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Wanda’s Picks May 2020

 Happy Mother’s Day! I especially want to remember the mothers who are not with their families this year due to physical distancing. I hope you are still able to connect with loved ones via technology.  We are going to have a special radio show Friday, May 8, featuring Mrs. Sadie Williams (96) in conversation with other mothers.

We have had a few really great programs highlighting events and projects you don’t want to miss:

Wanda’s Picks Radio Show Wed., April 29, 2020 Guests:
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2020/04/29/wandas-picks-radio-show

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

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Melanin Magic Sessions Take 10: A special series of shows featuring healers who will leave us with tools we can use to strengthen ourselves during a time when isolation is encouraged while the soul cries for communion.

We’d like to open the show with something about jazz, and McCoy Tyner and the improvisational nature of life– Black life and Muhammad B. Hanif, Charles Curtis Blackwell, and Damu Sudi Alii join us to talk about it.

1. Mina Morita, Artistic Director, Crowded Fire theatre, director, joins us to talk about Dustin Chin’s Snowflakes, or Rare White People, produced with UC Berkeley, Drama Department, as a radio drama, May 1-10, 2020. I attended the performance via Zoom last week and loved it, story, acting, design, choreography — a delightful story set in the future that leaves one wondering if there is any hope for the species known as “white people.” Is the dysfunction genetic, if so, perhaps all we can hope for in the future is a way to isolate them until they cease to exist.

2. We rebroadcast an interview with Delfeayo Marsalis on the release of a new CD that features his father, Ellis Marsalis (2017).

3. Jazz History Month concludes with a conversation with: Damu Sudi Alii, Charles Curtis Blackwell, Muhammad B. Hanif.  April 30, 2020 is International Jazz Heritage Day. Programming is 24 hours.

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

In the first conversation Michael J. Satchell and his editor, Marvin X, share the story of Tariq, a great Moorish General. Satchell has published his screenplay to raise funds to make the movie. 

Then in our next half we speak to Dameion Brown, whom I met on stage in his role as the fictional Moorish General, Othello. Hadn’t planned it this way, but . . . . Tariq meet Othello (smile).

Dameion, whom I saw last night at the Marsh, agreed to join me this morning to talk about solitude (or isolation) and its benefits and how he learned to manage such called by other names like Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg), a long name for “the hole” or solitary confinement. Eloquent and soft-spoken, I knew he’d drop a few jewels on us and he left the floor covers in salt.

The music was Archie Shepp’s Revolution and Duke Ellington & his Orchestra’s “La plus belle africaine”, Tivoli Garden Copenhagen 1969, Harry Carney baritone solo. 

1. Marvin X and Michael Satchell join us to talk about a new release, Tarik, a filmscript (2020).

Black Bird Press says, “It is proud to announce the release of Tarik, a filmscript by Michael Satchell. It is historical fiction on the life of General Tarik Ibn Ziyad who led his army of Moorish and Arab warriors into Spain, 711 A.D. It chronicles his childhood and adulthood as a warrior. Gibraltar is named in honor of him (Arabic: Gebal=Mountain, Tarik). Because of racism, Tarik returned to Africa after two years, although the Moors remained in Spain 700 years. The script depicts Tarik’s relationship with his childhood friend and later wife, Umm-Hakim, who accompanied his march into Spain with her own army.”

Michael Satchell worked on the script twenty years. Marvin X edited the script as a book. This limited edition is for possible backers. The estimated film budget is $150 million. Your support and donation of any amount will be appreciated. A donation of $99.95 is requested for the book. A script reading is planned ASAP. For more information, please contact Michael Satchell@ 415-756-2146, email satchellmichaelj@gmail.com

2. Dameion Brown had his first ever public performance as the title role in Othello at Marin Shakespeare Company in 2016, achieving what has never been done before by a first-time actor: the honor of “Best Lead Actor” from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Since then, he has appeared in The Seagull at Utopia Theatre Project, Waafrika and The Farm at TheatreFirst (winning another BATCC award), Dance of the Holy Ghost with Ubuntu, and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing last summer at Marin Shakespeare. He formally taught parenting classes at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department for at-risk-youth. Now he is a teaching artist and mentor at the Alameda Juvenile Facility and Youth Prison at O.H. Close and Chad facilities in Stockton.

 

Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Friday, April 24, 2020
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2020/04/24/wandas-picks-radio-show

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Melanin Magic Sessions Take 9: A special series of shows featuring healers who will leave us with tools we can use to strengthen ourselves during a time when isolation is encouraged while the soul cries for communion.

We open the show with Tosin Aribisala, drummer, percussionist, singer, composer, who hails from Lagos, Nigeria. He joins us to talk about his single, released earlier this year, and Africa Rising (2016) and other projects.

This is the final Friday, National Poetry Month. It has been really lovely sharing the airwaves with poets throughout the country. Thanks so much to Kim McMillon, Ph.D., poet, playwright, scholar, for curating with her friend, Lucinda J. Clark is the founder of P.R.A. Publishing and the Poetry Matters Project from Augusta, GA. We close with a bang, an all women set featuring Bay Area poets: Joyce Young, Adrienne Oliver, Kathryn Takara, in Hawaii, and Karla Brundage.  Co-hosts, Kim and Wanda, will close the program with a poem.

Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Wed., April 22, 2020
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2020/04/22/wandas-picks-radio-show

We open with guests: Deborah A. Wright, a retired Reference Librarian/Administrator from the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture (Charleston, SC, USA; Dr. David L. Horne, the International Facilitator for the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) and the Pan African Diaspora Union (PADU), an international umbrella organization of Diasporans & Nvasekie N. Konneh, a Liberian writer, poet, magazine publisher, community and cultural activist. We will talk about SEHWAH Liberia, Inc., a local Liberian NGO and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) its United States based Pan African counterpart’s Proposal for COVID-19 Awareness and Food Assistance in Liberia beg. 4/20 so that families can stay safe during the crisis. Donations can be sent via Cash apps or Zelle @ $KDonzo or 571-237-9159, and Mr. Nvasekie Konneh 267-826-3952.

2.  Zarinah Shakir is the Producer/Host of the award winning Perspectives of Interfaith, a TV program taped and aired at the Arlington Independent Media studios in Arlington, VA over 16 years. It airs at DCTV, Washington,DC, Manhattan Neighbourhood Network and other markets.  She is also the former Producer/Host for six years of Islamic Perspectives, the longest running TV program about Islam and Muslims in the Washington, DC metro area.  Ms. Shakir joins us to talk about Ramadan, the Islamic month fasting which begins this week.

3. Queen Hollins, Earthlodge Center closes the show. Rafael Jesus Gonzalez‘s poetry for Earth Day is another highlight of today’s show.

Sankofa 2020: A Transcontinental Poetry Reading
By Wanda Sabir

Saturday, April 25, WO2WA hosted its first international poetry reading celebrating the release of its new anthology, Our Spirits Carry Our Voices: West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange.  Almost four years ago, Karla Brundage, at Mills College at the time, created a vehicle to hold true reparations between Africans and African Americans. The boat, not unlike that folded from Aunt Ester Tyler’s Bill of Sale, was a vehicle made of parchment— In August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, the boat was for Citizen to take to the City of Bones, so that he could wash his soul (56). In Karla’s boat we folded words into notes on canvas carrying music across telepathic sound waves into cyberspace.

To go back home is more than a wish for many African descendants in the West. We think of Africa as home because this place, the place of our birth and our parents’ and their parents’ might be where we live, but it doesn’t always feel like home. African Americans feel tolerated at best, certainly not welcome, not since we got an upgrade and are no longer tax deductible. Now, this does not mean that Black labor is not economically viable or that slavery ended in 1865 with the passage of the Amendments 13,14,15.  Convict leasing might have ended, but Covid-19 shows us how little the thinking has changed as dead Black bodies are stacked in tents in open fields and the virus spreads unchecked in prisons and detainment centers throughout the nation even as borders reopen and normal is recalibrated.

So the idea, three years ago of going home, for the African Americans in the group, was a welcome idea.  Karla said

Karla Brundage, editor, Our Spirits Carry Our Voices

that she hadn’t thought about traveling to Ghana as a culmination of the project, but she was game and began planning the trip in 2017. We raised money in a variety of ways: we sold chapbooks with unique sewn covers, asked friends to sponsor us, hosted an Art Auction, a Speakeasy Poetry Reading. . .  lots of planning meetings and parties. I remember one time we met at Karla’s house at 7 a.m. on Mother’s Day for an Oakland-Accra via Skype meet-up, then on a bright day in May, we found ourselves at San Francisco International airport flying not sailing home.

After a stop in Amsterdam we arrived in Accra where the brothers met us with a school bus. It was nighttime, yet their smiles lit the evening with a special sunrise. You can read about the journey and the various places we went on the trip in Ghana in Our Spirits Carry Our Voices. Karla opens each section with a short essay which gives lovely context to the trip from Agoo Hostel in Accra to Cape Coast Slave Dungeon and One Africa Spa in Elmina Village.  We had quite the adventure.

It wasn’t my first time in Ghana, however, I usually travel alone, so it was fun with a group, both WO2WA and Ehalakasa. My favorite day was the morning we all met. That morning at Agoo Hotel it was really pouring rain. May-July is rainy season in West Africa, yet everyone came and we sat in the lounge and talked. We introduced ourselves to each other, shared stories, poetry and talked about the recent journey juxtaposed against another, more historic reference and how we returned.

