Hardened Booking was founded in 2014 by Om Johari, expressly for independent bookings of live music, theatrical productions, and social justice discourse intended for alternative thinkers and revolutionary masses. Hardened Booking is intentionally bringing select artists, musicians, bands, and social justice personalties to perform, presents works, and navigate discourse in an effort to affect the cultural narrative of America in the south; in a revolutionary effort to thwart the force feeding of synthetic pop culture to the masses as decided by corporate perspective of major record labels, publications, or the AI algorithms of social media directives funneled by high speed interned. With the collective financial backings of wealthy musicians, film directors, revolutionary techs personalities, cultural accomplices of progressive thought - those at the fringe of the 1% - who support the curation of these productions, Hardened Booking has been able to afford bringing high quality entertainment, and in-depth social discourse, to the sector a community willing to expand their thinking and elevate their humanity through healthy consciousness building. Hardened is also responsible for booking artists, whom are still operating with independent status, on the national and international performance circuit. Established in Seattle, Hardened Booking has relocated to New Orleans, choosing the historic Carver Theater, a national African-American treasure, as the proverbial stage for these curations. Ten blocks from the French Quarter, on the fringe of the Faubourg “Treme”, also known as the “Lafitte” area in the 6th Ward, the Carver Theater is located in the oldest community of free Blacks in the United States.
“The revolution will not be televised.” - Gil Scott-Heron
