Health and Wellness

In the studio: House Of Aama

Published

11 months ago

June 20, 2024

Isaiah from Texas

In Los Angeles, Akua Shabaka and her mother Rebecca Henry take part in a video call. They are similarly illuminated by light from the window, although they connect from different locations: Henry sits in his studio, while Shabaka appears on screen from a comfy alcove. They have matching sets of warm eyes. The two have been skilled partners in the development of their heritage brand, House of Aama, for nearly 10 years. Beyond their familial bond, the duo shares purposefulness of their sartorial practice – they create materiality for undervalued Americana.

House of Aama is Henry and Shabaka’s lifestyle storytelling brand; her fall/winter 2024 collection was shown in February during New York Fashion Week. During the celebrated show, designers and co-creative directors unveiled greater than 30 recent creations in an intimate presentation at a downtown jazz club honoring their Los Angeles and hometown roots.

“Over the last two collections, we have really entered the world of my paternal heritage,” Shabaka reflects. She is referring to her father and Henry’s late husband, Jamaiel Shabaka – a prolific avant-jazz horn player who died in 2021. This latest period in the history of the House of Aama may be very much rooted in the family heritage of arts and crafts, and even sheds light on the fusionist Pan-African ethos that brought Henry and her husband together.

, released in 1988, is considered one of the elder Shabaka’s most continuously referenced works. The highly improvised album combines traditional woodwind jazz musicality with Yoruba and other Afro-Cuban sounds, transforming an already culturally reflective genre into something much more dynamic. This source music reflects the textiles that inspired mother and daughter to take a cohesive approach to design. “I have always been someone who combined materials – new and vintage, as well as heirlooms with things I made myself,” says Henry, explaining how she continued the cycle of appreciating the family’s artistic heritage through clothes and their construction.

Isaiah from Texas

House of Aama, especially in its earliest collections, drew on the post-war history of the Henry family and mystical tales of the southern United States. “The association with crafts comes from the fact that both of my parents are Southerners,” Henry says. “My father is from South Carolina, my mother is from Louisiana, and I was in those places a lot of the time as a child. My grandfather had a farm in Shreveport, Louisiana, and my cousins from Detroit would meet us there every summer.” During these childhood exchanges, Henry observed her family’s sewing traditions, watching her mother and aunts go to fabric stores and hand-create their summer wardrobes. “It was important that you could express yourself with something you created yourself,” he says.

This practical legacy is tied to Henry’s understanding of southernness and black culture on a visceral level. She carried it together with her as she grew up and later settled in Los Angeles, where she practiced law for a few years and raised her daughter. As the younger Shabaka got here of age, she clung closely to her maternal lineage in Louisiana and coastal Carolina, along together with her father’s Los Angeles and Caribbean roots. Jamaiel Shabaka’s skilled journey as a jazz artist, DJ and educator has been his own cultural memory practice, engaging a variety of African-Cuban musical traditions across multiple instruments. A longtime Los Angeles family, the Shabakas retain their ties to the Compton, Watts and Long Beach communities to this present day.

Isaiah from Texas

Inspired by the creative influence of her parents, Shabaka began her own work, delving into physical and oratorical archives reflecting her heritage. Recently, her family’s participation in the creation of a novel piece of jazz history in Los Angeles became the inspiration from which the House of Aama collection for fall/winter 2024 was born.

Tasked with finding recent ways to attach with heritage, Henry and Shabaka followed the stories that got here to them organically – including the thread of Jamaiel Shabaka’s walking patterns in Leimert Park and Central Avenue. After inheriting and exploring her father’s archives, Shabaka discovered the depth of a neighborhood art movement that has global resonance – not only in the music world, but additionally in her and her mother’s work today. “We landed on the Free Jazz movement,” Henry says. “The Ornette Coleman and Billy Higgins that I knew were the stories that were presented to us, so we really took stock of everything and focused on that particular piece of jazz history in Los Angeles.”

Isaiah from Texas

The Free Jazz movement emerged in the avant-garde Nineteen Fifties and developed right into a dynamic mental revolution at the end of the twentieth century. Closely tied to the anti-war and Black Power consciousness of the time, this musical reframing celebrated collective improvisation and non-traditional forms to push the boundaries of what was considered jazz. Many of the period’s luminaries, who were themselves friends and mentors of the late Mr. Shabaka, formed a community during jam sessions, rehearsals and performances in the historic cultural centers of Black Los Angeles in the Watts and Leimert Park neighborhoods.