Sankofa is a term everyone knew, because it is an Andinkra symbol, indigenous to the Akan, in Ghana. However, I am not sure if its impact was realized before we were seated next to each other. The Doors of No Return were swinging in the opposite direction. Until we arrived for many present, African Americans were an intellectual concept—not a flesh and blood reality. Really. The projections are not one-sided—

Ramadan started while we were in Ghana two years ago too. In Ghana, especially in Nima Village, Accra, when Ramadan starts there are no more late night parties at clubs. So before everything went into lockdown, we walked to a nearby restaurant with a band and met Karla’s friends from the US Consulate whom we’d met earlier that week on a tour.  The band was really good and we had fun dancing.

Zakiyyah fell into a hole on our walk there from Agoo –yes you heard correctly. We were walking along and then I looked back and she’d disappeared. There was a huge hole in the center of the sidewalk. We helped her out and she put ice on her hand at the club.  She felt well enough to stay. This would not be the last fall—I ended up in a hole too. I wrote a poem about it. It was dark and I didn’t know there was no ground there. I stepped off the bus into air.

Karla spent years in Africa, first as a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Zimbabwe, then more recently in Côte d’Ivoire where she taught at a high school. On holiday in Ghana, she went to a poetry event where she met Yibor Kojo Yibor or Sir Black, who co-founded Ehalakasa.

Coined from three terms: “Eha” which means Song in Ewe; “La” which means Sing in Ga; and “Kasa” which means Talk in Akan (Twi)— Sir Black and other members of the ensemble shout: “Ehalakasa!”  The audience respondes: “It lives in us!”  “It,” the solution to whatever ails family, community, society, lives in the collective wisdom of those gathered.  One could say, it’s equivalent is “All Power to the People.”

Ehalakasa poet teachers (like Youth Speaks in the Bay) give workshops in high schools, where the youth are taught how to write poetry, the form, a vehicle for their truth. The organization hosts a monthly Poetry Slam at the W.E.B. Dubois Center in Accra where the big poetry slam between the Americans and Africans took place in 2018. WO2WA and Ehalakasa made local headlines.

We read of captive African ancestors walking home and even flying to freedom; however, those technologies were a bit beyond our capabilities so like Aunt Ester WO2WA poets use paper—not necessarily a bill of sale but words, nonetheless . . . these words too made flesh.

For her community engagement project at Mills, Karla created this boat . . . a WO2WA waterway, an exchange utilizing a Japanese poetic form called Renshi.  Renshi— like a jazz riff, takes the last line of poetic verse, which becomes the first line of the respondent.  We were throwing linguistic preserves across colonized water, similar to Morse code, yet a bit more primal . . . familiar – the language echoing a refrain . . . ancestors’ on both sides of the Atlantic bridging what was assumed lost: DNA memory, a durable profundity.  Citizen asked for passage to the City of Bones to wash his soul—that paper boat, words . . . the right words were all he needed along with two+1 (for Esu) shiny pennies.

“Get on board little children. . . .”  For how many African descendants in the Diaspora is finding one’s way back more philosophical than an achievable reality? Poetry—Renshi to be precise, was the way home for us.

I remember the conversation that October in 2016 with Karla the day before the Maafa Commemoration. We were at the flower market in West Oakland buying white roses, carnations, daisies and other blooms for the Ancestors who’d be honored at the Ritual the next day. I hadn’t seen Karla since she’d been back from West Africa, and there she was—I think we planned to meet, but it was nice seeing her there. She agreed to recite a poem at the ceremony.  Besides buying flowers we were to talk about her project. I thought it was great and I encouraged her to continue with her plan even if advisors didn’t fully grasp the concept yet—West Oakland to West Africa, WHAT?! Clearly a concept only a Diaspora Citizen could birth.

Karla asked me to recommend poets I knew and to introduce her to the librarian at the West Oakland Library, where I have hosted poetry readings for the past 30 years. WO2WA workshops were at both Mills College and the West Oakland Library. The poets I recommended shared the call with other poets. Maestra Brundage then took the names of these poets and asked Sir Black aka Yibor Kojo Yibor to match American poets with West African poets, most, if not all Ehalakasa, members.

I think we had about eight topics to explore, at which time, the project was to end, but the African American poets were like, hold up, of course we have to travel to Africa to meet our poet partners. For many poets, this was their first time to the Motherland. What better way to travel home for the first time than to have friends there to meet you?

The love affair continues. One member of the WO2WA, Mama Makeda, now lives in Ghana. When the borders closed, she was stateside and is here now. With WhatsApp and Zoom we are now able to do more like have a virtual book tour, since Covid-19 made travel to Ghana in June for a performance at the National Theatre impossible.

WO2WA hosted its first transcontinental reading April 25 with hosts in Virginia and Accra, poets in Detroit, Brooklyn, Oakland, Alameda, Richmond, San Francisco and Hawaii. That Saturday, April 25 featured poets – WO2WA and Ehalakasa, had an opportunity to begin sharing the cloth woven with words that continues to carry our voices back and forth across the water. There was an open mic too. The next poetry reading is Saturday, May 23, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PT. It is a free event, but donations are welcome. Sign up in advance for the open mic.  Buy a book, sales benefit Ehalakasa, which is developing a community center. You can purchase books on Amazon. For information visit the website: https://westoaklandtowestafrica.com/

Here is a video of Karla telling her story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gU1xyUh8hw

Anuj Nijhawan, co-founder of Shuffle

At the Weekend of Words! Friday, May 8-Sunday, May 10, Karla and Sir Black and Tyrice will be on a panel discussion the poetry exchange, Sat., May 9, 2020, 10 AM PT. https://wow.shuffle.do/talks/west-oakland-to-west-africa-facilitating-an-international-poetry-exchange/ 

Other highlights at the “Colossus: Home” reading on Sunday, May 10, 7 p.m. PT, the collection looks at “home” as a theme and the funds raised by the book, co-edited by Karla Brundage and Sara Biel will go to Moms 4 Housing. Visit: https://wow.shuffle.do/talks/colossus-home/

Wanda Sabir is facilitating the panel, “Writing for Social Justice,” Saturday, May 9, 4:45 p.m. PT, with Aya de Leon, Director, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley, and Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate. Visit: https://wow.shuffle.do/talks/panel-writing-for-social-justice/ 

For the entire schedule visit: Weekend of Words!  https://wow.shuffle.do/

To listen to a recent radio interview with Karla Brundage, Colossus and Anuj Nijhawan, co-founder of Shuffle, https://wow.shuffle.do, presenter of Weekend of Words, visit Wanda’s Picks Radio, https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2020/05/06/wandas-picks-radio-show


On the Fly:

Link: https://learn.nonprofitleadershipalliance.org/BLEHLecture/

City Lights Books: Afropessimism

Frank Wilderson III in conversation with Justin Desmangles, Thursday, May 28, 2020, 6:00 p.m. PST, Event will be held on Zoom. Click the link in the event description for info.

  

discussing the subject of his new book: Afropessimism, published by Liveright Books / W.W. Norton

This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.  (Click Here) to make reservations  Event is free, but reservations are required.  (Purchase AFROPESSIMISM here)

In the tradition of Edward Said’s Orientalism and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Afropessimism is an unparalleled account of the non-analogous experience of being Black.

A seminal work that strikingly combines groundbreaking philosophy with searing flights of memoir, Afropessimism presents the tenets of an increasingly influential intellectual movement that theorizes blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Rather than interpreting slavery through a Marxist framework of class oppression, Frank B. Wilderson III, “a truly indispensable thinker” (Fred Moten), demonstrates that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive, anti-black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but an almost necessary force in our civilization that flourishes today, and that Black struggles cannot be conflated with the experiences of any other oppressed group. In mellifluous prose, Wilderson juxtaposes his seemingly idyllic upbringing in halcyon midcentury Minneapolis with the harshness that he would later encounter, whether in radicalized, late-1960s Berkeley or in the slums of Soweto. Following in the rich literary tradition of works by DuBois, Malcolm X and Baldwin, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit.

Professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson III has received an NEA Literature Fellowship and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Creative Nonfiction, among other awards.

Justin Desmangles is chairman of the Before Columbus Foundation, administrator of the American Book Award, and host of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz, now in its fifteenth year.


 

Watch “The King and I” at BroadwayHD
https://www.broadwayhd.com/movies/AW2GtQ1Zpx3F9_4AqeuR

Join BroadwayHD, Playbill and The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization for an R&H Movie Night screening of the Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I on Friday, May 8 at 8pm ET! In this classic musical, British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens arrives in Siam in 1862 to instruct the royal children. But despite her sharp wit and strong will, nothing has prepared Anna for the lessons this rich and complicated new land has to teach her—or for the powerful connection she will forge with its imperious King. Featuring one of the finest scores ever written including “Whistle a Happy Tune,” “Getting to Know You,” and “Shall We Dance,” and featuring a company of more than 50 world-class performers, The King and I is a testament to the lavish heritage of gloriously romantic musical theatre. While you’re watching, make sure to use #RNHMovieNight on social media. While the film is complimentary for all to enjoy, please consider supporting The Actors Fund and its efforts to assist industry professionals impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more here: ActorsFund.org/TheKingAndI

 
Join CPE and our allies at Movement Generation, The Red Nation, and Arab Organizing and Resource Center for programs to help build power during the pandemic.
This week, Friday Night Forums continue!
Friday Night Forums feature anti-imperialist perspectives and lessons on organizing from around the world, with a focus on decolonizing Turtle Island.Sanctions on Iran
Friday, May 8, 5pm PDT
Register HereFeaturing:
Sima Shakhsari, University of Minnesota
Yousef Baker, California State University, Long Beachmoderated by Dena Al-Adeeb and Lara Kiswani.
Grounds for Healing, Rooted in Resistance
Thursday, May 14
4pm PDTRegister HereHow do Black landworkers relate to anti-imperialism, self-determination, and healthy futures during the global COVID-19 pandemic? Join CPE and Movement Generation for a webinar featuring Black landworkers in the Bay Area discussing the intersections of land, resistance, and well-being.Featuring:Joy Moore, food security activistWanda Stewart, Common Vision

Leslie Bennett, Pine House Edible Gardens

Malaika Parker, Hummingbird Urban Farming Collective

Moderated by: Deseree Fontent

 

Tonight: Mystery Shakespeare Theater 1592

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3fheuIHNSDyNiFtLA2N1uQ?fbclid=IwAR0309rEqxssdrUDJP0Gab2xcsdWja-cg00ifVOqbcNMJvavGH2wJym8y7U

graphic by Eric Ting.

