Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA Presents HORACE TAPSCOTT: MUSICAL GRIOT

​In person: Barbara McCullough

Barbara McCullough’s poetic new film HORACE TAPSCOTT: MUSICAL GRIOT is a profound meditation on the importance of Black music, art, and activism to the history of Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott (1934–99) was an important but underappreciated jazz musician and community activist blacklisted in the 1960s because of his political affiliations. During the Watts Rebellion of 1965, the LAPD shut down Tapscott’s performances, claiming his music incited people to riot. McCullough’s film shares Tapscott’s story in the manner of a griot, or West African storyteller who maintains the oral history of a culture.