Frankie Knuckles, a club disc jockey, remixer and producer who was often called the “godfather of house” for helping that percussive genre of dance music spread from Chicago nightclubs to global popularity and influence, died on Monday at his home in Chicago. He was 59.
His death was confirmed by Maria Rotella, the assistant to his manager, Judy Weinstein. She said the cause had not been determined but that he had had health problems related to diabetes.
Mr. Knuckles, a Grammy Award winner in 1998, started his career working at various New York clubs in the 1970s. In 1977, when disco was at its peak, he moved to Chicago and began spinning at a club called the Warehouse.
He played R&B and disco standards along with a range of post-punk, reggae, funk and synthesizer-based Europop rarities. That unusual mix, he later said, came to be nicknamed house music, after the club.
By the early 1980s Mr. Knuckles had started using a reel-to-reel tape recorder to edit his favorite tracks so that he could extend the beat, keeping dancers on the floor.
He left the Warehouse in the early ’80s and soon began spinning at another Chicago club, the Power Plant. In 1984 he incorporated a drum machine into his mixes. The combination of disco or pop vocals and catchy, often electronic samples laid over a pulsating beat became the hallmark of early house, a style that many Chicago producers were beginning to adopt.
“When it comes to the foundation, the bottom end, the kick and the bass line and how they work, my theory is it should be felt and not heard,” Mr. Knuckles said in an interview for the Red Bull Music Academy, a series of workshops and festivals, in 2011.
His beat-driven version of “Your Love,” a pop song by a young singer named Jamie Principle, was released by Trax Records in 1985. It became a club hit and a local radio favorite and led to more records with Mr. Principle.
He returned to New York in 1988 to work in Manhattan clubs like the Roxy and the Sound Factory Bar. That same year, teamed with David Morales and Ms. Weinstein, he formed Def Mix Productions, which worked on elaborate house remixes for artists like Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Chaka Khan. In 1991 he released his first album under his own name, “Beyond the Mix,” which included the singles “The Whistle Song” and “Workout.”
His Grammy Award in 1998 was for nonclassical remixer of the year.
Francis Nicholls was born in the Bronx on Jan. 18, 1955. (“Knuckles” was a family nickname.) He rode the subway to Manhattan with the singer Luther Vandross, a neighbor, to attend the High School of Art and Design, from which he graduated.
The renowned D.J. Larry Levan, a childhood friend, hired him to help with lighting at the Continental Baths. He learned to spin records while Mr. Levan took breaks.
Mr. Knuckles’s second album, “Welcome to the Real World,” was released in 1995. “Bac N da Day,” a track from his 2004 album, “A New Reality,” that featured Jamie Principle, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s dance chart.
He is survived by a sister and two brothers.
In recent years Mr. Knuckles continued to tour as a club D.J. and recorded with Eric Kupper, working under the name Director’s Cut. In 2011 they revived a 1980s classic by releasing a contemporary remix of “Your Love.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Tuesday that Chicago had “lost one of its most treasured cultural pioneers.”
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Frankie Knuckles, house music 'godfather,' dead at 59
April 01, 2014|Greg Kot
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Frankie Knuckles, seen here at the Chicago International House Music Festival at Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island in 2006, had a key role in developing house music as a DJ in the 1980s and helped to popularize house music in the 1990s, as a producer and remixer. In 2005, Knuckles was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame. (Tribune photo by E. Jason Wambsgans)
In Chicago, Frankie Knuckles was called the “godfather,” not because of any underworld connections, but because he helped build house – a style of Chicago dance music that revolutionized club culture in the ‘70s and ‘80s and still resonates around the world today.
Knuckles died Monday at the age of 59, as confirmed by his longtime business partner, Frederick Dunson. More details would be forthcoming Tuesday, Dunson said, who said in an email that Knuckles “died unexpectedly this afternoon at home.” In addition to developing the sound and culture of house music, Knuckles would go on to mix records by major artists such as Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode.
Knuckles learned his craft as a club DJ in New York City, then moved to Chicago in the late ‘70s and developed a reputation as one of the city’s most influential dance-music tastemakers. He arrived in Chicago just as disco was losing steam. For many, disco literally went up in flames between games of a Chicago White Sox double header at Comiskey Park, when radio deejay Steve Dahl blew up hundreds of disco albums.