The watch party inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000 returns tonight with a surprise screening of a Shakespearean movie and live commentary from a panel of esteemed artists and Shakespearean experts.

Last time we took a shot at this, we screened an aggressively 80’s, Australian production of Twelfth Night featuring shoulder pads, sideburns, and all the swings. We all learned what “flax on a distaff” REALLY means. If you enjoyed the shenanigans (or if you missed it and you’re livid about it), we’re coming back for more.

Our intrepid group of panelists (actors Safiya Fredericks & Phil Wong, founder of the Theatre Nerd Shakespeare Pandemic Watch Party Alex Moggridge, and dramaturg Philippa Kelly) are back this Friday night to watch a classic Shakespeare film and provide hot takes… and a dollop of expert insight. Best of all, no one knows what they’re showing up to watch (hence: mystery).  Tonight, May 8, 6:00-8:00 PM.  Register here.

If you’re looking for a more traditional Shakespearean viewing experience check out our streaming suggestions below. 

Sean Dugan (left) as Prince Hal and James Carpenter as King Henry IV in a 2004 adaptation of both Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 directed by Mladen Kiselow. Carpenter’s first role at Cal Shakes (when it was Berkeley Shakespeare Festival) was playing Prince Hal in the 1987 production of Henry IV, Part 1; photo by Jay Yamada. 

Run the Canon:

Henry IV, Part 1

The second in a tetralogy of history plays (which also includes Richard II, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V), Henry IV, Part 1 is just as much a story of fathers and sons as it is a chronicle of civil unrest. In this week’s poignant Run the Canon lecture, Philippa Kelly discusses the importance of history plays, the role of the crown, and the themes of authority, ambition, and remorse.

Have you missed Philippa’s previous lectures? Check out the whole library and catch up.

 

 

By

Wanda’s Picks March 2020

I am missing African Heritage Month already (smile). Next year on March 1, I will think about the space between – February 29 which we will not see again until 2024 the terminus year for the UNESCO International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-20024).

It’s amazing that women got the right to vote in this country just 100 years ago. I hope women are registered and exercising this right this important year.

Spirit is at the center of all African Movement(s), and this spirit, called Black Power is perhaps the reason for all social justice movements for African people in this nation from 1619 forward. Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely speaks of Afrophobia, what else could it be this racialized terror directed at African descendants? Since our sojourn in the west a little over 500 years ago once our usefulness was no longer legal Black people have caught what feels like more hell.

From France’s charging Haitian Blacks for their own liberation to the USA’s re-enslaving through targeted incarceration African American people here at home, to denying Puerto Rican victims of two natural disasters – an earthquake and a more recent hurricane, federal aid to allowing the level of displacement and homelessness in our nation’s cities to reach such unprecedented numbers people have gotten used to stepping over other people.

Black Movement has soundtracks, signage or visual documents not to mention creative writings to articulate and motivate those carrying the rifles and torches to continue forward to victory. The fight for legitimacy is one Africans continue to lose because the question is posed by what is illegitimate, an impostor not worthy of our energy or thought. How can that which is not human, legitimize what is? I was listening to a rebroadcast of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (3/4/20), a show on KPFA 94.1 FM, about Libya and why France and other multi-Europeans nationals want the county to stay in chaos. All the mineral resources that run the west, including this nation, come out of Africa, with Libya an important source for France, which would cease to function if Libya cut it off. The same is true for all the other European nations. They cannot afford to let African nations have autonomy, but why is this their decision to make?

Rhonda Benin & Lucindy’s Music Presents: Just Like a Woman: A Celebration of Bay Area Women in Music, Saturday, March 21, 2020

Rhonda Benin’s highly anticipated concert: Just Like a Woman, which celebrates the music of women composers performed by phenomenal singers accompanied by the Lillian Armstrong Tribute Band, led by Tammy Lynn Hall.  Patrons dance into the Freight & Salvage theatre, 2020 Addison Street, in Berkeley, and dance out.  Family friendly, tickets are $20 in advance and $28 at the door which opens at 7 p.m. The show starts at 8 p.m. Ms. Benin will be joining me on the air, Wed., March 19. Congratulations are also in order for her recent birthday (Feb. 23) and the announcement of retirement from public school teaching. Here is an interview from 2018: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2018/03/31/wandas-picks-radio-show


On the Fly:
Black Choreographers Here and Now 2020, Feb. 22-Mar. 8; Ubuntu Theater Project opens at its new home, The Flax Building in Oakland, with Macbeth – an all-woman ensemble, Feb. 7-March 15 (extended).  Art of the African Diaspora continues at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Tuesday-Sat., Richmond, CA, 510.620.6772, with lots of satellite exhibitions throughout the great bay area. Visit http://richmondartcenter.org/exhibitions/art-of-the-african-diaspora-2020/  Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective — on view, Feb. 19-July 19, 2020.  African Film Festival 2020 at BAMPFA March 4-May 8, 2020. Soul of a Nation: Art in the Art of Black Power: 1963-1983 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco through March 15.  Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé  Retrospective in conversation 3/12, 3/14, 3/15,  with Nigerian writer and scholar Akin Adesokan, an associate professor of comparative literature and of film and media studies at Indiana University at BAMPFA.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power: 1963-1983 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park — through March 15

“Soul of a Movement: Art in the Age of Black Power” at the DeYoung museum is an opportunity for America to acknowledge the African presence at the heart of all that is human in this nation. Art articulates a vision; it is a language which negates artifice. Black Art specifically erases borders as it builds edifices which house spirit.  It is the welcome home – home a new color, a new shape, a new landscape.  Art is the language a people dispersed throughout the west speak to one another and in this exhibition organized by Mark Godfrey, Zoe Whitley, and Tate Modern, at International Art in London, and remixed by curators Timothy Anglin Burgard and Lauren Palmor at the DeYoung in San Francisco, patrons walk slowly through a landscape that is as varied as a people speaking from these walls, display cases, pages in magazines and books.  The exhibit which opened in November last year, closes with a community party, Sat., March 14, with Boots Riley, who will be giving a free talk in the Koret auditorium at 2 p.m.  Tickets to Soul of a Movement are discounted, $10 on Saturdays, https://deyoung.famsf.org/education/free-saturdays

What is remarkable about this exhibit is its currency and how the San Francisco Bay Area, while not completely eclipsed, is in a large part left out of the story narrated here. How is this possible? The San Francisco Bay Area with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense reflected in so much visual design, from the music to Emory Douglas’s work as Minister of Culture for the BPP in the party newspaper. . . left out?

The Bay is so pivotal in the development of a social and political consciousness. This is one of the reasons why it is really important that you do not miss this iteration. When “Soul” opens in Houston next, the last stop on the tour, the stories that museum tells will be regionally specific and not include most of the art work curated for this stop.

When a body walks into Soul of a Nation, it cannot ignore the huge Romare Bearden work –a black and white collage. A founding member of the Spiral Movement, he is well known for his association with August Wilson’s century cycle – a work that looks at how over a period of ten decades, Black Americans crafted their lives, a task that kept unraveling because the thread was caught in a system meant to harm.

You might notice the similarities between the two men. Wilson’s storytelling looks a lot like Bearden’s work – characters reappear, themes consistent. There is balance and then there is a life explored just off kilter to be interesting. Both men are also inspired by Black music of the period- jazz.

Born at the time of the Civil Rights Movements for racial justice, Mr. Richard Mayhew, retired professor is another co-founder of Spiral. He said at a recent event that A. Phillip Randolph founded the group or at least gave the artists the idea to use their work to make a statement about the injustices Black people were experiencing. What is unfortunate is Mr. Mayhew’s absence from the catalog and the traveling exhibition. How could such a pivotal pioneer be ignored? As Soul toured the nation, Mr. Mayhew noticed his absence and told somebody: Sister Nashome Lindo, scholar and art collector, Mrs. Belva Davis, maverick journalist, Danny Glover perhaps and others, who collectively made sure Mr. Mayhew’s work – two black and white paintings, were included and that he was properly honored at the opening ceremonies which were full of pageantry and figurative fireworks. Mr. Mayhew, who gave many talks during the exhibition, gives background on Spiral in a wonderful audio tour created by the Fine Arts Museums and features, Belva Davis and Danny Glover as moderators.

Lauren Palmor, co-curator, and I have a wonderful conversation on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Tuesday, March 10, (http://tobtr.com/s/11690803) about the social movements covered by the exhibition and perhaps why the Bay was omitted. Besides Mr. Mayhew other artists with Bay Area connections are Ben Hazard, scholar, activist, artist who just made his transition in December. His piece “Medal of Honor” sits in a gallery that looks at the notion of heroism. When we think of “blackness” as a concept, heroism certainly comes to mind whether that is as a soldier fighting for a country that does not value one’s humanity or as Marie Johnson Calloway (1920-2018) shows with “Crossing Guard, 1970s,” African American women keep this nation’s children safe.  Raymond Saunders’s (b. 1934) “Jack Johnson,” boxer, a Black man who knocked out a white man.  Yep and lived.

Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) whose “Black Unity”

Other artists with local ties are Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) whose “Black Unity” has the emblematic clenched fist carved from mahogany wood and then on the other side we see Black people. Together we are powerful. Many patrons do not know to walk around the work to see the opposite side. Betty Saar (b. 1926), “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972” has the stereotypical troupe as an nkisis. Auntie has a rifle in one hand and a pistol in her lap. There is much to commend the exhibition, I just noted works that might not travel given the regional flavor of some of the presentations.

Phillip Lindsay Mason (b. 1939), “Manchild in the Promised Land, 1968,” shows a little boy seated on a stoop, bulls-eye on his shirt. I thought about Claude Brown’s classic story of addiction, poverty and despair. Above the child’s shoulder we see a Pepsi logo. How does the commercial go? “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation.” Interesting juxtaposition – the boy-child sits at the crossroads. Trayvon had Skittles and this child is associated with a beverage.  Both are quarry. In the catalog another painting by Mason is pictured: “The Deathmakers,” 1968. Acrylic paint on canvas 128.4 x 128.9. Whereabouts unknown.

Betye Saar’s (1926), “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972”

In “Deathmakers,” two police as skeletons in their blue uniforms carry a Black man on a stretcher. An American flag is the backdrop for the picture, the stars below the dead man’s gurney, the stripes cover the sky, the canvas sphere shaped within a tight square (72). In the catalog the work is juxtaposed with Archibald Motley’s “The First One Hundred Years: Te Among You Who Is Without Sin Shall Cast the First Stone; Forgive Them Father For They Know Not What They Do, 1963-72.

The Motley work looks like something out of the Adams Family, but it’s no fictional scene here: Confederate flag is draped over a door with the Statue of Liberty standing next to a Black man hanging from a tree branch by a rope wrapped around his neck. Dr. King and Kennedy’s faces are hanging from the tree too like ornaments. Below there is a uniformed Klan member with rope in his hand and a hungry hound licking his lips. Perhaps patrons will leave with a better understanding of the trauma associated in Black American minds, an often unconscious association, when they see dogs, dogs everywhere treated better than they. Given more rights to public space than they.

A fireman with a hose is walking away from a cross burning. Signs stating: “We want freedom now!” “Black Power!” “America for Whites! Africa for Blacks!” behind him—there are no Black people, just an eerie fog or mist—more signage. White Only. Colored Only on opposite sides of the canvas which is large.  There is cotton, not clouds in the sky. Skulls and masks hang out in canvas corners. Perhaps this is what hell looks like.

I think this is the same room where Dana C. Chandler, Jr.’s “Fred Hampton’s Door, 1970, is also displayed. On the door where bullet holes are at center, there is a star and a label that says: USA government approved ’69” (71). A few pages before Emory Douglas has an order form for Revolutionary Posters. Fred Hampton, the slain Chicago BPP leader, front page (62).

Women artists, while not majority, they are represented in the exhibition.  Among the artists is Faith Ringgold who is known more recently for her story quilts; however, this early work (1970s) is a militant Ringgold — a Black family, mother, father and son, a study for a poster: “All Power to the People;” “Free All Political Prisoners.” The poster is solid red with subjects drawn in black and green. The parents have rifles,  the child a stick. The mother has a moderate Afro, dad a beret, bullets across his chest, the woman a green jacket, black dress, ankle length with black boots. Their features are drawn in green.  The characters fill the space, the woman’s foot on FREE and the man’s foot between POLITICAL and PRISONERS.  FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS and ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE stacked.

Another Ringgold work I like is “United States of Attica 1971-2. Offset lithograph on paper 55.2 x 69.9
In it she takes the map of the USA and divides it into quadrants. At the top she writes: The United States of Attica founded by the American People on Sept. 13, 1971 at Attica State Prison N.Y. where 42 men gave their lives in an heroic struggle for freedom. She then proceeds to pay tribute to pay tribute to those who were killed. She also documents all the state wars against indigenous peoples and invasions in other lands like Korea and Mexico, Vietnam, Indian Wars, Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars I&II. In each state the narrative continues in place. And at the bottom of the World Map which contains a single nation (USA) Ringgold writes: The Map of American Violence is Incomplete. Please write in whatever you find lacking.

Make sure you have time to sit and watch the wonderful slide presentation with murals from Chicago’s Wall of Respect to Dewey Crumpler’s iconic mural on the side of the African American Art and Culture Complex, formerly Wajumbe Cultural Center on Fulton Street in San Francisco. Cleveland Bellow’s billboard is in the exhibition, one of ten he painted and put in various locations in Oakland (1970). On the museum’s website you can read more about the artist and what he called “social reality.” The boy’s hands are over his head and he looks to be smiling—today Black boys with hands raised are alarming. Funded by the Oakland Museum and the Foster-Kleiser Billboard Company— the uncluttered landscape allows multiple interpretations.

There is a screening room (just outside the final gallery near the gift shop) where patrons can view Take This Hammer, a short film about James Baldwin’s visit to San Francisco after a young person (Bayview Hunter’s Point resident) was killed by police and the city was put under Marshall Law by then Gov. Reagan. Watts had just gone up in smoke. Black Resistance was in the air.

Events:
Intergenerational Legacy: Poetry with “Swell Mel” Phillips
March 7, 2020, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

free saturdays at the de young museum
Courtesy Melvin Phillips

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Piazzoni Murals RoomJoin guests for a morning of poetry readings with “Swell Mel” Phillips. Hear Melvin Phillps as we honor elders and ancestors through poetry and music. This is a free program. No ticketing required. Every Saturday, residents of the six Bay Area counties receive free general admission to the museums. For information email or call publicprograms@famsf.org or (415) 750-7624

Also Sat., March 7, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

In Conversation: Music and Civil Rights with Marilynn Fowler

free saturdays at the de young
Marilyn Fowler, courtesy of J.P. R. Kenny

See KPOO Radio’s Marilynn Fowler live and in-person for a talk on music and Civil Rights in honor of the exhibition, Soul of a Nation. Fowler channels her DJ skills from KPOO’s regularly scheduled programming of jazz, reggae, salsa, blues, gospel, and hip hop into a discussion on the importance of music as a story-telling device for social change.

This event will be held in the Piazzoni Murals Room and is part of the De Young Museum’s Free Saturdays celebration of the exhibition, Soul of a Nation.

General admission and special programming are free on Saturdays at the de Young and Legion of Honor for all residents of the nine Bay Area counties. Seating for this program is limited and first-come, first-served. Purchase of a special exhibition ticket is required on this day to see Soul of a Nation.

For information: publicprograms@famsf.org or (415) 750-7624.

Free Saturdays: Talk with Boots Riley in the Koret Auditorium

March 14, 2020, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
free saturdays at the de young
Boots Riley, Courtesy of Evil Twin Booking

Boots Riley is a provocative and prolific poet, rapper, songwriter, producer, screenwriter, director, community organizer, and public speaker. Boots Riley wrote and directed Sorry to Bother You, a comedy fantasy sci-fi film, in his directorial debut. It stars Lakeith Stanfield, Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick and Terry Crews.

The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Fest and opened to strong critical acclaim in theaters nationwide later in 2018. He is the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. Fervently dedicated to social change, Boots was deeply involved with the Occupy Oakland movement. He was one of the leaders of the activist group The Young Comrades. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Tell Homeland Security-We Are the Bomb.

This is a free event and admission to the museum is also free. Admission to Soul of a Nation is not free and as this is the day before closing, advance ticket purchases are encouraged also early arrival, perhaps before the talk.

At the Roxie in San Francisco

System K from Kinshasaa  March 20-25 (times vary)

Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a vast, chaotic mega-city of 12 million. Water is privatized and the electric grid is capricious. Here, street artists’ performances are wildly creative, angry, irreverent, often shocking. With names like Kongo Astronaut, Strombo, and Kill Bill, they masterfully repurpose urban detritus (computer parts, TV sets, bullet shells, machetes) and work with fire and paint, wax and blood — to critique government corruption, Western exploitation (their nation was literally once the private property of Belgium’s King Léopold II), and entrenched poverty. SYSTEM K reveals a vibrant, raw, politically astute world of performance art the likes of which exist nowhere else on earth.  Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=E3qGJO917ag&feature=emb_logo

Directed by Renaud Barret. 2019 (94 mins), in French with English subtitles, “System K” is a nod to “Soul of Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” artists, an exhibition currently at the De Young Museum in San Francisco through March 15, 2020.  It also reflects the vision “Kwame Brathwaite, Black Is Beautiful” which closed March 1, at MoAD and is on its way to Columbia, South Carolina, June 26-Sept. 6, 2020.

In System K, visual and performance artists frame what is unpalatable, make injustice not only visual but encourage resistance. With rhythms that captivate and trigger what’s hidden— System K band activate or call in ancient mediums, ancestors from spirit realms.  The work charges audiences as streets are taken over from the tops of buildings to halting traffic in the street. It is wake up time.  This visual creative response to tyranny encourages those quaking with fear to stand up; hearts are released from captivity minds, freed from tangible philosophical and ideological violence—The visual artifice that ensnares as it oppresses and smothers possibility is challenged lyrically.  System K just like the Black Arts Movement, the Harlem Arts Collective Spiral, Carlos Cooks African Nationalist Pioneer Movement (1941), Kwame Brathwaite and Elombe Brath’s African Jazz-Art Society – is art as articulation, art as vehicle for change, and again art as people’s resistance movement.

