Happy Black History Month!
We get an extra day and we need it too to get our Black Joy parade gear picked out for Sunday, Feb. 23. It’s an attitude not an outfit.
He’s Back! Robert Townsend’s “Living the Shuffle,” directed by Don Reed
Robert Townsend’s “Living the Shuffle” is back at The Marsh Arts Center in Berkeley, beginning Feb. 1-29, Friday, 8 p.m., Sat., 8:30 p.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Visit Don Reed’s E-14th is up Feb. 21-22, @ SF Marsh Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, and Brian Copeland’s “Not a Genuine Black Man,” Feb. 8, 5 p.m. at Marsh in Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berkeley. For information or tickets call: 415.282.3055
Read my review of Townsend’s work “Living the Shuffle” when he presented the work to sold out houses.
Book Launch
Zach Norris, Executive Director, Ella Baker Center, is having his book launch for We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 6-8:15 p.m., beginning with a reception at 6:00, followed by the program at 6:30 and the book signing at 7:35. The location is Restore Oakland, 1419 34th Ave., Oakland 94601. Later this month, Feb. 12, 6 -7 p.m., Zach is in conversation with Fred Blackwell, SF Foundation CEO at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, 110 The Embarcadero, 415-597-6705. The two men will discuss “Building an Inclusive America.” For those in DC, Zach is kicking off his East Coast tour at Busboys and Poets, Feb. 6.
Featured at the Feb. 4 event are Zach Norris, author and Ella Baker Center executive director; Venus Jones, actress, poet, author; Lateefah Simon, president of the Akonadi Foundation; Davey D, host of Hard Knock Radio on KPFA; DeVone Boggan, founder and CEO of Advance Peace; and Marlena Henderson, criminal justice and mental health reform advocate. Books will be on sale at the venue. Listen to an interview with Zach on Wanda’s Picks Radio: http://tobtr.com/11646241
Artist and Activist, Rev. Daniel Buford Retires after 30 Years of Prophetic Ministry
Don’t miss an opportunity to attend a casual community celebration and gathering with appetizers, music, and artwork to honor Daniel Buford’s contributions to social justice in his 33 years of Prophetic Ministry in Oakland and the greater San Francisco Bay Area as he moves into life as an elder back in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he will retire and concentrate on his sculpture. The event is Thursday, February 13, 2020, 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM PST at COLORS Restaurant at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, 1419 34th Avenue, Oakland.
Hosts Fania Davis, Ron Glass, Merle Lustig, Awele Makeba, Zach Norris, Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Sr., and many others invite you to join them in recognizing Rev. Buford and his work as artist, sculptor, griot, prophet, minister, and community organizer.
This is a sliding-scale ticketed event. ALL of the ticket sales will go directly to support Daniel’s retirement. You can also make a donation if you can’t attend. Appetizers and light refreshments will be provided by the hosts, a no-host cash bar will be available to benefit the new COLORS Restaurant and ROC United, and musical entertainment will be provided by Rashiid Moore. For tickets or to make a donation: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daniel-buford-recognition-and-benefit-tickets-87198207185 To listen to two recent interviews with Rev. Buford about his work and retirement plans visit: http://tobtr.com/11646239 and http://tobtr.com/11646241
A Conversation between two African Scholars: Tony Browder and Dr. Runoko Rashidi
Uppity Entertainment presents: Tony Browder and Dr. Runoko Rashidi in Restoring the Missing Pages of African History, at Impact Hub Oakland, 2323 Broadway, in Oakland, Sat., Feb. 15, 6-9 p.m. The event will feature entertainment and African Diaspora merchants. For tickets visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/runoko-rashidi-anthony-browder-tickets-88726157325
“Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983” through March 15 at the deYoung Museum
The “Soul of a Nation” at DeYoung Museum located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco through March. There is one more free day February 8. After this the only discounts apply to general admission; however, this special exhibit will have a cost. Visit https://deyoung.famsf.org/free-reduced-admission There are docent led tours and special musical performances that are free with museum admission. Rockridge Library, 5366 College Avenue, in Oakland, is hosting a discussion about this exhibit, Wed., Feb. 5, 6:30 p.m. oaklandlibrary.org
Oakland Public Library Celebrates Black History Month February 2020
Don’t miss “Living the American Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era,” at AAMLO, 659 14th Street, Oakland, Sat., Feb. 8, 2 p.m. Visit oaklandlibrary.org
“Make a Quilt Square!” With the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland’s Annual Demonstration and Workshop. Supplies are provided. For all levels at the West Oakland Branch, 1801 Adeline Street, Sat., Feb. 22, 1 p.m.