"I witnessed that caper that Steve Dahl pulled at Disco Demolition Night and it didn't mean a thing to me or my crowd," Knuckles told the Tribune. “But it scared the record companies, so they stopped signing disco artists and making disco records. So we created our own thing in Chicago to fill the gap.”
Knuckles was mentored by the renowned DJ Larry Levan in the early ‘70s while in New York. “We would spend entire afternoons working up ideas on how to present a record so that people would hear it in a new way and fall in love with it,” Knuckles said. “To us it was an art form.”
He brought that knowledge west with him to Chicago, where he became known as “the godfather of Chicago house music” at the Warehouse and later the Power Plant. He would extend mixes of soul and R&B records and turn them into dance tracks, introduce new singles being produced by fledgling house artists and incorporate drum machines to emphasize the beat. In addition to building dynamic ebb-and-flow sets that would keep his dancefloor filled from midnight to noon on weekends, he would create theater-of-the-mind scenarios with inventive sound and lighting. “Sometimes I’d shut down all the lights and set up a record where it would sound like a speeding train was about to crash into the club. People would lose their minds.”
Knuckles was primarily known as a DJ, but he also played a key role as a tastemaker, de facto talent scout and producer. Knuckles bought his first drum machine from a young Derrick May, one of the founders of techno music, who regularly made the trip from Detroit to see Knuckles at the Warehouse. Knuckles also had a musical partnership with Chicago artist Jamie Principle, and helped put "Your Love" and "Baby Wants to Ride" out on vinyl after these tunes had been regulars on his reel-to-reel player at the Warehouse. He also produced the house classic "Tears" with Robert Owens (of Fingers, Inc.).
House was initially cruder and less polished than disco, a reflection of its blue-collar origins. Knuckles was hardly the only innovator in the scene, as Marshall Jefferson, Ron Hardy, Steve "Silk" Hurley, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk and dozens more also played key roles. By the late ‘80s, Knuckles and many of his peers were stars in Europe’s emerging rave scene.
Knuckles would often joke that he could walk down the middle of the street in Chicago and not be recognized, yet would be greeted by cheering fans when he would arrive at European airports for overseas DJ gigs.
“I wasn’t frustrated by that, not at all,” he said. “I’m not the kind of person that lives for fame and glory. If I’ve got a nice, clean home and can put a meal on my table and can entertain my friends, I’m fine. I don’t need to see my face plastered everywhere.”
Yet he took pride in Chicago’s growing recognition over the years as the home of contemporary dance music, celebrated by such mainstream hitmakers as Daft Punk and Paul Oakenfold.
"The people I meet all around the world look at Chicago and the house scene with a new romanticism," he said. "They recognize more than ever that Chicago is the core of where it all began."
In 2004, Chicago named a street after Knuckles where the old Warehouse once stood, on Jefferson Street between Jackson Boulevard and Madison Street. It was a little slice of legitimacy for a style of music that often didn’t get much love from the city, which became notorious in the dance community around the world for passing the so-called “anti-rave ordinance” in 2000 that made property owners, promoters and deejays subject to $10,000 fines for being involved in an unlicensed dance party.
Frankie Knuckles, house music 'godfather,' dead at 59
April 01, 2014|Greg Kot
3943
Knuckles once reflected on house music’s reputation as a soundtrack for hedonism, though much of the dance music he loved had a melancholy flavor, a yearning that evoked gospel and soul. He championed house music that wasn’t just about rhythm, but that embraced humanism and dignified struggle. It was in keeping with his belief that the dancefloor was a safe haven for the gay, African-American and Hispanic communities that first embraced him.
“God has a place on the dancefloor,” he once told the Tribune. “We wouldn’t have all the things we have if it wasn’t for God. We wouldn’t have the one thing that keeps us sane – music. It’s the one thing that calms people down.
“Even when they’re hopping up and down in a frenzy on the dancefloor, it still has their spirits calm because they’re concentrating on having a good time, loving the music, as opposed to thinking about something negative. I think dancing is one of the best things anyone can do for themselves. And it doesn’t cost anything.”