Courtesy zimbio.com

Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé
March 12–15, 2020

BAMPFA is hosting one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé. Born in Bamako in 1940, Cissé began his career as a film projectionist, later studying at the VGIK film school in Moscow before returning to Mali to work on newsreels for the country’s Ministry of Information. His searing 1975 feature debut, The Girl, was the first full-length film shot in his native language of Bambara; a fearless depiction of rape and powerlessness, it was banned by the authorities, and Cissé was jailed. His later works such as Baara and The Wind offer similarly heady social and political critique, delivered with visual panache and in narratives that weave Marxist thought with more ancient, traditional themes.

His most acclaimed work, Brightness, was “in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films,” Cissé noted. Proudly African, Cissé aims his films toward Malians first, so that they can understand the grace of their countrymen in the face of the reality—and the corruption—they encounter daily. “Damu is the Bambara term for the positive impression that is left by the sight of a person or a thing,” he has said. “Damu is perhaps what grace is. When you see man living, you observe all that he is, all that surrounds him . . . you have to depict him with damu.”

Cissé is joined in conversation on three evenings by Nigerian writer and scholar Akin Adesokan, an associate professor of comparative literature and of film and media studies at Indiana University— Jason Sanders, Film Notes Writer

Come One Come All
Her Majesty Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely is in town

Her Majesty Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely at Community Reception March 4, 2020 at Greenlining Bldging in Oakland. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Her Majesty Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely with Califa (L) and Portsha T. Jefferson, choreographer (R) and other wonderful women at Reception March 4, 2020 in Oakland. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
HM Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guelywith Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at the altar. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception. Portsha T. Jefferson in center.
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. The dance is for the ancestors who made the journey across the water in the ship, represented by the chair. The loa for the water is protector on the journey. This is how our ancestors made it. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
HM Queen Mother and Portsha T. Jefferson honor the ancestors. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
“It’s My Birthday!” HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Drums: Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Drummers and percussionist, Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir
Portsha T. Jefferson, choreographer, and lead drummer, Rara Tou Limen Dance Company at Community Reception for HM Queen Mother. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

This is a joyous gathering dedicated to welcoming Her Majesty Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely. This is the kickoff for a week of events in honor of her majesty’s visit and of the beauty of the African Traditionalist Community in the Bay Area. This social gathering will allow the Bay Area to extend a warm welcome to the Queen Mother as well as give people the opportunity to mingle with her and the other luminaries who are participating in the events of the week. Be sure your Ile and/or your community is represented at this event. All are welcome. Come out to enjoy good people and good energy in a loving and welcoming environment.

About Her Majesty the Queen Mother

Aside from being the Kpodjito of the Royal Palace of DaDa Daagbo Hounon Houna in the Republic of Benin, she is an independent scholar, human rights activist, author, photographer, and faith leader of African Religious Traditions. She is the Founder of the AfroAtlantic Theologies & Treaties Institute, and the Chairperson of the NGO Committee for the Elimination of Racism, Afrophobia & Colorism located at the United Nations.  https://www.hounonhouna2.org/  and www.lulu.com/spotlight/Dowoti

Special Presentation by: Rara Tou Limen Dance Company – Haitian Vodou + Ritual Theater. Learn More at www.raratoulimen.com

Welcome Reception, March 4th – 6:30-9 PM, The Greenlining Institute – 360 14th Street  Oakland: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/her-majesty-the-queen-mother-welcome-reception-registration-91577409497

In Search of Voodoo Film and Panel Discussion, Friday, March 6th – 4-6:30 PM at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives – 2155 Durant in Berkeley. Visit https://bampfa.org/event/search-voodoo-roots-heaven

Full-Day Workshop, Saturday, March 7, 8 AM-2 PM at the Movement Strategy Center, 436 14th Street 5th Floor Oakland. Register: bit.ly/2StxQA0

Closing Panel Event: Beyond The Narrative: Accessing Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Healing & Empowerment. Sunday, March 8th 6:30 – 9pm at Red Bay Coffee Roasters – 3098 East 10th Street Oakland

Eventbrite Version: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-the-narrative-accessing-ancient-wisdom-for-contemporary-healing-empowerment-tickets-95039895887?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

Special Performance by Oakland’s Very Own Warrior Woman: Osunfemi Wanbi Njeri osunfemiwanbinjeri.org


Reception Wednesday evening in Oakland
At the welcoming reception, which was HM Queen Mother’s 60th birthday, she resplendent in a gown and robe, said Oakland was medicine to her soul, the welcome and the performance by Portsha T. Jefferson’s Rara Tou Limen Dance Company, whom she’d met in Benin, brought tears to her eyes as she also participated in the libation and dance for the ancestors.

The procession and dance for the loa or deity for the water, protecting her children on the journey on the boat across the oceans was represented by a small chair the dancers carried. The journey was treacherous as indicated by loud powerful drumming, yet our ancestors landed and we — their descendants, are still landed, present, here.

Friends of HM Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely were in the audience, as well as panelists for the upcoming events this week: Dr. Wade Nobles, Yeye Luisah Teish, Iya Nedra, and many members of Ile or spiritual houses who at Tracy Brown’s request called out their names. Calendars from HM Queen Mother’s ordination were available as well as posters for the evening event and “goud kase goud: Conjuring Memory in Spaces of the AfroAtlantic,” her second book which is a catalog for the exhibition, “wòch kase wòch: Redlining a Holocaust, Memorials and the People of the AfroAtlantic.”

This second book documents Maafa sites in the western hemisphere like the USA, Haiti, Brazil and other Caribbean nations, as well as Europe. The photos are beautiful, yet it is the interpretative writing about these crime sites or sites of mourning which add depth to the work. HM Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II Guely is a wonderful writer and told us she has another book which is about to be released very soon, maybe this weekend.  Listen to a Special Broadcast interview with HM Queen Mother with Yeye Teish on Wanda’s Picks, Tuesday, March 3, 2020.

The film, which is at center of the conversation at Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Friday, March 6, is “In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven,” dir. Djimon Hounsou, United States, Benin, 2018.  “In Search of Voodoo” is Djimon Hounsou’s personal reflection on his life. Hounsou, best known for his portrayal of Joseph Cinque, who with others led a revolt on the ship Amistad. After capture and arrival in America, his suit against this country was successful and he and the other Africans were released and returned to Sierra Leone. John Quincy Adams, 6th president, represented the Mende Africans. It is unfortunate that missionaries returned with the new Christians. Perhaps this was a colonial compromise.

It was an unprecedented victory, that is, the courts find in favor of Africans suing for liberty.  This liberty stirred in the actor, he says in the film, his own story—and the shame associated with Vodou and Benin, Land of Vodou.  The journey or resulting film unpacks the propaganda and ties it to the enslavement of Africans and the colonization of indigenous Africans not stolen or enslaved—the bible is more powerful that a canon in its complicity in demonizing of traditional African ways, beliefs and practices.

Luckily there are culture bearers like Djimon Hounsou, Her Majesty and others who will be in conversation following the film. Often voices are silenced and traditions are lost to antiquity when demonized in conquest. In conversation with a friend of mine after the film and panel expressed disdain for the film which did not go deep enough or allow his audience to see him in ritual. We’d catch him just afterward which Iya Susheel Bibbs (panelist) said made the film as a whole fragmentary. A person without knowledge of the spiritual practice or religion would not be that much wiser after the screening.

Panelists spoke of this contradiction on the panel Friday afternoon at BAMPFA. Moderated by Tracy Brown, the panelists were: Her Majesty Queen Mother Dowoti Desir Hounon Houna II, Iya Susheel Bibbs, Ph.D., Yeya Luisah Teish and Dr. Wade Nobles.   The panelists addressed the Maafa or Black Holocaust and the way traditional spiritual guidance is the way back to self. Just as Hounsou makes the full circle in a story which takes the viewer through the misconceptions and the misuse of spiritual powers into a literal light, so can African Diaspora people who embrace all of themselves.  Granted the lens is popular culture given the directors position here presently. Nonetheless, I would not throw the film away and think it has its uses because it takes people from misconceptions shaped by media and unpacks them via gorgeous cinematography.   “In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven” is a lush film and the narrator, tour guide, director Hounsou is both attractive and compelling in our search for more– heard in many of the questions posed afterward by viewers present that afternoon in the theatre.

An Observed Conversation: Lifting Up Black Female Leaders in Education
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-blackfemaleproject-conversation-with-black-teacher-project-tickets-91081580459

Black Teacher Project and BlackFemaleProject invite you to join us for our 5th annual Women’s History Month conversation. Each year these fishbowl-style events have been called ceremony and sacred. Why? Because we center the voices of Black women, with intention. This year, the women around the table will discuss leadership in the education sector. Whether a classroom teacher, principal, or superintendent, Black women are bringing indispensable gifts to campuses and our communities. Let’s explore our shared vision for the future, clarify narratives about teachers, and elevate the power of our profession.

Please note: this event is open to EVERYONE, this is not an all-Black affinity space.

March 11th, 2020 at the National Equity Project Office, 1720 Broadway (Fourth Floor) Oakland, CA, at 5:30pm to 8:00pm

Cost? Free for Black Teacher Project and Black Female Project members, $10 for non-members Childcare will be provided. Please let organizers know at least 2 weeks in advance if you need childcare.

1619-2019 Project at UC Berkeley, Friday, March 6, 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The event, “Struggling for the Soul of Public Education: Lessons from the Frontlines of the Battle to Integrate Public Schools in New Jersey,” is part of the campus initiative to commemorate 400 years of resistance to slavery and injustice. (Excerpt from Berkeley News article on upcoming Boddie talk) 

Location: Social Science Matrix Conference Room, Barrows Hall 8th Floor

Directions to the Social Science Matrix in Barrows Hall:

The Social Science Matrix is located on the eighth floor of Barrows Hall. The elevator to the entrance is located on the east end of the building. You can alternately take an elevator to the seventh floor and come up the stairs on the west end of the building.