“Between the previous collection and the current collection, I spent a lot of time talking to many of my family members who were very active at the time,” Shabaka recalls. She notes how her aunts made her aware of her family’s connections to this prolific movement, and thru the accompanying study of archival photos, she was capable of imagine what this era meant to her parents’ past and her artistic present. “Discovering music and understanding the spirituality of it was really interesting – understanding the desire at the time for Black people to really look at themselves beyond their current situation, and using music as a way to achieve that,” he says. By allowing herself to be guided by history, she inadvertently tapped into the same creative expansion that had guided her paternal family for generations.

Isaiah from Texas

During the fall/winter 2024 presentation, titled “Sun Records,” viewers were treated to quite a lot of shades that reflect the light and heat of this era. Kaftans and semi-sheer maxi dresses moved along the sidewalk, immediately brightening the dimly lit venue. These pieces, in various shades of gold, orange and royal blue, energized everyone present on that dreary February day. For some time, the energy of Nineteen Seventies Los Angeles was in the basement of New York.

House of Aama, as a narrative-oriented label, creates collections based on the consistency of the narrative from previous seasons. The sources of inspiration – family history and the journeys of Black Americans – are vast and at all times ready for a brand new look, as evidenced by subsequent brand launches. The 2017 release “Bloodroot” spawned one other, after which one other, line evoking the poetry of African-American folklore: incl. “Salt Water” for spring/summer 2022 and the “Parable” capsule for 2023. In each version, Henry and Shabaka discover a historical place of kinship and reimagine it with a surreal, contemporary twist. In 2021, the couple arrived at “Camp Aama,” a reimagining of a sun-drenched community gathering place with a classic summer camp aesthetic. It is an ode to Black freedom, set in a mythical resort, that emerges from the latest collection and can likely be visually developed in future clothing releases.

Isaiah from Texas

The work of designers constructing a socio-political narrative through clothing may be in comparison with the work of Black femme visual artists working in other media. Julie Dash’s groundbreaking film similarly uses fashion and adornment as modes of subversive cultural identity, dressing historically inspired characters in their very own specific context of black heritage in the South Carolina Sea Islands. This screen world, much like the one which viewers enter in House of Aama presentations, reconciles multi-layered stories with almost utopian ideals of identity, memory and tradition. Many of the pieces capture the haunting charm and poetic melancholy of a past when generations of black families were often at home and least protected.

In the 2017 “Bloodroot” collection, Edwardian blouses with high, lace-trimmed necklines and delicate satin buttons check with the neo-Gothic image of the black south. It is historical in nature, but thematically current. The collection was released in a 12 months of racial tensions in America, heightened by the inflammatory whistles of the then-president. The same fall that the collection was released, a crowd of white nationalists fearing the lie of the “Great Replacement” gathered at the Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, singing a version of “Dixie” and chanting “Blood and Soil.” At the same time, the focused mother and daughter created their works with no considered hatred, as a substitute embodying the spirit of cultural triumph that the antagonists feared most.

Isaiah from Texas

In an interview Shabaka gave to the now-defunct British publication for girls and non-binary people of color, she expressed the relevance and thematic focus of the work, which was widely praised for its liberal use of color and seamless mix of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary aesthetics. “Blood root is a rare herb used by ancient magicians and root makers as a powerful guardian of the family,” Niellah Arboine explained to the author.

Like jazz itself, Rebecca Henry, Akua Shabaka, and House of Aama are children of the same meditation on expansive Black connectivity, pursuing a body of labor that may withstand an unknown future. The brand’s pieces offer insight into Shabaka and Henry’s family tree and the designers’ countercultural engagement with African American aesthetic practice and American heritage branding. As for the future, Shabaka and Henry proceed to speak with one another, expressing intentions and vision in a way that only a mother and daughter can truly understand. As designers, each of them follows in the footsteps of a deep family mission, similar to their moms and dads before them.

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com

Health and Wellness

President of HBCU will submit a request for a donor of organs in graduation

Published

3 hours ago

May 7, 2025

IAM

Livingstone College, organ Donation, kidney

President HBCU prays that a member of his school community may also help him find an organ donor.

Dr. Anthony J. Davis, president of Livingstone College, has been fighting kidney failure for almost two years. Since the diagnosis, Davis has undergone almost 10 hours of dialysis treatment at night, and was also juggling the duties of institutions. During the last ceremony of starting Livingstone, May 3 revealed his tragic request for a donor of organs.

“When the Lord is a blessing, the enemy begins to play”, he shared Graduate class, on.

Davis stays involved in lifting the college and her body, despite his medical failures. He remains to be working on increasing registration and recruitment, remaining at the highest of his goals to lift Livingstone. His term also recorded a donation of two anonymous gifts price $ 10 million per school.

Describing his health journey, he also noticed that none of his members of the family was entitled to a match because of their different blood groups.

“I said, my children, what is happiness? They have a good mother’s appearance and her blood group,” he shared the group’s laughter.

