing what New Yorkers are going to create coming out of 2020, but specifically native New Yorkers. And then after native New Yorkers, I’m interested in seeing what immigrant New Yorkers create. I was walking to dinner yesterday and there were all these new businesses and they’re all white, and they’re all from Minnesota and I’m like, where’s the opportunity for us? That’s what I’m curious about. There’s so much innovation constantly coming out of our community because that’s what we do, whether as an art form, whether we’re looking at hip hop, funk. We’re innovative people, and so I know that we will continue to build. I just hope that we don’t let the city forget us. I think it’s such a pivotal moment where so many of our businesses - whether they’re Caribbean, South American, whatever - so many Black-owned businesses closed because of COVID and didn’t survive. I’m interested in seeing what the second generation Mexican and American daughter of a laundromat owner is going to do with that - keep the laundromat open and open a club in the back? There’s so much space for innovation now! 

And what are the specific frustrations or concerns you have about the culture?

I think things that are bothering me are in the fight for breaking down boxes – people are just lumping everyone together, so there’s a catch 22. There’s so much beauty in being Latino and in being Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and it’s important that we honour our specific cultures and regions and cultural markers. I hate that everything Latino is always only salsa, and I love salsa! I will dance Salsa until my feet fall off, but also if we’re doing a Latino event, there has to be bachata and cumbia, samba... I’m very scared that what happened to white people when they immigrated to America in droves in the early 20th century, where they were very proud to be German and Italian and Scottish and this and that and then they became assimilated to become white, I’m very afraid that’s going to happen to the Latinx community, because America likes it that way. It’s much easier to understand. I’m frustrated in that sense, that whenever there’s something black, it’s only one kind of thing; it’s always African American. I’m so over the American construct of race and of compartmentalising. I love being Latina and I see that as my identity but if that means doing away with everything else just to be in this ‘rice and beans, salsa’ thing that America likes to put on a platter, then I don’t want any part of that. I think it’s very lazy.

And what are the specific frustrations or concerns you have about the culture?

I think things that are bothering me are in the fight for breaking down boxes – people are just lumping everyone together, so there’s a catch 22. There’s so much beauty in being Latino and in being Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and it’s important that we honour our specific cultures and regions and cultural markers. I hate that everything Latino is always only salsa, and I love salsa! I will dance Salsa until my feet fall off, but also if we’re doing a Latino event, there has to be bachata and cumbia, samba... I’m very scared that what happened to white people when they immigrated to America in droves in the early 20th century, where they were very proud to be German and Italian and Scottish and this and that and then they became assimilated to become white, I’m very afraid that’s going to happen to the Latinx community, because America likes it that way. It’s much easier to understand. I’m frustrated in that sense, that whenever there’s something black, it’s only one kind of thing; it’s always African American. I’m so over the American construct of race and of compartmentalising. I love being Latina and I see that as my identity but if that means doing away with everything else just to be in this ‘rice and beans, salsa’ thing that America likes to put on a platter, then I don’t want any part of that. I think it’s very lazy.

Are there any brands or community groups in New York that you can think of that are not being lazy; that are contributing to true representation and support?

I think the Haitan café Café Erzulie are doing a great job. They’re awesome. The main guy’s name is Mark, and he’s so nice. Throughout COVID, they had to close, but they were opening up their space for this other group from the community who have a project called Food with Fam, and they were doing food drives there. Me and my boyfriend helped out. They were able to really utilise their space and now, before COVID as well, in the wake of COVID or wherever we’re at, they’re able to create so much joy there because they have parties, and they celebrate life. 

That’s a beautiful way to put it – ‘celebrating life.’

I’m more interested in the celebration of life! They celebrate Caribbean stuff, they have live music, jazz. For me, it’s very taxing, whenever you’re talking about culture, to only think about it as colonialism, oppression, the white man, I don’t want to be thinking about that all the time! And I think this is what brands are getting wrong – that to talk about race and identity you have to talk about it in the most self-help way, or about overcoming something. Sometimes to overcome the struggle it’s a very small thing. There is just so much joy that’s not being celebrated right now, because brands are just now coming to terms with the ‘isms’ that are plaguing society, and by proxy think that they have to address those ‘isms’ in the most macabre of ways because it’s a bunch of white folks. I just don’t like what I’ve seen recently, it’s like a poverty ‘porn angle’ on things versus a celebration.

Do you think that the term ‘inclusivity’ falls under one of these corporate ‘isms’ that brands are getting to grips with?

Yes, I think ‘inclusivity’ right now is just a term and I don’t think it’s been put into practice. We’re still perpetuating the same stereotypes. If we’re talking about something that involves the black community, it means one type of blackness. If it’s about the Latino community, it’s one type of Latino experience. It’s still so surface and I still don’t feel represented. With a lot of it, the issue isn’t the planning, it’s in our misconceptions and preconceptions of these identified groups. It goes back to the problem that if you’re not in these rooms, you’re not advocating. How are people who are white going to know? Or people who are black, or not from the community? It’s very lazy also to just point fingers at people and say you got it wrong. You wouldn’t have got it wrong if you invited folks from that community to sit at that table. I think that people get the whole diversity and inclusion thing wrong because they’re thinking about it so much and you wouldn’t have to think about it so much if you surrounded yourself in your daily life with people from other cultures.

