Club Juke
What begins as a blues performance expands into something ancestral and futuristic at once: rock guitar riffs, hip-hop rhythms, West African percussion, bodies moving across eras.
The juke joint has always been a space where traditions collide and something new gets made — blues meeting gospel, African rhythm meeting American vernacular, the sacred and the secular sharing a dance floor. Inspired by Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Club Juke is an exploration of that collision: what does it look like when every musical tradition that has ever shaped Black American culture shows up to the same party?
It began as a character study, attempting to understand how distinct musical traditions might share a single space without losing what makes each of them distinct.
Starting with individual figures drawn in isolation — a ceremonial dancer, a sitar player, jazz musicians, DJs — the process was about building a cast before building a world. Each character was given their own cultural context, instrument, and posture. Only once the cast existed did the world begin to take shape around them.
The ensemble scene followed: all of these figures brought together inside a juke joint, standing side by side under a single sign. Then movement: the same characters shown in motion, dancing, releasing the restraint of the character studies.
And finally, color. The scene fully realized, warm and alive, string lights overhead, a live band behind, couples moving across the floor.
By the time color arrives, you've already met everyone in it.
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