His emotional speech also inspired graduates to beat obstacles that they might encounter in their lives. Davis also began the “Be my match” campaign to assist search. The “Be My Match” initiative encourages those in the HBCU Livcustone community and out of doors of it to get to know a living donor. Davis expressed the hope and faith that his public declaration concerning the need for a donor would cause his community to seek out a match.

Blacks are disproportionately affected by kidney disease. According to the National Institute of Health, the 2023 annual report showed that this demographic group Accounts 30% of all individuals with final kidney disease (ESKD). Black are also 4 times more exposed to death because of their ECOD than their white counterparts, because of which their ability to seek out a match is more essential than ever.

Bearing in mind these numbers, Davis hopes that his network will strengthen this campaign to the masses to assist the educator and supporter of HBCu save his life. When he finished his powerful and key message, the category of 2025 and Davis hope that in the subsequent era of their lives with latest prosperity.

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This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com

Health and Wellness

What does an ecological cosmetic brand really mean? – essence

Published

4 hours ago

May 7, 2025

Andriy Onceufriyenko / Getty Images

“Being ecological is not only a fashionable password” S’able Labs The founding father of Sabrina Elba says Essence. With growing cosmetic products without parabens 80 percent faster Than the final market and a couple of out of 5 consumers searching for “natural” ingredients during shopping, “Clean Beauty” reached $ 400 million On sale yearly.

Isamaya Beauty and saving the great thing about the cooperating Biodegradable cleansing clothsDavines hair care brand turned Regenerative agricultureAnd the cartridges have gotten increasingly more. However, other cosmetic brands are within the face of a response to mislead the claim of sustainable development. Lately, Dr. Bronners dropped B Corp Sustainable development certification, claiming that the usual has been violated with the principles enabling the “rinsing” brands, and never even checking the impact on human rights and the impact on the environmental chain environment.

Many brands say that it’s “clean”, but Elba indicates that products marked as “natural” can contain only a small percentage of natural ingredients, while the remaining is synthetic. “If the product was really 100% natural, it would probably require cooling because it would not contain preservatives,” he says. Alternatively, “an excessive source of some ingredients can harm the environment, and in many cases synthetic ingredients can be a more responsible choice when properly used.”

“Pure” beauty is treated as a trend, while “words such as” pure “,” non -toxic “and” natural “are thrown without regulation or standard definitions, and unfortunately leaves room for washing with rinsing,” says the founding father of Klir Lesley Thornton. “We are in an era in which marketing often overtakes the intention.” By misleading money consumers, brands often use well -sounding conditions to cover dirty business practices that require using water, people and other resources.

While the packaging accounts for 70 percent of the cosmetics industry waste, the availability chain begins much sooner than the components of the minimalist bottle. BloomeffetsThe skincare brand known from the list of ingredients Tulip-Forward uses “balanced Dutch agricultural practices” for its supply chain in form. Works through “Upcycling imperfect tulip bulbs, which are considered a” waste “and would be rejected [since] Only perfectly shaped bulbs can be sold by farmers, “says the founder and general director of Bloomeffets Kim van Haaster.

“Regenerative agriculture, which supports healthy soil and biological diversity, is a much better way for balanced sources of ingredients, which causes higher quality, more effective products,” adds Elba. In the case of S’able Labs, constructing relationships with ethical partners, equivalent to Farm Africa, an international organization working on the development of resistant rural Africa, wherein people and the environment develop, is just as vital because the product.

But can cosmetic brands really be environmentally friendly? The truth is: the words themselves are empty. “Being friendly to the cosmetic brand means adopting sustainable development at every stage of the process-from obtaining ingredients for packaging,” says Elba. “Although we cannot deny that every industry, including beauty, has a certain level of environmental impact, the key is how the brand is involved to minimize it.”

Most brands reduce sustainable development into the plant formula itself, without inserting work to make sure the regeneration of the soil they use, the ingredients are obtained ethically, and individuals are treated truthfully. Meanwhile, influencer, excessive packaging and bad agricultural practices prevent branded awareness of brands. “We don’t need more products – we need better products,” says Thornton. “It’s not about doing everything – it’s about doing the right things.”

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com

Health and Wellness

What are the key risk factors for the development of degenerative knee joints? We analyzed the evidence

Published

1 day ago

May 5, 2025

IAM

Bone and joint inflammation is the most typical articular diseaseaffects Over 3 million Australians and it’s over 500 million people around the world.

. knee It is the mostly affected joint, but osteoque and arthritis may also affect other joints, including hips and hands. The condition causes painful and rigid joints.

For someone with degenerative knee disease, easy classes that many individuals take for granted, equivalent to walking, walking on the stairs or crouching, could be very difficult.