Can you think of any other brands that have done something that has felt real and representative, to you?

For me, getting that right looks like the Puerto Rican Day thing with Melanie [clarifying info needed], because there was long term investment into not only a Bushwick community centre but one in the Barrio as well. You are servicing the Boricuas, who have always been the number one consumers of Air Max’s. You have the long-term investment in both community centres, you have this beautiful mosaic, the fact that she was able to amplify and uplift the work of Puerto Rican artists from the island. These are the things that I’m interested in. For me, that’s what getting it right looks like, to me.  Telfar is also getting it right in terms of, for example, the mailings, it’s always random people, everyday people with the bag, looking cute, a baby holding the bag! It’s black people, white, short, tall. They just do it right and I think that so many of us - by which I mean people of colour - do it right from the jump because you just know the things that other brands are asking you to pick your brain about, you know it because you embody it. You don’t have to think, “we need to be inclusive,” it’s like, duh!

And how about brands that get it wrong?

Getting it wrong looks like calling it collaborative and then the brand makes all the decisions, and you have no say. 

We totally agree. Can you think of a specific brand that’s gotten it wrong?

One  example is El Museo del Barrio. I have such a bone to pick with that goddamn museum, because I exhibited there in 2019 out of protest and out of a way to bring back the museum to its roots. The Museo was formed by Puerto Rican activists to have a place for marginalised Puerto Rican artists, but what’s so wild is that it’s become this space that amplifies the Latin American fine arts, and it’s like who is that for? Why are we showcasing so and so fine artists from Venezuela that have nothing to do with, not even New York, but the diaspora of the particular neighbourhood? They had a particular mission to uplift the Barrio, but when you go there now, the people who are brown Puerto Ricans are security guards, and the head curator is a white Brazilian man that knows nothing about anything. I had to put him in his place because he came to my exhibit and he was walking over me and I was like, “Hi, my name is Djali, the artist,” and he was like, “oh!” He was surprised that I was the artist. So, I wanted to exhibit there because I thought it was important to bring back the roots of the Barrio to this museum. Again, they’re getting it wrong because they’re not hiring from the community. There is so much potential and talent. The fact that I even have to say “there’s so much potential and talent in the hood” is ridiculous. That’s where it always is. Innovation is always coming from poverty and marginalisation. The monarchs aren’t coming up with the ideas, it was always the people!

And how would you translate this for big, global brands?

I think that when it comes to brands, in the way that Museo is scaling its people and that they’re not hiring from the community, if you’re trying to do something in New York that’s a Latin campaign then you need to be talking to Latino New Yorkers, not white people from Portland. Because of “the numbers”, and their “research shows”…. What? Research and numbers show what?! Go to the block and ask the dude on the corner “do you fuck with Pumas, Nike or adidas?” Go, “1, 2, 3” and that is all the information you need, because that man has all the information for the neighbourhood. Talk to the people. 

We love that. Talk to the people!

Right! You have to hold space; really allowing people to share, and listening and hearing. A lot of people or organisations, brands, influencers hear, but not many people listen. The question isn’t what are we doing, it’s why? For whom? Why do we feel we want to amplify this story? 

It’s an important distinction to make. Thinking of inclusivity and community in terms of streetwear specifically, what changes would you like to see addressed?

I guess just in general it’s less about streetwear and maybe more about the companies behind them. People of colour have been the number one consumers of that stuff in New York City. It’s been black and Latino folks who don’t have money who spend money on streetwear, so I think the least that brands can do is invest in the communities that are giving their money to them! Being raised Dominican especially, you’re raised with the mindset of saving your money and being frugal, not spending money on stupid things.

How would you summarise for adidas what is so important when trying to uplift and work with a community?

I think whether it’s adidas or any brand, just knowing that if you want to take this step, then reach out to people who’ve already been doing this work, organisations, community influencers, advocates, activists. There’s this idea you have to reinvent the wheel every time when it comes to diversity and inclusion, and people think it’s this really hard thing. If you just tap in with and give space for conversation with people from communities, I think you’re able to gather enough information to help you make the right decision. Listen to the people and invite them to foster space. Hire the people that are already doing the work. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. Long term investment in the community is a great way to build trust; you can’t expect trust from a community if you don’t put in that trust. 

If you could do a project with adidas, what would that project be?
I’m into collaborating with very New York things, so I would want to do a tracksuit that’s very New York, very Nuevayorkinos, very old school. Either that or an installation, a party - people should be coming together as we find our way out of COVID. I would be so down. I’d definitely be down.. We should do something together…