Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae is a multidisciplinary artist, award-winning scholar, and truth-teller whose work moves at the intersection of art, activism, and ancestry. For over 35 years, she’s used music, theatre, and critical writing to explore — and now, propose — responses to the social, political, and economic forces that shape our lives.

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Her new album, "Grateful" is both personal and political — a sonic extension of her acclaimed research-creation project, Black And Free, which examines Black expressive culture across music, performance, literature, and digital media. The project asks what freedom looks like and feels like for Black people — and this album is one of her answers.

Written and recorded in 2024 after a five-year pause from songwriting, the ten-track project marks a shift in Keleta-Mae’s creative approach: from analysis to offering, from bearing witness to building vision. Inspired by artist Zak Ové’s reflection that he tries ‘not to bleed on the canvas but to propose solutions,’ Keleta-Mae brings her full self — feminist scholar, artist, mother, and woman — to every lyric.

The track “ABCD” lays the foundation — a mantra of persistence through failure and uncertainty. “Grateful” is a tender acknowledgment of struggle that insists on hope. And “Move,” rooted in the traditions of dancehall and protest, rejects hollow words in favor of lived action: “Mi nuh inna di long talking.”

Part mantra, part memoir, part mirror — this album is Black And Free in sound. A declaration. A reckoning. A legacy in motion.

Select accomplishments

• Principal Investigator of Black And Free, a multi-year research-creation project supporting Black artists, communities, students and scholars

• Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance and former Dorothy Killam Fellow

• Royal Society of Canada College Member

• Author of Beyoncé and Beyond (2023) and Performing Female Blackness (2023)

• Curated exhibitions and produced events spotlighting Black artists with institutions like THEMUSEUM and Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum

• Co-editor of special issues on Black performance and futures for Theatre Research in Canada and Canadian Theatre Review

• Featured commentator for CBC, BNN, CTV, The Globe and Mail, Vice, and more