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Francis Nicholls, better known by his stage name Frankie Knuckles (January 18, 1955 – March 31, 2014), was an American DJ and record producer.[2]
Knuckles was born January 18, 1955[1][3] in The Bronx, New York; he later moved to Chicago. He played an important role in developing and popularizing house music in Chicago during the 1980s, when the genre was in its infancy. Due to his importance in the development of the genre, Knuckles was often known as "The Godfather of House Music."[4]The city of Chicago named a stretch of street and a day after Knuckles in 2004 for this role. His accomplishments earned him a Grammy Award in 1997. Knuckles was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005 as recognition for his achievements.
While studying textile design at the FIT in New York, Knuckles began working as a DJ, playing soul, disco, and R&B at The Continental Baths with childhood friend[5]and fellow DJ Larry Levan.[6] In the late 1970s, Knuckles moved from New York City to Chicago,[7] and when the Warehouse club opened in Chicago in 1977, he was invited to play on a regular basis. He continued DJing at the Warehouse until 1982, when he started his own club in Chicago, The Power Plant.[8]DJ History'reports: "The style of music now known as house was so named after a shortened version of [Knuckles' Warehouse] club."[9]
Knuckles bought his first drum machine from Derrick May, who regularly made the trip from Detroit to see Knuckles at the Warehouse and Ron Hardy at the Music Box, both in Chicago.[10] Knuckles also had a musical partnership with Chicago artist Jamie Principle, and helped put "Your Love" and "Baby Wants to Ride" out on vinyl after these tunes had been regulars on his reel-to-reel player at the Warehouse for a year.[10]
When the Power Plant closed in 1987, Knuckles played for four months at Delirium in the United Kingdom. Chicago house artists were in high demand and having major success in the UK with this new genre of music.[12] Knuckles also had a stint in New York, where he continued to immerse himself in producing, remixing, andrecording.[10]
Knuckles made numerous popular Def Classic Mixes with John Poppo as sound engineer, and Knuckles partnered with David Morales on Def Mix Productions.[13]His debut album Beyond the Mix (1991), released on Virgin Records, contained "seminal work", "The Whistle Song".[14] The Def Classic mix of Lisa Stansfield's "Change", released in the same year, also featured the whistle-like motif. Another track from the album, "Rain Falls", featured vocals from Lisa Michaelis. Eight thousand copies of the album had sold by 2004.[15] Other key remixes from this time include his rework of the Electribe 101 anthem "Talking With Myself" and Alison Limerick's "Where Love Lives".
Knuckles continued to work as a remixer through the 1990s and into the next decade, reworking tracks from Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, Eternaland Toni Braxton. He released several new singles, including "Keep on Movin'" and a re-issue of an earlier hit "Bac N Da Day" with Definity Records. In 1995, he released his second album titled Welcome to the Real World. By 2004, 13,000 copies had sold.[15]
In 2004, Knuckles released a 13-track album of original material – his first in over a decade – titled A New Reality. In October 2004, "Your Love" appeared in thevideogameGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas, playing on house music radio station, SF-UR.[17]
In 1997, Knuckles won the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical.[18] In 2004, the city of Chicago – which "became notorious in the dance community around the world for passing the so-called 'anti-rave ordinance' in 2000 that made property owners, promoters and deejays subject to $10,000 fines for being involved in an unlicensed dance party" – named a stretch of street in Chicago[19] after Knuckles, where the old Warehouse once stood, on Jefferson Street between Jackson Boulevard and Madison Street.[20] That stretch of street, called Frankie Knuckles Way, "was renamed when the city declared 25 August 2004 as Frankie Knuckles Day. The Illiniois state senator who helped make it happen was Barack Obama."[18] In 2005, Knuckles was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame for his achievements.[18][19]
Knuckles died of Type II diabetes-related complications in Chicago on March 31, 2014 at age 59.[24][25] Knuckles had developed the disease in the mid-2000s.[26]
***** Francis Nicholls, better known by his stage name Frankie Knuckles (January 18, 1955 – March 31, 2014), was an American disc jockey (DJ) and record producer.
Knuckles was born January 18, 1955 in the Bronx, New York. He later moved to Chicago. He played an important role in developing and popularizing house music in Chicago during the 1980s, when the genre was in its infancy. Due to his importance in the development of the genre, Knuckles was often known as "The Godfather of House Music."The city of Chicago named a stretch of street and a day after Knuckles in 2004 for this role. His accomplishments earned him a Grammy Award in 1997. Knuckles was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition for his achievements.
