The first time that Jasmine Barber, poet, stepped on a formal stage as rapper J Bambii, it was at the Hideout in 2016. She had been writing songs for herself for more than a year as a way to understand her evolving identity, exploring a genre that she had considered herself simply a fan of.
But as she became increasingly active in the city’s music scenes, Barber quickly saw inequities in the experiences of her nonmale, nonwhite peers. Seeing Black women underpaid and relegated to early opening slots before audiences had arrived pushed her to take a stance as an organizer in addition to being a performer. It all started with “The Brown Skin Lady Show” in 2017, a musical showcase that centered and empowered Black women at the now-defunct DIY spot, the Dojo, in Pilsen.
“The Dojo gave me the chance to really cultivate cool stuff I wanted to do that I couldn’t do in a regular venue, like smoke, and give room for Black people to commune,” Barber explains of the beginnings of her work as a curator. “And controlling the price of drinks and having food, which is hard to do with the amount of policing and regulation in typical spaces. It really became a place where I could feel good about business without it disrupting the spiritual.”
Music and community have always been her foundation, but for Barber, her focus is on the bigger picture. Her message? Embrace the power and timing of the divine to let yourself heal, and in return, help heal others through shared creative experiences.
Growing up on the South Side, she often created her own artistic worlds; the music her mother and father played was the soundtrack. A performer to her core, she liked to dance and participate in talent shows and plays. But the harsher realities of existing in the world —the anti-Blackness, colorism, fatphobia, bullying — took their toll. And like so many who become an “other” to their peers rather than a fellow, Barber relegated herself to the background.
“I didn’t like being seen, but I loved the stage,” she says. “I’d say I’d be better off behind the scenes. A lot of that was due to not feeling like I was good enough and deserving to be seen because of what I dealt with.”
She began writing poetry to deal with those outside forces, as well as with her parents’ divorce, retreating inward to try to understand these new, complicated feelings. When her freshman English teacher, Ms. Bradley at Morgan Park High School, introduced her to “Def Poetry Jam,” spoken word “showed me I could express things in a certain way. Whether I’m angry, sad or hurt, or I’m in love, there’s punctuation, there’s inflection I can give to that,” Barber says. “The first time I heard ‘Knock, Knock’ [a piece about a young, Black boy abandoned by his father], hearing that poem, it moved me. I remember being like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’”
In spoken word, she felt like she could hear herself for the first time, tapping into an intimacy and vulnerability that she hadn’t accessed before. Rap quickly followed when she realized spoken word was “the seed,” as she says, and the poetic forms she was exploring through Young Chicago Authors began to feel too academic and restrictive. In 2018, she released “Retrograde,” an Afro-futuristic EP that tackled what it means to make peace with and restore one’s inner child.
Barber continued to present “The Brown Skin Lady Show” at various venues: Alulu Brewery in Pilsen, Sleeping Village in Avondale, Empty Bottle in Ukrainian Village — and on one occasion, on a yacht on Lake Michigan. By 2019, the showcase had grown to include Black women healers performing massage and body work, in addition to a selection of local vendors. Also that year she launched its male counterpart, “Hot Boyz N’ Company,” which returned this May after a hiatus.
Through her curation, under the umbrella “J Bambii and Friends Presents,” Barber has emphasized creating as many paid opportunities for artists, local vendors and makers as possible, especially after the pandemic. After performing virtually or outside for just $50 during the shutdown, she’s keen that artists earn a fair pay for their work.
“I knew I had a gift in being resourceful and bringing things together and making things happen, so it ended up being a twofold thing,” she explains. “I could pay Black artists to come in and do a job they weren’t able to do due to the pandemic and lack of funding and jobs and career options, and also provide a space for people who feel like they don’t know how to get back out in the world again yet.”
Providing her community with what it needs — whether that’s space to air grievances and frustrations or space for pleasure, celebration and abundance — is what Barber has stayed attuned to. Her latest endeavor, “The Fifi,” began in May 2022, and every quarter it’s the must-attend party on the South Side, centering Black joy and community, particularly for women and queer folk. Every installment has sold out, including its inaugural New Year’s Eve blowout.
“I’ve been to enough concerts and festivals and parties to know that people were in these spaces hurting and not getting what they needed, including myself. Also, living on the South Side, a lot of the events you go to — or pay to go to — are up north. With so many spots [on the South Side] permanently shut down, I wanted somewhere people could have fun and dance and get free and laugh and just have a place to rebuild themselves to some degree without having to leave the neighborhood,” she says.
“And it doesn’t have to feel like work. A lot of healing and revolutionary liberation work doesn’t have to feel like it’s work — it can feel like having fun, too.”
Barber hopes people don’t feel like they need to compete with the world around them when they are there. “There are people in the city who don’t want Black people to have a safe space to congregate,” she says, “so it is very much our own underground, inclusive, accessible space.”
As she plans the next Fifi, Barber is putting the finishing touches on her debut album, “Black American Beauty” (due early 2024), and its lead single, which is scheduled to drop on Halloween. She has embraced the wave of opportunity that’s come her way, grateful that she’s stayed true to the path she’s known was meant for her since fifth grade.
Most recently, that path led her to open for bounce icon Big Freedia at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, part of a “Femmergy” showcase that included rapper/dancer Mister Wallace and DJs Hannah Viti and Zolita. It was Barber’s biggest hometown performance to date: Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events reported that 10,000 attended. When she took the microphone, nearly 7,000 were waiting.
“Before I called you, I was walking out the pancake house, and I told this girl her babies were beautiful, because they were — they were beautiful,” Barber says. “And she said, ‘You just performed at Millennium Park!’”
She laughs, “Getting recognized at the Original Pancake House on 47th! It’s shifted my life in such a short amount of time, but I knew that, though.”
