THE HOUSTON EDITORIAL ISSUE o b g i k O o b e e Ok ival h c r A l l a h nce a D n a c i a Jam Creative Direction & Photography by Hope Obadan AUGUST 2026
EDITORIAL ISSUE I have been thinking about flags. On the day I host SETLIST, I want to hold two. The Kenyan flag — for my father, Paul Akumu, who died in 2010, for Cynthia “Saha” Okutoyi, my childhood best friend who died in 2025 from Myasthenia Gravis (MG), and for my daughter Myla Amari — for the land that raised me. And the American flag — for the pop culture that raised my ear, for Virgil Abloh, and for every Black American whose work taught me how to see. I grew up in Kenya listening to Houston without ever having been there. That is what this issue is about. Houston was not just settled. It was built. Enslaved Black people built it in the 1800s. Freed people laid its brick streets with their own hands in Freedmen’s Town in 1865. Migrants from Louisiana and East Texas came for the port and stayed for the promise. Later, Nigerians and Jamaicans came with their own sounds and stayed too. So when Okeebo Okigbo, a Nigerian, archives Jamaican Dancehall in Houston, photographed by Hope Obadan, published by a Kenyan magazine — it is not random. It is a return. It is Africa as a global network, not a geographical boundary. This is what PIED has always meant when we say we create spaces where culture is experienced, documented, amplified, and archived. SETLIST is the experience. This monograph is the archive. Volume 1 failed twice. This cover did not. Because culture does not wait for a perfect venue. It moves through people. This issue is dedicated to everyone I carry, dead or alive. And to Houston — for showing me that survival can become an institution. — Calvin Ominde Editor-in-Chief, PIED Magazine 2
SPECIAL ISSUE 002 In a city as culturally resonant as Houston, global subculture finds its natural local address. rawing a direct line from Tenor Saw’s posture straight D to Hype Williams on the set of Belly, photographer and creative director Hope Obadan leans into accidental JPEG grain as raw analog texture—giving this dancehall archival set an incredible institutional weight. itle: JAMAICAN DANCEHALL ARCHIVAL: T HOUSTON TO KINGSTON Location: Houston, Texas Creative Direction & Photography: Hope Obadan Date: August 28, 2026 3
01 / ON TENOR SAW & STANCE PIED: You mentioned the photo of Tenor Saw stopped you in your tracks—specifically how he posed with money in one hand and ganja in the other. When framing Okeebo for this editorial, what specific posture or body language did you draw from that stance to capture authentic Jamaican presence in Houston? Hope Obadan: When I saw that picture, I went on this complete spiral of how dancehall artists posed back in those days. Their bodily expressions and mannerisms are unique to them and I think it’s also tied into the Patois language. Same way if it was a Nigerian, they will naturally pose differently. So I directed the model to match the poses in the moodboard. Fun fact: pay attention to my favorite afrobeats star, Wizkid—he adopts some of those same mannerisms from early Jamaican dancehall DJs. 5
PIED: You described feeling like Hype Williams directing Belly in Jamaica, cutting a continuous film down into a single still frame. If this editorial set is a single scene from a larger movie playing in your head, what is the plot of that scene? ope Obadan: The scene I saw was a shanty town, H somewhere with more spirit than money. Places like that are where the world’s music comes from. Every sound system, every genre that shook a generation, was born on a block that had nothing but a speaker and a reason to gather. In that world, I imagine the model as an electrician by day, General Shock by night. Same hands that wire a house wire the sound. So I’m not shooting him on a stage. I’m shooting him at his spot, digging through scraps and salvage, looking for the part that fixes somebody’s lights or finishes the rig for Saturday. That’s the frame. The DJ before he’s the DJ, still in his work clothes, already thinking about the night. 7
PIED: You noted that in sound system culture, artists live what they express, making the line between the alias and the real person invisible. How did Okeebo’s own presence shift once the camera started rolling—did he step into a character, or did the lens reveal who he already is? Hope Obadan: Nothing shifted when the camera started rolling, because Okeebo isn’t playing the role, he is it. The way he dresses, the old school stuff he collects, that’s just how he shows up every day. I knew he was perfect before we shot a frame. Honestly, if he’d come across this book on his own, he would have bought a copy. That’s the kind of person you want in front of the lens. 9
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