Program Description: Decades of research point to significant educational and social-emotional benefits from integration.  Yet public schools across the country continue to be highly segregated, raising questions about why integration is relatively scarce in public education.  Most explanations lie with the significant limitations of federal constitutional law and white resistance.  Drawing on lessons from the frontlines of the battle to integrate public schools in New Jersey–which has perhaps the best state law in the country for integration–Professor Boddie will discuss the peculiar challenges of northern integration and the demand it creates for multiple solutions that move beyond a strict focus on court-centered remedies.

Professor Chris Edley will serve as a respondent at this event.

About the Speaker

Elise Boddie's head shotElise Boddie is a Professor of Law, Henry Rutgers Professor, and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar at Rutgers Law School where she teaches constitutional law, civil rights, and state and local government law.  She is an award-winning legal scholar with publications in leading law reviews.  Her commentary has appeared regularly in The New York Times, as well as in other periodicals and law blogs. She is a frequent public speaker and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Before joining the Rutgers faculty, she was director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.

Boddie is the founder of The Inclusion Project at Rutgers Law School and a founding trustee of the New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools.  She is a leader in the current effort to integrate public schools in New Jersey and has been a major force behind the case (Latino Action Network, et al. v. State of New Jersey, et al.) that challenges school segregation statewide.  She is also a member of the American Law Institute, the national board of the American Constitution Society, and the board of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.  Boddie is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School and Yale and holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government.

Note: This event is wheelchair accessible. To request ASL/captioning, or other accessibility services contact takiyah.franklin@berkeley.edu. Requests made within three weeks of the event may be difficult to arrange depending on the availability of the of service provider.

Kindly refrain from wearing scented products.

By

Wanda’s Picks December 2019

Season’s Greetings!

I hope 2019 was kind to everyone and if not kind, at least full of important lessons and opportunities for growth. Alas, we are almost through it. What follows are a list of programs I’ve hosted this month on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show. It has been really busy this year and especially these last few months and so, while I have not been able to file all the stories I have written, I have continued broadcasting.

I encourage fans to download the app and listen in or at least see whose work I am highlighting so that you do not miss important work, work that speaks to what it means to be human beings at a time when person-hood (especially yours and mine), for some, is a negotiable commodity. Art is a way to address the absence of Blackness in such spaces. In fact, Blackness is its own reality and brings its own value, value added, value+able, abilities others lack because these others lack heart.

I have had the opportunity to speak to and experience a few moments this year and towards the end of this year moments that acknowledged my Blackbeingness. This acknowledgement I’d like to share with you who support the work, the effort at visibility and consciousness in spaces where not only are we against the walls, these walls are porous so we flow rather than stand — a state that is hard to maintain as gravity-bound creatures who instinctively crave more grounded plains.

I have tried to at least post the shows with extended bios on Interchange, my blog. The links are in the titles:

https://wandasabir.blogspot.com/2019/11/wandas-picks-radio-show-wednesday.html

https://wandasabir.blogspot.com/2019/12/wandas-picks-radio-show-wednesday-dec-4.html

https://wandasabir.blogspot.com/2019/12/wandas-picks-radio-show-wednesday_11.html


On the Fly:
Let Us Break Bread at Oakland Symphony Sunday, Dec. 15, 2019, 4 p.m.; Oakland Ballet’s Graham Lustig’s Nutcracker at the Paramount Theatre, Dec. 21-22 (1 and 5 p.m. shows); Soulful Christmas at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Friday-Sunday, Dec. 13-15 and Friday-Sunday, Dec. 20-22; KOLA: An Afro Diasporic Remix of the Nutcracker at Castlemont High School, Dec. 12-15 and Dec. 19-22. 8 p.m. except Sundays at 2 p.m. African American Shakes presents Cinderella, Dec. 20-22 at the Herbst Theatre. 2 shows on Sat., matinee on Sunday.

The People’s Conservatory presents: “KOLA: An Afro Diasporic Remix,” a different take on the holiday classic

RyanNicole Austin & Rozz Nash, KOLA Directors. Photo credit: Stephanie Lister KQED
Grandmother (Jennifer Johns) and Grandfather (Dame Drummer) with Nzingha (Makeda Booker).Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

 

 

 

 

 

In “KOLA: An Afro Diasporic Remix of the Nutcracker”—we meet Nzingha, an orphan, who lives with her grandparents.  Actor Makeda Booker’s character doesn’t remember her mother and resents her abandonment. Though she knows her grandparents – actors Dame Drummer and Jennifer Jones, love her, the child feels a sense of isolation at the family holiday party and spends time playing games on her phone. While everyone mingles then dances, Nzingha moves awkwardly when her

Uncle Victor (James Davis) and Nzingha (Makeda Booker) talk while Mom (Karma Smart) dances. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

Uncle Victor (James “Banks” Davis), whom she hasn’t seen in a while asks her to join him. Later, the next day, he seeks his niece out as she does her chores, and shares with her stories of his sister, her mother.

And so begins the journey where Nzingha guided by Uncle Victor, transformed into Esu (the Orisha of the Crossroads) takes her on a Sankofa journey so she can learn grasp her historic past to better understand her present.

“Bahia” arranged by Baba Zeke, Yemanja choreography by Karma Smart. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

 

The Shore arranged by Calvin Choice, Baba Tacuma, and Baba Zeke. Choreography by Asatu Hall, performed by Jennifer Johns. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

Crossing bridges made from bones Nzingha dances through Bahia where she meets Yemanja—goddess of the sweet waters, then into Cuba where she meets Oshun, goddess of love, and Ayiti where she dances

Cuba arranged by Calvin Holmes, Oshun choreography by Asatu Hall and Karma Smart. Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

Yanvolou, for Ogou and the Ancestors, Gede. It is a dance used to reinforce community and solidarity. Nzingha grows in self-confidence, her leke or ritual beads earned after she dances through each divine portal. The next stop is Southern Spain where Nzingha, also named for a warrior, meets Oya, the goddess of change and transformation.  This stop is the beginning of the “great (re)turn,” this time accompanied by Mamiwata, Obatala, and Esu.  The child carries her nkisi or juju with her. She is wrapped in literal rainbows as she alights in New York at the African Burial Grounds (Wall Street), dances into Congo Square in New Orleans then heads back to Oakland where the enchantment continues in Osacr Grant Plaza where Nzingha meets young grandmother, young grandfather.  Home again, she meets her mother again in the mirror and embraces her as she embraces this episode of her journey, now complete.

The Swipe, Dame Drummer, composer. Choreography by Adriana Wilson.            Photo credit: Wanda Sabir

For each leg of the literal journey master percussionists and other choreographers join lead choreographer, Rozz Nash and co-writer, theatre director, RyanNicole Austin – who was running the sound, opening night. 500+ students from over a dozen Oakland and other East Bay schools are involved as performers, composers and costume/set designers, including OSA, Anna Yates, Northern Light, Pear Tree Community School, West Oakland Middle School, Envision Academy Middle Grades, Park Day, Head Royce, and Latitude High School.

Jennifer Johns is also co-writer and composer. She is both grandmother and Mamiwata. Ultimately, it is African divinity which is where Nzingha, orphaned, finds what she believes lost. Once she steps into the chasm holding Esu’s hand or cane, it is trust that ultimately rewards Nzingha with the answers she seeks. Once she commits to the trip, she doesn’t let go until she reaches home sweet home.

It is a beautiful story, one of hope and love.  KOLA continues at Castlemont High School, Thursday-Saturday, December 19-21, 7 p.m. Sunday, December 22 at 2 p.m.  It is a family friendly production. For tickets visit www.thepeoplesconservatory.org

There is free parking on the side of the school campus by the fence near the childcare center signage. Keep driving all the way to the back.

Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch in mouth/full at CounterPulse presents: Performing Diaspora 2019


Performing Diaspora 2019 at CounterPulse is really wonderful this year. It’s always wonderful but the three artists: Cherie Hill’s IrieDance in She-Verse and Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch in mouth/full this weekend, Thursday-Sat., Dec. 12-14, 7:45 p.m.-9 p.m. (Don’t be late) — is “more” wonderful.

How often are Africans or Black people VIP because they are African or Black people?! We are royalty because of our melanin. We are called out for an exclusive, pre-show experience that sets the tone for the evening, perhaps for the rest of our lives, definitely for 2020.

It is experiences like Performing Diaspora 2019 that hold us when the days are chilly with whiteness– a crisp breeze that seeks to rob us of our Black Souls, even when we know, that is not really possible as we grab doorknobs and other objects that have more permanence than flesh to buffer ourselves against what happens when stage coaches return to pumpkin state. All Cinderella had was a dream, right?

How easy it is so easy slip into antebellum attitudes what with white folks claiming “fragility,” feigned helplessness, as an excuse for structural racism. “We’re just too weak ethically to do any better, so adjust your attitudes Black people,” is the unspoken reality of Blackness in America if you are a descendant of enslaved Africans.

The two-ness W.E.B. Du Bois writes about in his “Souls of Black Folks” is what saved and saves America from complete destruction.  There are places we can go to be free. Within the craziness, artists like Cherie Hill; Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch have opened with their work windows into spaces where Blackness — just everyday Blackfolkness is a ticket or key or pass code into rooms others seated behind us out of sight and mind/full/ness cannot enter.

