The Hero's Last Dance: The '90s Resurgence

While the 1992 uprising did little to alter the economic status quo, it did to some extent lift the torpid social atmosphere of the 1980s and galvanized the community's artists. The Leimert Park arts scene had been struggling to survive, upheld by a core of committed artists and small merchants, many of whom had participated in the Watts Renaissance of the 1960s, some with strong memories of Central Avenue. After April 1992 it became the heart of a rejuvenated community arts movement. For the scattered members of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, some of whom had started coalescing and broaching plans for a more dynamic community presence in the 1990s, it was catalytic. As the arts movement emerged in Leimert Park, Horace and his UGMAA artists, once again, were in the middle of it, asserting the importance of community and its griots.