Album Notes

We, The ADODI Muse: A Gay Negro Ensemble, are Atlanta's only black gay male performance poets collective. We commit our time and energy to the telling of our individual and collective experiences, performing the work we pen and the work of others who support our survival. The ADODI Muse are Duncan E. Teague, Malik M.L. Williams, and Anthony Antoine. We present an in-your-face collection of performance poetry, singing, rapping, and more that is fierce, funny, confrontational, dangerous and entertaining.

We humbly honor the assistance and guidance of our chosen ancestors. We dream and hope to create the lasting presence of our stories by publishing and recording these works. The freedom we seek depends upon our unique art, our lives and our love as African American gay men at this intersection of time and place. Countless voices of African American gays and bisexuals go unheard because of HIV and AIDS, fear, bigotry, loss, and other silencers. Few of our brothers feel free enough to speak honestly; therefore we claim freedom through our words and our actions.

We will be here while we stand, and our words will be here when we can stand no longer.

Our History

The ADODI Muse formed in 1995 as a writers' collective with a mission to establish a safe place for Black gay men's stories, poems, plays, and essays. Previously there had been hundreds of prolific Black gay writers felled by the epidemic of AIDS, and/or silenced by homophobia, who after their deaths left no trace of their unique contributions. We honor the concept and the founding of our efforts by Jerel Cooper our original manager, and by Tony Daniels our inspiration and first president. A prolific writer of poetry, prose, plays and erotica, Tony was a griot, an historian, an activist and a performance artist. He was tragically lost to us in an auto accident in 1998. We continue to be guided by Tony's spirit and his written words.