Theatre is ritual. It is a place where we can imagine and then practice another reality. She-Verse and mouth/full are the scaffolding. Blackness our shelter. It is our protection from artificial Gama rays. In the theatre that evening “darkness” is currency. It is our shelter as we ascend to Giovanni’s room where magic is conjured. Spells are cast and we are sworn to secrecy. The ritual is for us.

And then we return changed.

Lights are on us as we see magic carpets . . . take our seats in the pews, some seated closer to the literal pulpit than others . . . and then the paradigm shifts. We are back on the slave ship– the actors are wearing clergy robes. We are protected by the light, by the red and white barriers, by the altars and stained windows, by the sacrifices — ancestors’ lives, bones paving the railroad cross the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

We have lifetime vouchers — already stamped, to spirit ferry passage– not Spirit Airlines, rather links to a People who could fly and another branch of the family who walked from Ibo Landing back home. They just walked into the water back to Africa. They were magical like that.

Cherie Hill’s IrieDance in She-Verse at CounterPulse presents: Performing Diaspora

Cherie Hill’s She-Verse stands at the intersections directing traffic and often stopping the same. She is shadow and presence. She is steady and stable. She is mother and earth. She is see forever and what is past. Her children walk, crawl, roll, move staccato into habitats familiar and hostile.

Earlier, we Africans keep moving; however, for the moment we sit in pews sanctified and holy until intermission when the set is remixed and we are among the swine and bovine where we get to practice Blackness unapologetically.  It is a good thing to rehearse.

We sing songs of freedom, lifting our feet, raising our hands, waving hands the way we do when holy spirit lifts us up like waves on a ocean — caught up in a breeze. . . . This movement is not televised yet voyeurs are seated just behind us wishing perhaps they were Black– at least for this cinematic moment.  But we don’t let them play. No one breaks rank. Unity or Umoja is constant.  We light the Black candle and do not let anyone blow it out.

During the praise break, the evening I attended, the two artists, Europa Grace and Bronte Velez, share a meal– greens, sweet potato, corn bread, legumes, and then watch each other sleep as the other person shares poetry, recorded beats and other thoughts. It is lyrical and lovely. Together, taken with mouth/fullness, this evening’s “praise break” is part of a larger meditation on faith and hope and recovery — Blackness as refuge and shame.

Here in this mouth/full moment; She-Verse Moment — we are beauty, we are power, we are all there is and all that matter.  Blackness is where it’s at. It always has been where it’s at, but to have the validation within a public space means there are witnesses and perhaps a collective shift and rememory of this moment is a tangible takeaway.

Perhaps those that are not Black, those who were not VIP will remember the feeling of being outside, not belonging and make a visceral performative change when roles are flipped back and the lone or a lone Black person clings to a tangible periphery.  Will these white hands reach out and grab that of the person about to fall? Will these hands notice, someone is missing?

However, this is not the point. The point is whether these other patrons get it or not, remember the experience or not, is not a Black problem.  It is not our job to take care of the white people, to worry if they get it or what they get.  We are just to bask in Blackness and enjoy the privilege of Black space: Its beauty, its peace, its love.

As the collective dances this African Diaspora with Cherie Hill; Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch we are lifted, baptized, anointed, made holy the way Wayne Corbett used to do when he performed. We are holy; however the white gaze like smog often makes our legacy, our greatness difficult to see.  Sometimes we just need to get away. Step aside, take the day off, get with other Black folks and witness as participants great art created by and for people like us — and so . . .

We are called out– “If you are Black or an African identified come with me” Gabriel says and we look at each other those who self-select, check the box: Blackness. Hum, I hope being Black is a good thing, we hope; we wonder.

Trusting the process is also having faith. When Gabriel takes the lead, I have the feeling he is going to take good care of those of us who are following him. I am not disappointed.

Thursday, Dec. 12 is pay-what-you-can. It is also a special tour for the visually impaired or those who want to experience such a tour at 7 p.m. The show begins at 7:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. at 80 Turk in San Francisco (near Powell Street BART).

Visit the CounterPulse website for all the details and to see what artists will be performing during the “Praise Break” in mouth/full. The Praise Break features a new artist(s) each evening. Mouth/Full is a continuation of a query, the two choreographers explored first in mouth/full of Seeds at the National Queer Arts Festival. How did Africans come to America? They are looking at creating a third part to this query. Listen to Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch in a recent interview on Wanda’sPicks Radio Show Dec. 11.

Listen to Cherie Hill and Chibueze Crouch in another conversation a week ago: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2019/12/04/wandas-picks-radio-show

Like so many seeds we crossed land and oceans and planted ourselves in these new worlds. Now that we are here how has this experience changed us and how do we remain the same? What happens when seeds from a distant land are planted in new soil?

Faith and religion are two spaces that African Diaspora still occupy– the names might have changed, but the spirit remains. In mouth/full, Christian and Crouch’s characters struggle visibly with the crosses they’ve been carrying and through story and movement we learn the cost of bondage and the price of freedom. This is not a Harriet Tubman story, and yet it is a Harriet Tubman story. It is also the story of Araminta “Minty” Ross, the girl who trusted her dreams. A woman who feared no man.

Is that what it takes to be free, an absence of fear?  Visit http://counterpulse.org/upcoming/

Robert Townsend’s Living the Shuffle at The Marsh in Berkeley, 2021 Allston Way, through Sat., Dec. 14

Robert Townsend in Living the Shuffle at The Marsh in Berkeley

Friday evening was HHREC or the Health and Human Resources Education Center’s Annual Holiday Party. Located on San Pablo and 19th Street in Oakland this organization celebrated another year of programs that promote African American wellness, especially that of Black women and Black youth (Downtown TAY). Wellness programs include the quarterly Be Still Retreat, Fitness Workshops, Black Women’s Media Project, Sister Lola Hanif’s Sacred Space, We Move for Health Run/Walk, and a magazine for Black Women, the current issue on “Depression.”

While there one of the former participants in Downtown TAY, Venus Morris reminded me of Robert Townsend’s Living the Shuffle at The Marsh in Berkeley, 2021 Allston Way, through Sat., Dec. 14, 8:30 p.m. I’d forgotten he was performing there, and certainly wanted to see his work before it closed. We learned that evening Townsend (b. Feb. 6, Bob Marley’s birthday) is coming back February 2020 for an extended month long run.

Robert Townsend, director, actor, producer, is epic and so congenial. The intimate theatre on Allston Way (formerly Anna’s Jazz Island) was sold out, but for those folks who showed up, Marsh staff were able to get them in. And he was great!

Living the Shuffle is the story of a boy with talent, a man with dreams, faith and a vision. Themes covered are spousal abuse, single parenting, divorce, positive self-image– all couched within the context of humor.

When one thinks of the term “shuffle,” it is more than the walk of a tired elder. It is the way Black men were made to move to avoid condemnation, even death by white Americans. Stepping off sidewalks into the dirt roads, donning hats, bowing heads, lowering eyes — humiliation is the shuffle Black Americans descendants of enslaved Africans have been cast since freedom rang.

For whom did that bell toll?

Shuffle, shuffling is an inherited act. It is a persistent-traumatic stressor complicated and normalized by 21st century totems like sagging pants. Stumbles follow easily when shuffling is what one does with one’s feet, particularly if one’s clothing enables falls. Shuffling implies laziness and immorality. Fallen people shuffle, shoulders hunched — shifty mortals who can’t look a person in the eyes shuffle.

However, shuffling can also be an attitude. In Townsend’s Living the Shuffle it’s never showing one’s hand, keeping one’s thoughts private, and having multiple deals available at any given time.  It is improvisation, it is jazz, it is what African ancestors did so well in this new world— syncretism. Like his ancestors, African people, Townsend too is gifted at finding the mean(s).

Townsend channels spirit. He is kinetic energy, always thinking and always moving—shuffling his hand and returning and replacing cards which do not serve him or his people. A man with vision, always ready with a deck, Townsend doesn’t wait for a hand, he reshuffles the deck and stands where he chooses to stand a counter-narrative to presiding dominant cultural archetypes. We see this over an over again as photos are projected onto a screen as Townsend appears in his first film, the “popular urban classic: ‘Cooley High (1975), co-stars with Denzel Washington in ‘A Soldier’s Story (1984), with ‘Diane Lane in ‘Streets of Fire’ (1984) and ‘American Flyers’ (1985) with Kevin Costner.'” (Marsh program notes).
After Don Reed, whose popular work, E14th Street is up at the Marsh in Berkeley, Dec. 21 (8:30 p.m.) and Dec. 22 (5:30 p.m.) introduces his friend, who gave him his first job in Hollywood, we realize these two men, these brothers control this thermostat, so we can sit back and enjoy the excursion.
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Townsend’s life story illustrates that prays are answered almost immediately if one listens. We watch the youngster listen to his stepfather yelling and screaming at his mother. He worries and wonders what he can do and remembers what his mother told him about prayer.

Throughout Living the Shuffle, the combination of faith and a mother’s courage and support, plus strong friendships are the foundation for this director, actor, producer, whose professional start was when he was about 14 years old at Chicago’s Experimental Bag Theatre, an after school improvisational theatre program.

Townsend is encouraged in school by a teacher who sees the youngster’s interest and talent. He’s had lots of practice. His mother tells him to come home after school to protect him and so her son knows all the TV shows by heart and if anyone misses an episode he can reenact all the characters almost verbatim.

When Townsend discovers Shakespeare, it’s love at first sight.  He goes to the library and steals as many recordings of performances he can fit beneath his shirt. Once home, he begins to study the language and stories performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. It is this scholarship that impresses his teacher when Townsend reads a character in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex.

