2026. Paperback. 9 × 6. 211 pages, with notes and references. Eight original photographs. Cover from original painting by Druid Hill Park Vibe artist Kaki Edwards.
Think of it as live archive. It moves fast, the book leaps, it conjoins precarity and resource. Cultural vortex: it whirls, it worlds. Vortex, Baba proximates around Black space and time, around parks and trees and roots and ancestors. Think with Christina Sharpe of "beauty as method," think with Fred Moten para-phrasing ontologies and holds, "feeling you feeling me." This book rumbles respect, care, and neophilia, love of the new. Vortex, Baba looms language and form fresh and wild, the book spinning through bright matter moments, memory glow quanta, tripping energy times.
Gerald Majer engages with Black urban spaces of experiment and creation, of blessing, prayer, and improvisation. At an intersection of Black philosophy, anthropology, and aesthetics, Vortex, Baba sounds through the people, the histories, and the profound diasporic-cultural vibrations gathered at Baltimore's iconic Druid Hill Park. Vortex, Baba traces the personal and collective lives of Baba L'Salaam, Adon Aesh, Jamal Moore and other Park Vibe players rooted in a drum circle community sustained from 1960s Black Arts radicalism onward through today's rising generations. Joining immersive literary journalism and philosophical explorations, Majer interrogates immediacies of race, feeling, and sociality.
.
PLAYLIST VORTEX, BABA
(complete Playlist is on Bandcamp as VORTEX, BABA)
With Open the Gates leading
and Saul Williams and Carlos Williams going out--
In the middle, Baltimore Park Vibe generations (with DC and Philly friends) continue to bud blossom root branch with new music!
Irreversible Entanglements, Open the Gates (2021)
PRIMER
Luke Stewart, Warren "Trae" Crudup III, For Mdou (2023)
TA ABU
Mojuba Duo (Jamal Moore and Nik Francis), Hardship, the Land, and the Shining Sun (2019)
PLAYLIST WITH ABDUL
Ancestral Duo (Jamal Moore and Luke Stewart), Two Sides (2020)
KALIMBA WITH DENNIS
Bashi Rose, Ritual of Rebellion (2024)
ADORATION WITH AESH
Nikolas Francis, The Path Chosen by Travel (2024)
VORTEX, BABA
Kemetic Lullaby, Shu Movement 1 (2022)
APP WITH GERALD
Jamal Moore, Thomas Stanley, Luke Stewart, Cargo (2019)
AS SHAWL, ARMOR OF FLIGHT
Konjur Collective, Blood in My Eye (A Soul Insurgent Guide) (2022)
Saul Williams, Carlos Rossie, Saul Williams Meets Carlos Williams and Friends at Tree People (2025)
2026. Paperback. 9 × 6. 211 pages, with notes and references. Eight original photographs. Cover from original painting by Druid Hill Park Vibe artist Kaki Edwards.
Think of it as live archive. It moves fast, the book leaps, it conjoins precarity and resource. Cultural vortex: it whirls, it worlds. Vortex, Baba proximates around Black space and time, around parks and trees and roots and ancestors. Think with Christina Sharpe of "beauty as method," think with Fred Moten para-phrasing ontologies and holds, "feeling you feeling me." This book rumbles respect, care, and neophilia, love of the new. Vortex, Baba looms language and form fresh and wild, the book spinning through bright matter moments, memory glow quanta, tripping energy times.
Gerald Majer engages with Black urban spaces of experiment and creation, of blessing, prayer, and improvisation. At an intersection of Black philosophy, anthropology, and aesthetics, Vortex, Baba sounds through the people, the histories, and the profound diasporic-cultural vibrations gathered at Baltimore's iconic Druid Hill Park. Vortex, Baba traces the personal and collective lives of Baba L'Salaam, Adon Aesh, Jamal Moore and other Park Vibe players rooted in a drum circle community sustained from 1960s Black Arts radicalism onward through today's rising generations. Joining immersive literary journalism and philosophical explorations, Majer interrogates immediacies of race, feeling, and sociality.
.
PLAYLIST VORTEX, BABA
(complete Playlist is on Bandcamp as VORTEX, BABA)
With Open the Gates leading
and Saul Williams and Carlos Williams going out--
In the middle, Baltimore Park Vibe generations (with DC and Philly friends) continue to bud blossom root branch with new music!
Irreversible Entanglements, Open the Gates (2021)
PRIMER
Luke Stewart, Warren "Trae" Crudup III, For Mdou (2023)
TA ABU
Mojuba Duo (Jamal Moore and Nik Francis), Hardship, the Land, and the Shining Sun (2019)
PLAYLIST WITH ABDUL
Ancestral Duo (Jamal Moore and Luke Stewart), Two Sides (2020)
KALIMBA WITH DENNIS
Bashi Rose, Ritual of Rebellion (2024)
ADORATION WITH AESH
Nikolas Francis, The Path Chosen by Travel (2024)
VORTEX, BABA
Kemetic Lullaby, Shu Movement 1 (2022)
APP WITH GERALD
Jamal Moore, Thomas Stanley, Luke Stewart, Cargo (2019)
AS SHAWL, ARMOR OF FLIGHT
Konjur Collective, Blood in My Eye (A Soul Insurgent Guide) (2022)
Saul Williams, Carlos Rossie, Saul Williams Meets Carlos Williams and Friends at Tree People (2025)
release date January 31 2026