Golden Gate Library has a special presentation on Ruth and Eugene Lasartemay, one of the founding families of the East Bay Negro Historical Society (EBNHS). Their collections, now at AAMLO, were originally housed at Golden Gate Library. The program is Thursday. Feb. 13, 6 p.m. at Golden Gate Branch, 5606 San Pablo Avenue.
5th Annual Local Authors Showcase at West Oakland Library, Feb. 29, 1 p.m., 1801 Adeline Street.
Alameda Free Library Black History Month Events:
https://www.alamedafree.org/Home/Black-History-Month-2020
2/1 All Your Favorite Music is (Probably) Black
2/2 Black Youth: Exploring the Road to Success
2/3 Alameda Free Library Film Series: The God Given Talent
2/10 Art Talk: Soul of a Nation
2/12 Fourth Annual Author Series: Jenee Darden
2/18 Thoughtful Movie Tuesdays: Fences
Other Alameda Black History Month Events from Alameda Island Poets Black History Reading, Wed., Feb. 5, to panels on Black Youth Success: https://alamedasun.com/news/black-history-month-events-start-next-week
Book Signing
Historian, Alison Jefferson presents: “Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era”
The CA Historical Society in partnership with the African American Center of the San Francisco Public Library, the California Historical Society presents a book talk and signing with historian, Alison Jefferson, Tuesday, February 11, 2020 6:00PM at Koret Auditorium San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco. Cost: Free.
Dr. Jefferson will discuss her new book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era which explores how, as Southern California was reimagining leisure and positioning it at the center of the American Dream, African American Californians were working to make that leisure an open, inclusive reality. By occupying recreational sites and public spaces, African Americans challenged racial hierarchies and marked a space of black identity on the regional landscape and social space – creating black-owned resorts, communities, businesses, and recreational culture that drew vacationers and participants from Northern California and around the state.
KQED African American History Month programming:
https://ww2.kqed.org/about/2020/01/23/on-tv-black-history-month-february-2020/
Monday, 2/24
10pm Independent Lens #2111 “Always in Season” (NEW)
In 2014, African American teenager Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a swing set. His mother believes he was lynched. Stark inconsistencies and few answers from officials drive her to lead efforts in what has become an ongoing fight for the truth.
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Tuesday, 2/25
9pm Miles Davis: American Masters #3109 (NEW)
Discover the man behind the legend. With full access to the Miles Davis Estate, the film features never-before-seen footage, including studio outtakes from his recording sessions, rare photos and new interviews.
Damien Sneed presents: “We Shall Overcome: A Musical Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Cal Performances at UC Berkeley presents, We Shall Overcome, A Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., featuring Damien Sneed, renown, award-winning, music director, conductor, and accompanists for Grammy winning touring and recording artists, Thursday, Feb. 20, 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall. Sneed will lead an ensemble of five vocalists and a live band, joined by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir in a program of timeless African American music, including traditional spiritual and contemporary gospel songs, soul, R&B, Broadway and jazz selections. For tickets visit calperformances.org or call (510) 642-9988. Tickets are $28-56 with half-price tickets for UC Berkeley students. For other discount information visit calperformances.org/discounts
This event is in conjunction with UC Berkeley’s 400 Years of Resistance to Slavery and Injustice initiative, which started last fall. Visit https://400years.berkeley.edu/
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 1. 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/ Film featuring Charles Curtis Blackwell, directed by Jeff M. Giordano, “The God Given Talent,” at Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, Monday, Feb. 3, 5:30-8 p.m. Free admission, followed by a Q&A with the director, Jeff M. Giordano and star, Mr. Blackwell. Rosie
Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective — on view, Feb. 19-July 19, 2020, Symposium, Sat., Feb. 29, 2 p.m. at BAMPFA.
