Rebirth of the Cool
Talking with Art of Cool cofounder Cicely Mitchell about the upcoming Missy Lane's Block Party — a years-in-the-making tribute to jazz, Durham, and do-overs.
Editor's Note: Missy Lane's Assembly Room is an occasional advertising sponsor with Super Empty. This article was not sponsored by them, nor was it shared with them before publication.
It's hard to tell if, by Cicely Mitchell's standards at least, I'm catching her on a busy day.
When I meet her one morning at Missy Lane's Assembly Room — the jazz club she opened on Durham's East Main Street last year, expanding on her considerable curation and event promotion bonafides — she's just finished up a meeting. Forty-five minutes into our conversation, she has to hop on a Zoom call with Radio One Raleigh (K97.5, Foxy107.1) to talk about media coverage and sponsorship packages. As we part ways and make plans to re-connect in a few days, her next meeting is already walking in.
A week later on the phone, I ask if even a modest reprieve will be in order when Missy Lane's Block Party, her newest venture (an all-day street festival on Oct. 4th, featuring jazz/R&B heavy hitters like Donald Harrison Jr., Braxton Cook, Teedra Moses, and Bilal), concludes.
"Oh, it's right back to work," she says.
"The week after that we have a pop-up with Fever to do the Edgar Allen Poe bar. And then the following week we have something, and the week after that is [NC] Central's Homecoming, so we got a whole weekend of events for that."
Though it sounds exhausting, it also comes with the territory. Throwing events is what Mitchell does (well, half of what she does — she's a biostatistician, too). And over the years, she's been known for one event more than any other: the multi-day, Durham-based jazz festival Art of Cool, which was acquired by promotions company The DOME Group in 2018, and which held its most recent installment in 2019.
In the eyes of many, the beloved 2010s cultural institution that was Art of Cool has long since died. But in reality, it's suffered a fate that might be even worse: a suspended state of quasi-life, tethered to this realm by only a wafer-thin website that solicits newsletter signups with the foreboding call-to-action: "SUBSCRIBE FOR AOC:2023 UPDATES." As of this writing, the festival's penultimate Instagram post is an announcement about the outbreak of COVID-19.
Between the festival's vestigial modern-day existence and the natural passage of time, it would be hard today to convey to a new Durhamite just how important, impressive and esteemed AOC once was — how much its culture of electric, high-profile collaboration on the stage and "what legend am I standing next to?" spontaneity in the crowd contributed to the heady sense of cultural possibility that suffused the Bull City at the time; how well its wide-angled interpretation of jazz (pulling in funk, soul and hip-hop) captured the artistic and unpretentious spirit that was making Durham a hipster darling in the national press.
"Art of Cool was a special moment," says Mitchell. "It's very rare to hear the same type of moment or memory from different stakeholders, but over the years I've heard the same memory, same moment where everybody felt like this is what Durham is about."