Currently, there isn’t any cure for bone and joint inflammation. The most available treatments, equivalent to exerciseWalking AIDS and Ledines (including Paracetamol AND Non -steroidal anti -inflammatory drugs), Focus on managing symptoms. But it’s important to contemplate first of all how we are able to prevent bone and knee inflammation.

With this in mind, we now have conducted a scientific review to summarize the risk factors for the development of knee and knee inflammation. Our findings, published today in the journal Bone and cartilage inflammationIt will help us higher understand how you can reduce the risk of this state.

What we found

We collected data from the research, which over time occurred for people to envision which risk factors were related to developing knee inflammation. We included a complete of 131 studies, with the participation of over 5 million people.

We have identified over 150 factors that affected the risk of developing osteoarthritis and knee joints.

Some key factors that increased the risk of developing degenerative knee arthritis, included obese or obesity, knee injuries and skilled physical activity, equivalent to lifting heavy objects and shift work.

We also found several other possible risk factors, including:

Eating large amounts of ultra-processed food (including “junk dishes”, sweet drinks and processed meats)
Poor sleep quality (for example, sleeping lower than six hours a day or having 1-2 restless nights per week)
I feel depressed.

Being obese or obesity and knee injury in the past constituted 14% of the general risk of developing osteoarthritis of knee joints.

In other words, if we were capable of completely remove these two risk factors, we could potentially reduce the incidence of osteoarthritis in the population by 14%.

Women had almost twice the risk of developing osteoarthritis, and the older age was barely related to developing knee bone inflammation.

Knee and knee inflammation affects tens of millions of people around the world.
Tofiqu Barbhuiya/Pexels

Protective factors

On the other hand, we now have found that some factors may reduce the risk of developing osteoarthritis and knee. They included after Mediterranean weight loss plan (which incorporates so much of vegetables, olive oil, nuts, fruits and healthy fats present in fish) and after a weight loss plan in fiber.

Avoiding things that increase the risk of developing osteoarthritis, equivalent to a weight loss plan wealthy in ultra-processed food, knee damage, weight gain and weightlifting, may also help an individual reduce the risk of developing condition.

Exercise is effective treatment for osteoarthritis. It can reduce pain and improve the function.

Our study didn’t have enough information to find out what types of physical activity (for example, walking, running, swimming) and the way much time spent on these activities can reduce the risk of developing osteoarthritis of the knee joint, so that is a very important area for future research.

How can we explain these links?

The research we included didn’t generally examine possible mechanisms combining key risk factors with the development of degenerative knee joints.

However, other studies can ensure helpful insights. A knee injury can result in knee instability and extra knee consumption that may result in osteoarthritis and knee. Similarly, Professional physical activity Such as kneeling, squatting, climbing or severe lifting can increase the risk of consumption on the knee.

A poor dream was related weight gain AND depression.

. Duration and sleep quality It was found that it affects how much we eat and hormones responsible for regulating metabolism. Depression was related to reduced physical activity which might result in weight gain. Wearing a further weight can Increase the knee load and contribute to osteoarthritis.

Shift works can result in Bad dietary decisions AND lack of sleepwhich, in turn, can increase the risk of knee and knee inflammation.

It seems, due to this fact, that although the risk factors we discover can contribute individually to the development of degenerative knee disease, they may also affect together to extend risk.

It will not be clear why women are more exposed to the development of knee joints. However, this might be on account of the combination of factors, on this lifestyle, biological and hormonal factors.

The Mediterranean weight loss plan is high in polyphenols, which perhaps reduce body inflammation and cartilage destruction. In this fashion, it may well reduce the risk of developing bone and knee inflammation.

A middle -aged couple runs in the park. — Lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of knee -length degenerative disease.
Peopleimages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

Most risk factors are modified

There were some restrictions with the available evidence. Most studies were based on populations from the United States or didn’t report on ethnic origin. We do not know much about the risk of developing osteoarthritis in some groups, equivalent to people from Latin, African and south -eastern environments. We need more research examining risk factors in other countries and populations.

Nevertheless, such a review allows us to raised understand what you’ll be able to do to scale back the risk of developing osteoarthritis.

We have found that almost all risk factors related to the developing osteoarthritis are modified, which suggests that they could be modified or higher managed with a healthy weight loss plan and lifestyle. Healthy eating, maintaining healthy weight and taking proactive steps to forestall injuries in the workplace and sports communities can potentially reduce the risk of developing this state.

Public health strategies aimed toward encouraging healthy eating and weight reduction (for example, subsidized nutrition programs and academic programs from an early age to advertise the optimal weight loss plan and physical activity) may reduce the burden on degenerative disease of the knee joints, and now have broader health advantages.

Programs equivalent to these, in addition to reducing heavy lifting in the workplace, ought to be the subject of government strategies to unravel the burden of this painful state around the world.

This article was originally published on : theconversation.com