Xaviera Simmons will create a jazz salon room, covering the walls with album covers, building a DJ station and comfortable listening environment and facilitating a lecture/music series (through a dialogue with Greg Tate). On one wall she will create a catalog of jazz imagery via record album covers collected from thrift stores, libraries and online research. The function of this wall will be to create a visual document that communicates a strong social history of jazz as well as political, social and artistic aspects of African-American, Latin and American cultures. This wall wants to engage the viewer with an overwhelming visual history lesson using the images on these records.

The salon will be open to the public while Xaviera DJs jazz music from two turntables within the space. With this performance, the artist seeks to combine elements of contemporary music presentation (DJ-ing as it relates to all forms of contemporary music) with its appropriate history (jazz as the cornerstone to most popular music). Free mixed CDs and audio tapes will be on hand for those audience members who engage with the space. These free, mixed CDs will infiltrate the private and public environments of the Art In General community (Chinatown and Tribeca). Invitations to the lecture series and DJ performances will be distributed to reach this community and other parts of the city (Harlem, in particular).