BOSTON — Zeituni Onyango, President Obama’s Kenyan-born aunt, who received asylum in the United States in 2010 after years of living illegally in Boston, died on Tuesday in a rehabilitation home here. She was 61.
Her death was confirmed by Margaret Wong, a Cleveland lawyer who represented Ms. Onyango in her immigration case. She said that Ms. Onyango had cancer and respiratory problems.
Ms. Onyango was the half-sister of Mr. Obama’s father.
Mr. Obama wrote about his aunt in his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” She served as his guide in Kenya — and his guide to some painful family history — during his visit there in 1988. She said that Mr. Obama’s father, who died in a car crash in 1982, had taken her in when her husband became abusive and she had no money.
But there was little or no contact between Mr. Obama and his aunt while she fought to immigrate. She attended his inauguration in 2009, but the two apparently did not see each other.
Ms. Onyango moved to South Boston on a valid visa in 2000 and sought political asylum in 2002. It was denied in 2004, and she was ordered to leave the country, but she refused.
She was living in relative anonymity in Boston until just before the 2008 presidential election, when her illegal status was reported by The Associated Press. The Times of London found her in what it described as “run-down public housing.”
At the time, aides to Mr. Obama said that he had not known that she was in the United States illegally and that “any and all appropriate laws” covering her situation should be followed. The aides said that he would not intervene in her case and that the two had had no contact.
To escape media scrutiny, Ms. Onyango moved to Cleveland, where the Kenyan community took her in, said Ms. Wong, who helped her obtain a green card.
In seeking asylum for Ms. Onyango, Ms. Wong argued that if she were forced to return to Kenya she would face undue attention and perhaps danger because of her nephew’s fame. To be granted asylum, people must show that they would face persecution in their home countries.
In Boston, Judge Leonard Shapiro granted Ms. Onyango asylum in 2010. She died before being granted citizenship.
Ms. Onyango was born in Kenya on May 29, 1952, under a mango tree, and delivered by a midwife in the absence of medical care, Ms. Wong said. She raised a family in Kenya and worked in the computer department at Kenya Breweries, where she managed a staff of 25.
Her memoir, “Tears of Abuse,” was published in 2012. In it she wrote, “The Obama clan is like the Baobab tree; the strength lies in its roots.”
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Zeituni Onyango (May 29, 1952 – April 7, 2014) was the half-aunt of United States President Barack Obama. Onyango was the half-sister of Obama's late father Barack Obama, Sr. She is referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father.
In 2000, Onyango, a native of Kenya, came to the United States illegally and in 2002 sought political asylum in the United States citing violence: Kenya and East Africa have seen an escalation in violence in the 2000s. Her case was denied in 2004 but she remained in South Boston, Massachusetts, and retained legal representation. Her case was leaked in the final days of the 2008 United States presidential election in which Obama was the Democratic candidate.
Her case became the subject of international media attention highlighting "the hot-button topic of illegal immigration into a race that has largely avoided it" and the contradictory rules governing public housing in Massachusetts. It also sparked an investigation by the Department of Health Services as to how her case was leaked and added heightened administrative review on asylum deportations until after the 2008 general election. Onyango's case is often cited in light of immigration reform efforts of the Obama administration.
Josephine "Joe" Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the rights groups Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy.
Odumakin was born in Zaria, Kaduna, on July 4, 1966. She grew up in a Roman Catholic household. She received a bachelor's degree in English Education in 1987, followed by a master's in Guidance and Counseling and a doctorate in History and Policy of Education from the University of Ilorin. She has frequently been arrested for her activism, especially during the military rule of Ibrahim Babangida, and she met her future husband, Yinak Odumakin, while in prison.
In 2013, Odumakin was presented an International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State.
On March 9, 2011, she participated in a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo. The military violently dispersed protest participants, and Samira and other women were beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched, and videotaped by the soldiers. They were also subjected to virginity tests. The tests were allegedly carried out to protect the soldiers from claims of rape.
After succeeding in placing the case in front of a civilian court, a court order was issued in December 2011 to stop the practice of “virginity tests”. However in March 2012, a military court exonerated Dr. Adel El Mogy from charges laid in connection with the virginity testing of Ibrahim.