Later when his family moves to another neighborhood in Chicago where Townsend  says he had to walk a different way home from school each day to avoid the gangs and certain death, we also see the actor on the basketball court playing pick up games with local youth. It is a place where kids across turf affiliations could play.

Townsend’s values sportsmanship. The court is a place where truce is called. It is also a place where this youth shows that one can choose other ways to resist than violence. Though he never says he is fearless, the younger Townsend’s values did not allow him to consider fighting back with violence. He like Gordon Parks “chose a different weapon.” Townsend’s was wit, humor and skill– all the improvisational tools he honed practicing his character roles from TV. These personas learned on his own and later polished in private study and in school or workshops gave him worlds he could tap into, alternative spaces he could examine extracting necessary tools needed in critical moments to defeat or slay innumerable mortal dragons.

His hero’s journey was protracted.

Living the Shuffle is physical theatre at it’s best. Townsend is bouncing an imagined ball around the stage, running backward as he and a shorter teammate “kill it” every time to the chagrin of the other captain who has crooked teeth.

Themes of fairness and honesty follow Townsend to college where the young thespian looks to fine tune his craft and go to New York a star.  He shares this dream with the faculty chair of the department at the Illinois college who tells this young student who has had nothing but encouragement all his life that he would never be successful. This party line continues when Townsend transfers to another school in New Jersey. The student eventually dismisses their comments because “they don’t know him or what he is capable of.”

He and friend, Keenen Wayans Sr. decide to start their own production company, producing and writing their own material and they are successful. Townsend’s independent film, Hollywood Shuffle (1987), a case study, is a film he financed with his own credit cards. He wrote, starred and produced it. Perhaps the reason why this film remains a classic is for the very reason Black imagery seems to be the property of anyone with a dollar 484 years after Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez first colonized Baja California in 1525 utilizing 300 enslaved Pan Africans; 400 years after the English colony in Virginia was established in 1619 through Black material merchandising– Africans from Angola traded for provisions at Point Comfort, now Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton.

Even though Black people, the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans are technically free, the rights to our personas remains available in public domain. A copyright free zone, Black bodies and the capital such personas create remains opens season for those with big bucks, deep pockets or political agency.

Blackness is top on cultural exploitation lists — national and global, so Robert Townsend’s remarkable Living the Shuffle journey is unfortunately as relevant today as it was a brief 32 years ago.  When juxtaposed with Queen & Slim, a film that exploits Black vulnerability with white fear, we see Black prey and white hunters situated in gorgeous cinematography as cameras pan Circle Food Market in New Orleans, the site of an historic slave auction block. On the run, Angela and Ernest flee domestic armed forces (police) trying to get to safety. It is just 7 days, yet feel like a lifetime as the two characters captured on the police officer’s body camera are tracked like an elaborate modern Hunger Games. It is a United States against Blackness—they race tangentially against fugitive slave acts rescinded and lose.

This trope is the same refrain on repeat. It is in the recent film Harriet too, when the brute is cast “black” and brutality in “purity or whiteness.” There is seemingly no escaping the prescription, unless like Robert Townsend shows in Living the Shuffle one rolls out an alternative reality and lives his truth.

From classes at the Negro Ensemble Theatre to Pepsi Commercials to creating roles from nonspeaking “extras” to production of Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987) to his friendship with mentor Sidney Poitier, Living the Shuffle is ultimately about paying attention to the voice inside and never forgetting who you are. When he looked around, Townsend noticed a world which did not reflect what he was seeing in the mirror, so he stopped looking for Hollywood to validate a reality it could not see.

Jordan Peele says in his 2017 film, also starring Daniel Kaluuya (protagonist in Queen & Slim) to Get Out[!]  His appeal is to those Black folks to get moving and create a their own world. At the end of “Queen & Slim” why do the protagonists have to die? They unlike the criminals they are compared to — Bonnie and Clyde, who rob banks, should get away. Why can’t they get on the plane and fly off to Cuba where we see them hanging out with Assata Shakur? In a postscript, why can’t we see the young family as parents living quietly in a forest with a baby running free?

A friend said, Black people can’t dream.  In Living the Shuffle, “be the change” is not a just a campaign slogan, it is an imperative for life.

When we look at successful persons like Townsend, it is not often that the public knows the back story. Townsend literally climbed a mountain and that feat—his career, a career still unfolding, is something he reflects on as he takes us with him into his dreams or clouds as he talks us through the spaces where we cannot look down and then when the incline makes it difficult to continue up.

We catch our collective breath, then breathe deeply.

Don Reed in East 14th at the Marsh in Berkeley, Dec. 21 and Dec. 22, 2019

Standing at the apex of a journey he could imagine once he realized what he was good at and plus he enjoyed the most, Living the Shuffle shows Townsend a free man among a free people.  His friend, Don Reed, East 14th,[1] producer, Living the Shuffle, is a free man.  Brian Copeland[2] is also a free man. The Marsh seems to be a place that showcases free Black people. Might be a good idea to take out a subscription. Visit https://themarsh.org

What does Sam Cooke write in his classic song, “Change Is Gonna Come,” covered by Aretha Franklin? The subject in the song says he is weary of standing alone. Townsend gets weary too, but is encouraged along the way by his mother and mentors and friends.

He speaks of all the auditions he goes with no call backs and meets another brother who is unable to pay his bills and is rethinking his career and passion. He offers to loan this actor, Denzel Washington some money, then when he is at a low point he calls his mother who asks him if he is praying and when is the last time he went to church.

A Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke

I was born by a river, oh man, in this little old tent, oh
Just like this river, I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long, long time coming
But I know, but I know, a change is gotta come
Ooo yes it is
Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my

It’s been too hard living, oh my
And I’m afraid to die
I don’t know what’s up there
Beyond the clouds

It’s been a long, long time coming
But I know, but I know a change is gotta come
Oh yes it is
Oh my, oh my, oh my

There’s a time I would go to my brother, oh my
I asked my brother, “Will you help me please?”, oh my oh my
He turned me down and then I ask my dear mother, oh
I said “Mother!”
I said “Mother! I’m down on my knees”

It’s been a time that I thought
Lord this couldn’t last for very long, oh now
But somehow I thought I was still able to try to carry on
It’s been a long, long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come
Oh, yes it is

Just like I said, I went to my little bitty brother, oh my little brother now
I asked my brother “Brother help me please?”, oh now
He turned me down and then I go to my little mother, my dear mother, oh my
I said “Mother!”
I said “Mother! I’m down on my knees”

But there was a time that I thought
Lord this couldn’t last for very long, oh my
Somehow I thought I was still able to try to carry on
It’s been a long, long time coming
But I know, but I know a change is gotta come, ooo
It’s been so long, it’s been so long, a little too long
A change has gotta come
So tired, so tired of standing by myself
And standing up alone
A change has gotta come
You know and I know, and you know that I know
I know that you know, honey
That a change is gonna come oh yeah oh, I gotta

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Sam Cooke

A Change Is Gonna Come lyrics © Abkco Music, Inc

Here is Sam Cooke performing his song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPr3yvkHYsE

[1] East 14th is at the March in Berkeley, Friday, Dec. 20 and Sat. Dec. 21

[2] The Waiting Room, Grandma and Me: Ode to Single Parents, Not and Authentic Black Man, The Jewelry Box . . . A Genuine Christmas Story.

2019 Kwanzaa Celebrations in Sacramento

All events are free. Please bring food for the potluck (karamu) at each event

Saturday, Dec. 7 – Pre-Kwanzaa Celebration

Time: 11:00am-2:00pm.   Location: 2251 Florin Rd.  Sacramento

Sponsor: Sacramento Association of Black Social Workers

Contact: Arobia Battle – nettabrave@gmail.com

Saturday, Dec. 7 – Kwanzaa at the Illumination Festival

Time: 4:00pm-9:00pm     Location: District 56, Civic Center Site

Sponsor: City of Elk Grove and Wo se African Community

Contact: Jodie Moreno 916-478-3632 and Imhotep Alkebulan 916-835-1823

Sunday, Dec 8 – Early Kwanzaa Celebration with Fenix

Time: 1:00-4-:00pm         Location: California Stage, 2509 R St., Sacramento

Sponsor: Fenix Drum and Dance Co. Contact: Angela James 916-205-3970

Friday, Dec. 27 – Community Kwanzaa

Time: 3:00-5:00pm         Location: Del Paso Heights Library. 920 Grand Ave, Sacramento

Sponsor: Friends of Del Paso Heights Library and Fenix Drum and Dance

Contact: Angela James 916-205-3970

Saturday, Dec. 28 – Wo’se African Community Kwanzaa

Time: 5:30pm-9:30pm; Kwanzaa Market 12noon-9:30pm.

Location: Wackford Community Complex, 9014 Bruceville Rd. Elk Grove,

Sponsor: Wo se African Community.  Contact: Imhotep Alkebulan 916-835-1823

Sunday. Dec. 29 – Kwanzaa Celebration

Time: 4:00pm-7:00pm.    Location: 1275 Starboard Dr., West Sacramento

Sponsor: Center for Spiritual Awareness   Contact: Rebecca Davis 916-317-6042

Monday, Dec. 30 – Children’s Kwanzaa

Time: 6:00pm-9:00pm, Drumming 6:00pm-6:30pm  Location: Call or email for location

Sponsor: Umoja Productions

Contact: Maia Morton 916-821-6466; ifalami1@gmail.com

Tuesday, Dec.31 – Kwanzaa Creativity Celebration

Time: Noon-4pm.   Location: Valley Hi-North Laguna Library. 7400 Imagination Parkway.Sac.  Contact: Michael Harris 916-346-3327