Wonesthesia Pictures · DAARAC · Los Angeles
AJ WONE
He turns oral tradition into structure — and structure back into voice.
Filmmaker · Poet · Multidisciplinary Artist · Institution Builder
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He turns oral tradition into structure — and structure back into voice.
Filmmaker · Poet · Multidisciplinary Artist · Institution Builder
Storyteller, Producer, AI Engineer. Curator of Collections at DAARAC. Executive VP & Poet Laureate of African Heritage Foundation. Director, producer, writer and editor of musical documentary DiaTribe: From The Village To The Streets, 36 film festivals garnering 15 awards. Some 4,000 poems over thirty years of daily practice. On July 18, 2027, he attempts the Guinness World Record: 42 albums released in Wone day. The upcoming memoir Bay Boy Blue is complete.
Written · Directed · Built independently
The name arrives from James Weldon Johnson's The Creation (1927) — "I'm lonely, I'll make me a world." Wone sole master rights holder. Six sonic movements. 42 albums in Wone day.
Official Guinness World Records attempt — application accepted
Forty-two albums in Wone day — July 18, 2027.
The largest single-day deposit of any creative archive. No individual artist or group has ever released this amount of musical work at once.
Six sets of seven albums — each set a different aspect of Wone's creative canon.
Those six seven-volume sets are:
"I'm lonely — I'll make me a world." — James Weldon Johnson, The Creation (1927)
2027 marks 100 years since James Weldon Johnson wrote God's Trombones (1927).
Support the Campaign — GoFundMe
May 25, 2012 · Alberta Rose Theatre · Portland
African drumming and dance fused with hip-hop on Wone stage — Obo Addy's last major stage performance of record, the Ghanaian master drummer and NEA National Heritage Fellow. The 42-minute documentary (2020), directed by AJ Wone and co-produced with Susan Addy, traveled from the Pan African Film Festival to opening night of the 32nd Cascade Festival of African Films.
Trailer above — the full film is free to view on the Film page, and the springboard for the docu-series now in development, tracing the living conversation between African musical traditions and contemporary hip-hop.
A literary effort where the entire city is the canvas.
Gangsta Odyssey — 4,000 poems, a poem a day, with Los Angeles as its witness. Staged as live poetry art across the city and county, late 2027. The archive goes public.
"Photosynthesized the punishment into pigment."
— If I Were A Flower"Charm is merely a C sharp removed from Harm."
— The Allure Of The LureAn estimated 4,000 poems over thirty years — a voice with receipts.
Four From Wone — a touring solo show. Wone body, four men, eighty minutes.
Staging: DiaTribe: From The Village To The Streets and the greatest stage musical experience Life In The Key Of Black — formerly titled "The Journey Of The African American."
Wone artist · Wone ensemble · Three works · Wone night
Los Angeles · 2027 — Venues & dates to be announced
Wone stage. The best voice wins.
A national spoken-word competition — 2028, in development.
Details to be announced.
The works currently underway.
Docu-series
The series — in development.
A journey to the Continent and around the USA, connecting the hereditary cosmic dots of rhythm and DNA, the ethnoexpressions mirrored in regions of Africa and America. A reintroduction to a rhythmic bloodline, growing out of the musical stage production and documentary written and directed by AJ Wone. The series fuses the 50 states and 54 nations through the genealogy of hands and feet, tracing the drum across the water and everything America made of its echo. The bloodline was never broken. This is its homecoming on screen.
The memoir
Complete — the agency push is next.
Twenty schools in nine years, a playwright stepfather at the Inglewood Playhouse, adventures galore every summer. Its kinship runs through legendary indie filmmaker and UCLA alum Jamaa Fanaka, who put the young Wone on screen as “Sugarpop” in Street Wars and years later on Facebook Messenger, Fanaka heard about this Wone man stage play he gave his blessing to in a final message six weeks before his death. From a twelve-year-old furious at the Boston Celtics to performing in front of Nelson Mandela on the City Hall steps, this is an epic story the world has never heard.
Live poetry art
Staged across the city and county — late 2027.
A yearlong love letter to Los Angeles: 365 poems set against this West Coast jewel, with the entire city as canvas. A poem a day, every day, with the City of Angels as muse, witness and coauthor, from Midtown to Inglewood to Leimert Park. While the world waits on July 18, 2027 and the 42 albums in Wone day, this is Wone at his most devotional. Wone poet, Wone city, Wone poem at a time, until the whole of Los Angeles is inside the work. Every boulevard a stanza, every neighborhood a chapter.
Wonesthesia Pictures — the production banner. Film, music, and stage, produced in-house.
The shop is open — wearable art · the Kyaju youth line · Gangsta Odyssey merch.
AJ Wone is Curator of Collections at DAARAC — the Department of Afro-American Research, Arts, and Culture, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2019 by its president, Dr. James D. Spinks: systems designer, educator, and collector of African-American film. Wone leads preservation of the digital archive, educational program design and development, LLM development, and immersive curriculum production across more than 2,000 Afro-American films of the 20th century and 40,000-plus images — carrying the work public through Black Film History channels, screenings, and symposiums. Black Film History reaches nearly 600,000 followers on Facebook and 58,000 subscribers on YouTube.
daaracarchive.org daarac.ngo Black Film History — Facebook Black Film History — YouTube
Music press
42 albums in Wone day — 3.5× the standing world record.
Pitchfork · FADER · Complex · NPR Music
Literary & culture
The largest single-day deposit of a Black creative archive.
LARB · The Believer · Bookforum · Hyperallergic
Trade & sync
800+ compositions, six sonic movements, Wone sole master rights holder.
Billboard · Variety · MBW
Black culture
Oral tradition codified at institutional scale; DAARAC as living archive.
Essence · The Root · Okayplayer
Theater
Two historically grounded stage musicals; original cast recordings day-and-date with forty albums.
Playbill · American Theatre · Deadline
Legacy & inspiration
A security guard watches Wone performance on television. Thirty years later: 42 albums, two Broadway musicals, Wone record.
Broadcast · Podcast
Clipping links coming
