Alfred Nomad is pleased to announce his documentary Everything Will Be Alright, culminating a two-year long art project featuring an album, live performances, and final documentary. The long-term program has utilized music as its nucleus to highlight and emphasize the mental health needs of Black creative communities. Directed by Liana Lydia, and edited by iCreate Art.
In the documentary, Nomad describes, "There is a heavy lack of representation when it comes to professionals and resources for Black people and the Black community. There are not enough people that look like you or resources accessible." Through personal experience upon moving to Los Angeles and finding footing in a new city and coast, Nomad identified the limited discourse surrounding "mental health” and Black people’s exclusion. For many, the summer of 2020 became a reorienting moment regarding Black life; however, Black life is often shaped by continuous attempts at maintaining stability with or without resources. Nomad's goal became facilitating an immersive experience for listeners and participants, which emphasized the development of material resources and information.
Immediately following the initial lockdowns at the global pandemic's start, Nomad began hosting virtual events for fans and his creative community. Simultaneously, he finished the album version of Everything Will Be Alright, released on September 17, 2020. Some topics covered in these events and the album include treating depression, local community mobilization, financial literacy, educated voting, and manhood.
Everything Will Be Alright builds upon Nomad's previous ventures, highlighting community-building as their core. In 2015, Nomad founded LxVE Fest, a music festival originally designed to uplift underground artists in Atlanta. Starting with the theme "The Lightbulb Moment," the initial fete has led directly to the most recent festival themed after his project, "Everything Will Be Alright." More broadly, the annual, multisensory, and multigenre event centers live music, fine art, and creative culture.
The 2020 iteration took advantage of the pandemic's in-person limitations to virtually take place, permitting community members not in Atlanta to participate and engage. Further, Nomad is also co-founder of TONE, a community-based streaming platform designed to provide alternatives to YouTube and other outlets. Artists can upload and control music videos, live music, web series, documentaries, films, DJ sets, and more. They describe, "We are not conforming to the status quo, or fitting into the spaces allowed to us. We're instead setting our own tone, and creating our own space for our voices to be heard."
Alfred Nomad & band featured on E.W.B.A documentary & B-Sides album [Left to right] TaRhea Ray, Yuki, Alfred Nomad, Randy Mallory & Mark Pelli
Audre Lorde writes, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." Lorde's words highlight the political dimensionality to what Everything Will Be Alright features as a documentary. Facilitating a space for discussion and processing mental health as a Black man and Black people is a political action. However, Nomad also embraces a spirit described by Sara Ahmed, "We need each other to survive; we need to be part of each other's survival."
Rather than solely focusing individually and caring for himself, Nomad's practice thrusts him into his community as the nucleus of healing. This is resoundingly clear in his partnerships with the mental health organizations Inclusive Therapists and Therapy in Color to create the Everything Will Be Alright Initiative, raising funds to provide black creatives with free therapy. The phrase "everything will be alright" initially came to Nomad as a self-developed mantra when moving through the ups and downs of his mental health struggles. Similar to Tina Turner's deployment of Buddhist chanting, Nomad's mantra emphasizes the genuine and intimate relationship between mantras, chanting, Black music and healing.
Alfred Nomad's Everything Will Be Alright Documentary is available now exclusively on TONE.
Follow Alfred Nomad: @alfrednomad
See more from Alfred Nomad: https://linktr.ee/alfrednomad
Story written by Summer Azul
Additional photography by Ryan Forsythe