Amanzi Arnett is a multidisciplinary artist based in Memphis, TN. Their work centers the liberation and preservation of the stories of Black and queer communities in the South. Amanzi studied music composition at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis. Centering on the African-American experience, Amanzi's classical compositions consist of various settings of Negro spirituals for the concert stage and other contemporary works based on the literature of black Americans.
Amanzi’s 2010 work The Creation: A Negro Sermon for Five Voices premiered at African-American Lectionary Forum on Culture, Worship, and Preaching at the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School. The work was inspired by the James Weldon Johnson poem The Creation from his work "God's Trombones."
Amanzi’s life journey to them to Brooklyn, NY where they expanded their imagination though community building with amazing artists and shapers of culture. Returning to music after a brief hiatus, Amanzi toured with Chorale Le Chateau in collaboration with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for the Abyssinian Mass tour spanning sixteen cities along the eastern and southern United States.
After returning home to Memphis by way of Los Angeles, Amanzi continued to cultivate their writing practice in the form of screenwriting. In 2021, Amanzi was awarded the Indie Memphis Screenwriting Fellowship, during which they completed a feature length film screenplay “I’ll Fly Away”.
In October 2022, in collaboration with PRIZM Ensemble, Amanzi presented Songs of Cabin and Field, an evening of the composer’s compositions for both the Memphis area orchestra as well as select local singers. The concert, centering Black American folk music, was held at the historically Black college LeMoyne-Owen in South Memphis.
Their words have appeared on Mic.com, Cassius Life, BBC, and Minnesota Public Radio. Amanzi has also appeared on panels for Indie Memphis Black Creators Forum, Center for Southern Literary Arts, and most recently as a keynote panelist at Hamline University’s Mahle Lecture Series. Amanzi’s multidisciplinary storytelling focuses on the interior lives of Black Americans and queer folks.