Ibrahim vowed to take her case to the international courts.
In early March 2013, Ibrahim came under criticism after Samuel Tadros, writing in The Weekly Standard, accused her of posting anti-Semitic and anti-American statements on her Twitter account. These statements included quoting Adolf Hitler, writing: "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.” In reaction to a suicide bombing of a bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, she wrote "Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” In 2012, on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she tweeted "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning".
The United States State Department subsequently announced that it would not be giving the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim in light of these comments.
Initially, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been "previously stolen" and that "any tweet on racism and hatred is not me”. However, she later stated "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award." The United States State Department later stated that Ibrahim had since left the United States to return to Egypt.
On March 8, 2013, a spokeswoman for the United States State Department stated that "Upon further review, the department has decided not to present her with the award" as American officials "didn't consider some of the public statements that she had made appropriate. They didn't comport with our values" while adding that "There were obviously some problems in our review process, and we're going to do some forensics on how that happened."
Beatrice Mtetwa is a Zimbabwean lawyer who has been internationally recognized for her defense of journalists and press freedom. The New York Times described her in 2008 as "Zimbabwe's top human rights lawyer".
Mtetwa received her LLB from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1981 and spent the next two years working as a prosecuting attorney in Swaziland. In 1983, she moved to Zimbabwe, where she continued working as a prosecutor until 1989. That year, she went into private practice, and soon began specializing in human rights law. In one of her more notable cases, she successfully challenged a section of Zimbabwe's Private Voluntary Organizations Act which allowed a government minister the authority to dissolve or replace the board members of non-governmental organizations. She also challenged the results of 37 districts in the 2000 parliamentary elections. In a PBS documentary, Mtetwa described her motives for her activism as "not because there is any glory or cash to it and not because I'm trying to antagonize the government... I'm doing it because it's a job that's got to be done".
Mtetwa is particularly noted for her defense of arrested journalists, both local and international. In 2003, for example, she won a court order preventing the deportation of Guardian reporter Andrew Meldrum, presenting it to security officials at Harare International Airport only minutes before Meldrum's plane was scheduled to depart. She also won acquittals for detained reporters Toby Hamden and Julian Simmonds from London's Sunday Telegraph, who had been arrested during coverage of the April parliamentary election on charges of working without government accreditation. In April 2008, she secured the release of New York Times reporter Barry Bearak, who had been imprisoned on similar charges. She also defended many local journalists arrested in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.
In 2003, Mtetwa was arrested on allegations of drunk driving. At the police station, she was reportedly beaten and choked before being released three hours later without a formal charge. Though unable to speak for two days after the attack, she returned on the third day with a folder of medical evidence in order to file charges against the police officers who assaulted her. Police officers reportedly attacked Mtetwa again in 2007, beating her and three colleagues with rubber truncheons during a march protesting harassment of Zimbabwe's lawyers.
In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mtetwa described her procedure for averting potential attacks:
"I think I confront the danger immediately before it happens. I always make sure that if, for instance, I'm called in the middle of the night to a scene that is potentially dangerous, I make sure that there are as many media practitioners as possible, particularly to record what will happen there. And in the glare of cameras I find that people don't want to do what they would want to do. So in a lot of ways I think I've been lucky, and I haven't received as much harassment as one would have expected, or as much as other human rights defenders have had."
In 2005, she won the Interantional Press Freedom Award of the Committed to Protect Journalists. The award citation stated that "in a country where the law is used as a weapon against independent journalists, Mtetwa has defended journalists and argued for press freedom, all at great personal risk." She also won the group's Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.
Mtetwa was also received several awards from legal organizations. In 2009, the European Bar Human Rights Institute awarded her the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize ("The award given by lawyers to a lawyer"), reserved each year to a lawyer who throughout his or her career has illustrated, by activity or suffering, the defense of human rights in the world. Mtetwa also won the 2010 International Human Rights award of the American Bar Association. In 2011, she was awarded the Inamori Ethics Prize by Case Western Reserve University in the United States. And, most recently (2014), she was named a recipient of the International Women of Courage Award that is annually given out by the United States Department of State to women around the world who have shown leadership, courage, resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice for others, especially for better promotion of women's rights.
