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MALIK BOOKS & PAFF JOIN FORCES FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH
BLACK-OWNED, INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE BRINGS THE LOVE OF READING TO THE 31ST ANNUAL PAN AFRICAN FILM & ARTS FESTIVAL
LOS ANGELES, CA (February 1, 2023) – For Black History Month, Malik Books is excited to bring the love of reading to the 31st Annual Pan African Festival & Arts Festival. During the film festival’s run, the black-owned, independent bookstore will host a book-signing and Q&A featuring attorney and television personality Eboni K. Williams, author of BET ON BLACK: THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT BEING BLACK IN AMERICA TODAY. The book calls for Black people worldwide to adopt a fresh, highly-informed mindset that will change lives. Devyn Bakewell, who serves as assistant managing editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Los Angeles Watts, and a romance novelist – the author of GREATER LOVE and GREATER LIFE — will serve as a moderator.Audiences may be familiar with Williams thanks to her appearances on ABC’s “The View” and Season 13 of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York.” In her new book, BET ON BLACK, Williams delves into some of the cornerstones of leading a first-class Black life, ranging from knowing one’s history to understanding the power of representation to investing in the sometimes challenging processes of success. As Williams writes in her introduction, “Black excellence is as much an individual journey as a collective one. I will admit that my belief in what I consider to be a fundamental truth about the place of Blackness in our society didn’t come effortlessly. My own road to embracing who I am and what I can do has been met with many obstacles in my career and personal life, a couple of which I’ll share with you. At one point in my education and career, I thought it would be easier to make myself smaller. But over time, I’ve learned how to stay true to my ideals, and Black foundation, so becoming small was no longer a viable option.” “We are excited to collaborate with the Pan African Film Festival in celebrating Black culture,” said Malik Muhammad, who founded Malik Books in 1990 at the corner of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards before moving to the mall four years later. “Our bookstore provides a vehicle where people can embrace their Blackness and educate and empower themselves to connect with their African American heritage. Without censorship, a person can explore his or her own Blackness and be enlightened through the pages of hundreds of books at Malik Books.”
About Devyn Bakewell
Devyn is an activist for the Black community, advocates for women and children, and is a Romance novelist who believes Greater Love can lead to a Greater Life. In her debut novel, “Greater Love,” Devyn connects with people by bringing them closer through shared experiences. Devyn hopes that through her literary work, she can improve the plight of black youth, women, and anyone who faces systemic oppression. With Greater Life, she continues the conversation.
About PAFF
PAFF is one of the largest and most prestigious Black film festivals in the United States, taking place February 9-20, 2023, in Los Angeles. It attracts local, national, and international audiences as the nation’s largest Black History Month cultural event. PAFF presents and showcases a broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images and help to destroy negative stereotypes of Africans and African Americans. Since 1992, PAFF has remained dedicated to promoting Black stories and images through the exhibition of film, visual art, and other creative expressions. Most importantly, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has designated PAFF as an official qualifying film festival for live-action and animation short films. Visit PAFF.org.
About Malik Books
Malik Books is a black-owned, independent bookstore specializing in books, calendars, cards, and gifts full of cultural diversity. This bookstore is a rare gem and offers a unique experience to its customers. Book loves can find all the hottest and best sellers of today, as well as hard-to-find books, or upon request, special order more than 12 million book titles. Malik Books served as the official bookseller of the 2022 Leimert Park Village Book Fair. Malik Books offer two locations – the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and Westfield Culver City. Visit MalikBooks.com.
Before there was a science of influence, before algorithms decided who mattered and viral moments manufactured stars overnight, there was Howard Bloom — working the phones, shaping narratives, and building some of the most enduring legends in the history of popular music.
In an era when the music industry ran on relationships, instinct, and the sheer force of personality, Bloom was operating on a different level entirely. He wasn’t just doing publicity. He was doing something closer to cultural architecture — understanding not just how to get an artist covered, but how to make them mean something. How to make them matter. How to embed them into the fabric of American life in a way that outlasted any single hit, any single moment, any single headline.
The roster tells the story. Prince. Billy Joel. Kiss. Lionel Richie. Michael Jackson. Bob Marley. These were not simply clients. They were cultural phenomena — and Howard Bloom was one of the key minds helping to shape what those phenomena meant to the world. At a time when rock and roll was the most powerful cultural force on the planet, Bloom was at the center of it, helping to translate raw talent into enduring mythology.
What set him apart was not hustle alone — though there was plenty of that. It was his relentless intellectual curiosity, his insistence on understanding the deeper forces at work beneath the surface of pop culture. While others in the industry were counting chart positions, Bloom was asking bigger questions. Why does this artist connect? What need are they meeting? What truth are they telling that the culture is desperate to hear? Those questions drove everything — and the results spoke for themselves.
His approach was years ahead of its time. The strategies he developed intuitively in the back rooms of the music industry would later be validated by neuroscience, sociology, and the emerging study of how ideas spread through human populations. Howard Bloom was not just a publicist. He was, without fully knowing it yet, a theorist of cultural contagion — and the music world was his laboratory.
The industry has changed beyond recognition since those years. The gatekeepers are gone, the major label system has been disrupted, and the very concept of a music publicist has been transformed by social media and the democratization of attention. But the principles Bloom operated by — find the truth in the artist, find the human need they speak to, and tell that story with everything you have — remain as relevant as ever. Perhaps more so, in a landscape where genuine meaning is harder to find and easier to fake.
Howard Bloom didn’t just help make stars. He helped define what stardom meant in the most electric and consequential era in the history of popular music. That is a legacy worth understanding — and one the industry is still catching up to.
The official website for Howard Bloom may be found at https://www.howardbloom.net
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