Adam Bradley

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Adam Bradley

LAST SPRING, DURING the Broadway revival of " Appropriate " (2013), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's sardonic drama about white family members returning to their ancestral plantation home in southeast Arkansas to bury their father, a rare moment of cross-racial candor transpired - not onstage but in the audience. In the third act, Bo, the middle-aged older brother played by Corey Stoll, unleashes a rant about the burdens of whiteness in 21st-century America.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Adam Bradley

Coco Jones (left) and Victoria Monét photographed in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, 2024. Jones wears a Gucci dress, $6,900, bracelet, $1,300, bracelet, $1,150, and cuff, $920, gucci.com; Christian Louboutin shoes, $995, christianlouboutin.com; LO Collections earrings, $425, and ring, $300, dinosaurdesigns.com; and Dinosaur Designs ring, $235, dinosaurdesigns.com.

Sep 3, 2024 | newsroom.ucla.edu | Adam Bradley

In 1963, on a song called “Surfin’ Bird,” a one-hit-wonder surf rock band called the Trashmen claimed that the “bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word.” They might be right. Look and listen closely, and you’ll find that birds are everywhere in literature and song. Birds give humans things that we might aim to achieve (the beauty of their song, for instance) and things about which we can only dream (the exhilaration off unaided flight).

Nov 10, 2023 | nyti.ms | Adam Bradley |Justin French

TRAY WELLINGTON KNOWS that many will take the title of his 2022 album, “Black Banjo,” as an oxymoron. The banjo, and with it an entire body of folk-based music, is now so thoroughly associated with whiteness as to obscure its origins in Black musical tradition. “One of the first things I heard when I started playing banjo was, ‘You’re not supposed to be doing this,’” says Wellington, 24, whose father is Black and mother is white. But for him, playing the banjo has become an act of reclamation.

Oct 3, 2023 | newsroom.ucla.edu | Adam Bradley

“Hip-Hop America: The Mixtape Exhibit” at the Grammy Museum, which opens Oct. 7 and runs through Sept. 4, 2024, celebrates the genre’s 50th anniversary. It is co-curated by Adam Bradley, UCLA professor of English and African American studies and founding director of the Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture (RAP Lab) at UCLA. The immersive exhibit explores music, fashion, activism and more to allow visitors to make hands-on connections with the past, present and future of hip-hop culture.