DJ Spooky (a.k.a. Paul D Miller) is a writer, conceptual artist, and pioneer in the field of mashups and mixing, a politically minded musical archivist who works at the borders of performance art and musical statement. Based on D.W. Griffith’s infamous film, Spooky’s 2004 Rebirth of A Nation ran to rave reviews at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival.

In a world-premiere event devised exclusively for the Duke Performances series Soul Power, Spooky connects soul music’s “then” and “now,” cutting soul-inspired vinyl with historic footage of Wattstax, the 1972 concert Stax Records staged in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The multimedia event, Video Soul: Wattstax to the Avant-garde, premiered on February 9, 2008, at Duke’s Reynolds Industries Theater.