Theatre
History Keeps Me Awake: Queer Voices in Repertory at TheatreFirst Feb. 15-March 7, with two plays: Skylar Cooper’s “A One Man Show,” he charts his course of transformation from a Baptist minister’s daughter afraid to tell her parents she liked girls, didn’t believe in God, and desperately wished to become a man, through the death of his mother that serves as the unexpected catalyst that sets Skyler on his path toward whom he’s always been. This work, dramaturgy by Lisa Evans in repertory with Elaine Magree’s PUSSYGRABBINGREVENGE, a seriously funny play about seriously unfunny things. Spanning 60 years, collective responses to sexual threats and violence are recounted and interrogated: is it revenge, resistance, subversion or justice? What is justice? T1st in West Berkeley at The Waterfront Playhouse, 2020 Fourth St, Berkeley. Visit https://theatrefirst.com/tickets/
Health and Well-being Tips
This has nothing to do with arts and culture; however, if one doesn’t feel well, then she can’t get to the events happening throughout the greater Bay Area and beyond. I recently discovered Neocell’s Super Collagen, a fan of bone broth for a number of years, I was still not getting enough collagen and every fall-winter season, I was having back related injuries either sciatic or now another back injury and arm-shoulder pain. I continued the acupuncture for pain management and massage whenever I could afford the $1 a minute cost, plus Pilates exercises – lots from physical therapist(s) and then I walked into the local grocery and saw Neocell and other brands on sale and got the mixture with no additives like sugar. There was even a coupon. I add it to my chicken bone broth in the morning before I do my exercises and I was even having it in the evening with another cup of bone broth. Immediately I felt a difference. Not as much pain, then no pain. The ingredients are Grass fed collagen (bovine hide). So anyway, just wanted to pass this on to the 60+ folks who are still trying to jet set (smile).
I also add Quantum Health’s SuperLysine to the broth. It is an immune supplement. Devil’s Claw is my go-to for pain, the tincture and Curamin Extra Strength Pain Relief—works well. I take the Devil’s Claw with powered HealthForce Super Foods Truly Natural Vitamin C and Now Red Algae Calcium Powder. I also take Now Magnesium & Potassium Aspartate & Now Vitamin D3 and MK-7. Got to be able to move. I try to walk at least a few miles every other day, and/or for at least 40 minutes every day before retiring. It seems to help my food digest. I haven’t been successful yet with the big breakfast, medium lunch and small dinner allocation, but I am working on it. My diet routine is for stomach spleen health. No sugar, no fermented foods, no bread or baked goods, no cold foods or drinks. You can get a list. Dr. Axe is a great resource, but I got my first list from Octagon Community Acupuncture in Oakland. They are great. I like Alameda Community Acupuncture too. My brother likes the community acupuncture in San Francisco next to Costco. I always ask for referrals from acupuncture doctors. They often know each other. If you don’t like needles, there are also less invasive seeds for certain points and cupping.
“Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite”, closing March 1
By Wanda Sabir
Sunday afternoon, February 23 at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco was an opportunity to see what Black Joy looks like. While Africans in Oakland were celebrating what makes us a people, in San Francisco artists, curators and scholars were discussing Kwame Brathwaite’s work in his first major exhibition: “Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite,” up through March 1. More than a tangible aesthetic enumerated, Brathwaite’s “Beautiful” is an opportunity to reflect on the many ways through the ages, Blackness— while commodified, continues to transgress, transcend, even morph into something completely incomprehensible (in that moment) like Charlie Parker’s “Koko” or with Dizzy Gillespie “Shaw ‘Nuff” (or John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.)
What made the panel Sunday afternoon so remarkably fine was the personal relationships all the guests, especially co-curator, Kwame S. Brathwaite, son, and moderator Marc Bamuthi Joseph, share. The two men grew up together, went to the same public schools. Joseph says, he just saw Brathwaite Sr. as Kwame’s father, a serious man who didn’t speak much.
Dr. Deborah Willis, noted for her work for the Smithsonian which documented the centennial of Black Photography with a multicity retrospective, spoke of meeting Brathwaite Sr. when she was a young grad student doing research at the Schomberg which she returned to later to develop its photography archive.
Then Dr. Tanisha C. Ford spoke of how she discovered the artist’s work as a scholar while in Europe where she met Kwame Brathwaite, son.
