Dr. Johari Jabir

Johari Jabir is an artist, scholar, and contemplative. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Johari began piano lessons at an early age and was immersed in the expressive culture of St. Louis’ Black working class religious community, which is the foundation for his continued practice as a musician, cultural historian, and contemplative teacher. In addition to working as an associate professor in the department of Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, he is currently director of music at St. George & St. Matthias Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL. His research, teaching, and writing includes Black Religion and Spirituality, Music and Social Transformation, Contemplative Pedagogy and Prison Abolition. Johari’s first book, Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Gospel Army of the Civil War (Ohio State University Press, 2017), is a cultural history of the nation’s first Black regiment, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. Conjuring Freedom attends to the “spirituals” sung by the regiment in the ring shout as a mode of conjuring the spirit for military aims toward freedom.