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (born March 1, 1983) is an actress and music video director of dual Kenyan and Mexican citizenship. She made her feature film debut in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013) as Patsey, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other awards and nominations. She is one of the few actors who has won an Academy Award for their debut performance in a feature film.
Nyong'o was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Dorothy and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, a politician in Kenya. It is a Luo tradition to name a child after the events of the day, so her parents named her Lupita (a diminutive of "Guadalupe" Our Lady of Guadalupe). She is of completely Luo descent on both sides of her family, and is the second of six children. Her father was the former Kenyan Minister for Medical Services. At the time of Lupita's birth, he was a visiting lecturer in political science at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, and her family had been living in Mexico for three years.
Nyong'o moved back to Kenya with her parents when she was less than one year old, when her father was appointed a professor at the University of Nairobi. She grew up primarily in Kenya, and describes her upbringing as "middle class, suburban". At age sixteen, her parents sent her back to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. During those seven months, Nyong'o lived in Taxco, Mexico, and took classes at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico's Learning Center for Foreigners.
In 2013, her father was elected to represent Kisumu County in the Kenyan Senate. Nyong'o's mother was the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation and owned her own communications company. In 2012, her older cousin, Isis Nyong'o, was named one of Africa's most powerful women by Forbes magazine. Her uncle, Aggrey Nyong'o, a prominent Kenyan physician, was killed in a road accident in 2002.
She was fluent in her native Luo, English, Swahili and Spanish. On February 27, 2014, at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon in Beverly Hills, Lupita gave a speech on black beauty. Lupita talked about a letter she received from a young fan who stated she was unhappy with herself until she saw the actress on the cover of a magazine. In her speech, Lupita talked about the insecurities she had about herself as a teenager; growing up as a dark skinned black girl, women that looked like her were barely portrayed in the media and when they were, they were not deemed as being beautiful. She said her views about herself changed when she saw South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek become successful.
Nyong'o grew up in an artistic family, where family get-togethers often included performances by the children in the family and trips to see plays. She attended an all-girls school in Kenya and acted in school plays, with a minor role in Oliver Twist being her first play. At age 14, Nyong'o made her professional acting debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in a production by the Nairobi, Kenya-based repertory company Phoenix Players. While a member of the Phoenix Players, Nyong'o also performed in the plays "On The Razzle" and "There Goes The Bride". Nyong'o cites the performances of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue a professional acting career.
Nyong'o attended college in the United States. After graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies, she worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, Mira Nair's The Namesake, and Salvatore Stabile's Where God Left His Shoes. She cites Fiennes as another individual who inspired her to pursue a professional acting career.
She starred in the 2008 short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn, New York. She returned to Kenya in 2008 and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga, an MTV Base Africa/UNICEF drama about HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2009, she wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the treatment of Kenya's albino population, which played at several film festivals and won first prize at the 2008 Five College Film Festival. Nyong'o also directed the The Little Things You Do music video by Wahu featuring Bobi Wine, which was nominated for the Best Video Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards 2009.
Nyong'o subsequently enrolled in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. While at Yale, she was the recipient of the Herschel Williams Prize "awarded to acting students with outstanding ability" during the 2011–2012 school year.
Nyong'o landed her breakout role when she was cast in 12 Years a Slave immediately before graduating from Yale with an MFA in 2012. The film was released in 2013 to great critical acclaim. Nyong'o received rave reviews for her performance, and was nominated for several awards including a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and two Screen Actors Guild Awards including Best Supporting Actress, which she won. She also co-starred in Liam Neeson's 2014 film Non-Stop.
On March 2, 2014, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the sixth black actress to win the award.
In 2014, she was chosen as one of the faces for Miu Miu's Spring 2014 campaign, with Elizabeth Olsen, Elle Fanning and Bella Heathcote. She also appeared on the covers of several magazines, including New York's Spring 2014 fashion issue and UK magazine Dazed & Confused. She was also a regular on Harper's Bazaar's Derek Blasberg's Best Dressed List.
music’s reputation as a soundtrack for hedonism, though much of the dance music he loved had a melancholy flavor, a yearning that evoked gospel and soul. He championed house music that wasn’t just about rhythm, but that embraced humanism and dignified struggle. It was in keeping with his belief that the dancefloor was a safe haven for the gay, African-American and Hispanic communities that first embraced him.