It was an afternoon or storytelling and reflection on these specific periods in African Diaspora history on this soil. Kwame Sr. an immigrant from Barbados, Joseph’s family immigrants from Haiti, Bamuthi, first generation American born.
Willis spoke of how in her search for the African Diaspora image, missing in her studies, she came to what became her life’s work. As slides rotated behind the panel who eventually shared stories about the eclectic selection from the exhibit and the Brathwaite archive, the notion of art and personal aesthetic and choices were discussed as Bamuthi’s provocative questions about intention and community and desire and necessity for the work as essential to one’s value and life were shared. Bob Marley, James Brown, Abby Lincoln and Max Roach and a collective Grandassa Models, a part of Brathwaite’s African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS). We’re talking 1956 when with his brother, the late Elombe Brath (1936-2014) the men documented a period where racial segregation served as an incubator for Black culture to flourish. Brathwaite’s work didn’t just “challenge mainstream beauty standards that excluded Black women and other non-white women,” AJASS and Grandessa Models were a public counter narrative that offered a positive alternative to this exclusive discourse. Brathwaite was inspired by the writings of the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey who was a Black nationalist whose work was to repair and mend a fractured nation. He actualized the Pan African concept in the meetings throughout the world, Madison Square Garden in NYC, New Orleans and elsewhere.
Garvey used print media and performance to stage counter narratives and manipulate Black images similar to his hero, Booker T. Washington, whose Tuskegee Institute, was a place where African Americans, many the children of formerly enslaved parents, had an opportunity to reinvent themselves as whole people.
Black Is Beautiful illustrates Black community’s compelling diversity and challenges to public personas that that are negative or contrary to Black well-being. What a person thinks of him or herself affects his or her success in the world and our notion of self is socially constructed.
In MoAD’s third level gallery, large prints of gorgeous men and women embrace visitors. Also displayed are several gowns and original designs the models created. Since Africans arrived on this soil and even before, the fight has been for proper representation. Brathwaite admits an emotional attachment to the images and the people he documents – in a huge body of work whose breath is still not completely known. This first exhibition is just a part one. He says, “As a Keeper of the Images, my goal has always been to pass (the truth of each moment – the history to be known), to pass that legacy on and make sure that for generations to come, everyone who sees my work knows the greatness of our people” (8).
In a culture bound inextricably to text, Brathwaite knew that one’s currency is attached to imagery. Now more than ever African people need to control how they perceive themselves as the world community maligns and prints images that are not framed well, underdeveloped or not developed at all, and more often poorly handled. The analogy Gordon Parks makes to guns and cameras which both shoot is intentional. He says his weapon is the camera. Brathwaite might say the same.
Other wonderful exhibitions also up through Sunday, March 1, on the first level are: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s smaller photography show: “Baye Fall: Roots In Spirituality, Fashion And Resistance.” These photographs by NY-based documentary photographer Barrayn visually engages the Baye Fall, an enterprising sub-group of Senegal’s notable Sufi Muslim Community, the Mourides. An integral part of the cultural fabric of Senegalese society, the Baye Fall possess a unique aesthetic that includes “locked” hair, patchwork garments, symphonic chanting, and artisanal leather talismans. Through witnessing the lives of the Baye Fall, and the Senegalese cities in which they dwell, this series shows how pre and post-colonial politics have influenced their spiritual practice. On the second floor is MoAD’s emerging artist: Chanell Stone’s Natura Negra. The artist has a talk Sunday, March 1, 2 p.m. On the same level in the larger gallery is Don’t Shoot: An Opus of the Opulence of Blackness.
For more information about MoAD, visit the museum’s website at moadsf.org. The Black Is Beautiful exhibition is accompanied by the first-ever monograph dedicated to Brathwaite published by Aperture, May 2019.
The museum is open Wednesday-Saturday 11am–6pm and Sunday, 12–5pm. Museum admission is $10 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens with a valid ID. Youth 12 and under always get in free. For general information, the public may visit The Museum’s website at moadsf.org or call 415.358.7200. MoAD is located at 685 Mission Street (at Third), San Francisco, CA.
30th Annual Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry, Sat., Feb. 1, at the West Oakland Library
It was a wonderful program, lots of great poetry and a wonderful audience. It was like old times, we finished late. However, library staff helped us clean up and stack chairs.