"Gamble and Huff are a true symbol of brotherhood and unity. We've survived all kinds of situations, and the bond we share, our common denominator, the glue that bought us together — and keeps us together — is our love for the music. So, respect each other, because respect creates power, honesty and strength. Don't abuse the music. Give the music the respect it needs to grow."
Kenneth Gamble

"And the beat goes on."
Leon Huff

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Since 1963, the songwriting and producing team of Gamble and Huff has earned 175 gold and platinum records, defining an entire category of Black popular music known as "The Sound of Philadelphia," and dominating the pop and R&B charts for twenty years, while writing or co-writing over 3,000 songs.

Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff were awarded the prestigious Grammy Trustees Award -- an award reserved for such musical visionaries as the Beatles, Berry Gordy and Frank Sinatra -- from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1999; they were inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1995.

With such performers as Harold Melville and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, the O'Jays, the Intruders, Lou Rawls, the Jacksons, Billy Paul, Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, and many others, Gamble and Huff produced such classic anthems as "Wake Up, Everybody," "I'll Always Love My Mama," "Family Reunion" and "For the Love of Money."

In interviews filmed on location in the Philadelphia International Records studio (where the above hits were recorded), Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff talk about their artistic collaborations and style, marking a period of musical history now known as the "Golden Age" of Black Soul Music with a Message.

Also included in BrotherMen is footage of Mr. Gamble on location in the South Philadelphia community where he was raised and returned in the 1980s with his wife and children to live. Mr. Gamble's commitment to the development of the community through his Universal Companies includes, among many projects, a charter school, a job training center and the renovation of over 100 houses for low-income families in the neighborhood.

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"My goal is to make a visual record of the life and times of people of African descent. I hope that by the time I reach elderhood I will have accumulated a visual encyclopedia that contributes to human understanding."
Chester Higgins, Jr.

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The photography of Chester Higgins, Jr. can be found within the pages of The New York Times, where he has been a staff photographer since 1975. As one of the premiere African American photographers working today, he continues to exhibit in museums throughout the country and abroad.

Mr. Higgins is the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Center of Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. His photographs have appeared in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise. Mr. Higgins has produced seminal works in the photo-essay form such as the book collections "Black Woman" and "Drums of Life" and most recently, "Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa," and "Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging."

An exhibit of his recent work, "Landscapes of the Soul," toured nationally (including the Smithsonian) and was shown at The Museum for African Art in New York City in March, 1999. The show, in a review by the New York Times, noted his series of work on Black women as "a masterpiece in form, lighting and style."

In BrotherMen, images from this exhibition and others are intercut with an on-site interview with Mr. Higgins at the museum and at work photographing an elderly Black woman, whom with deep affection and love he refers to as one of the "snow heads," paying homage to the wisdom and style of the elders he portrays.

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"Part of my artistic agenda is to create a dialogue with as many communities and audiences as possible, both on and off stage, by using African American culture to speak 'on universal issues of the heart.'"
David Roussève

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David Roussève's work and philosophy flows from the tradition of what the late James Baldwin refers to as a "Black Westerner."

Employing the voice and influence of the storytelling technique of his grandmother and reaching back into the Western canon of such classical composers as Wagner and Puccini, he brilliantly tells, through the use of movement, text and music, the love story of two slaves, John and Sarah, and their dramatic attempts at freedom in his work, "Love Songs."

Performed with Reality, his multi-racial dance/theater company of seven performers, "Love Songs" was the third Roussève work commissioned and presented at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Roussève's company has toured internationally and garnered such reviews as "...a call for grace, a cry to reunite with some large universal framework... Inspired, ingenious work" (Chicago Sun Times).

A Magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and currently a professor in UCLA's World Arts and Cultures department, Mr. Roussève is the recipient of many grants and fellowships, and has created new work for the Houston Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble and the Atlanta Ballet, among others.

In BrotherMen, director Demetria Royals re-stages for film excerpts of this performance, along with interviews with Mr. Roussève.

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"Affirmative music was just a thought I had to myself, that I could sing something and get people to listen, and maybe they would be better to one another."
Pops Staples

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This family, led by its patriarch, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, for 48 years until his death shortly before his 86th birthday in 2000, recorded such hits as "I'll Take You There," "If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)" and "Respect Yourself," as well as such spiritual anthems of the Civil Rights movement as "Why Am I Treated So Bad."

The Staple Singers have received seven gold and six platinum records and performed in the White House for three presidents: Clinton, Carter and Kennedy. They performed in the films "Watts Stax" and "Save the Children," among others, and Mr. Staples appeared as a solo performer in the film "Wag the Dog" in 1997.

At 81 years old, Pops Staples garnered a 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for his solo album, "Father, Father." In 1999, The Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Mr. Staples was named a 1998 National Heritage Fellow in the folk and traditional arts by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In July 1999, The Staple Singers performed in Brooklyn, New York as part of the free, outdoor "Rhythm and Blues" concert series. Although Mr. Staples was too ill to attend, the concert, with daughters Mavis, Cleotha and Yvonne Staples, was filmed for BrotherMen. Led by Mavis, the group continues the musical tradition taught to them by their father.

As Michael Eric Dyson wrote in Vibe: "Mavis Staples -- whose sensuous, sweet-husky gospel alto is one of pop's most distinctive voices -- can blow away 95 percent of the competition just by showing up."

In an interview conducted following the concert, The Staple Singers share the story of their family's migration from Mississippi to Chicago and their beginnings in gospel, as well as their involvement with the Civil Rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as performers and activists.

Additional archival interviews and performances with Pops Staples shortly before his death provide an emotional, political and social context as to the power that this music continues to exert within the Black community.

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