“Dr. Mutulu Is Welcome Here” is the title of the campaign and the program Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement hosted Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day in Oakland. As we walked into Sole Space, a venue that also sells shoes and art, and is a part of the corner building that houses “Oakstop,” we were invited to pose with a photo of Dr. Shakur. Mama Ayanna, seated at the door welcomes and greets comrades and friends of friends as other members of MXGM (https://mxgm.org/) host the program which includes a slide presentation which presents Dr. Shakur’s political biography and what led to his conviction, February 11, 1986. He was charged and convicted of freeing our Sister Assata Shakur from prison and master minding a 1981 expropriation of a Brinks armored truck. He is a prisoner of war, a distinction which carries certain legal rights, not that the federal government acknowledges these rights. It is for this reason that after serving 30 years of a 60 year sentence, his release was not addressed nor his parole date honored this past Feb. 10. His next date is April 7, 2016. There is lots of information and a wonderful video at http://mutuluiswelcomehere.com/
A young sister poet opened the program, followed by Wanda Sabir who spoke of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, followed by Phavia Kujichagulia who stated that we are at “WAR.” Tureeda Mikell spoke about the system of white supremacy and its tactics in a poem which every black child needs to hear and use as a counterinsurgency plan. Queen Ayodele Nzinga—Wordslanger sprinkled medicine on the fire and it came up red, her brazen hot fingertips covered in molten language, bullets formed and fired from her mouth. Antique wrapped it up in fiery freestyle melodies. Write to Brother Mutulu, support his release.
Adopt an Encampment
The monthly breakfasts are going strong, the two encampments we serve are cleaner and have less dumping now that we have mobilized support for its inhabitants. There was a lot of flooding in March. RJ and I got sandbags from the City of Oakland to help with the excessive water. We have also been able to continue to give away shoes, men’s pants, socks, coats, and men’s underwear. However, these supplies and others like heavy garbage bags, pine cleaner, food, blankets, etc., often come out of our pockets. I average $200-$300 out of pocket a month. I am not sure how long I can keep this up. We are still looking to develop permanent housing stock for these alternative communities. Visit http://theausetmovement.blogspot.com/ or email: theausetmovement@gmail.com
“Welcome to Leith” premieres on Independent Lens, April 4
So you thought racism has spun its wheels and left the concourse? Nope. Meet Craig Cobb, notorious white supremacist leader who sees a real estate investment opportunity, and before the small North Dakota town, Leith can blink, it is occupied by nouveau Mayflower stockholders, puritans who want a place in America where they can honor and celebrate whiteness and white power. Leith is so off the beaten path, Mayor Ryan Schock can’t define white supremacy, let alone agree to participate in Cobb’s armed legion. Directed by Christopher K. Walker and Michael Beach Nichols, the film airs on Independent Lens, April 4, on PBS.
Listen to an interview with Walker about the surreal experience, a throwback to the Wild Wild West mixed with Jim Crow South, when the only ones winning were white men with guns: http://tobtr.com/8558877
That the film screens on the 48th anniversary of Martin King’s shooting at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, April 4, the end of The Season of Peace – the months between the killing of men of peace: Mahatma Gandhi, JFK, Malcolm X and Martin King, is not unnoticed by this writer. Nor is it lost on anyone watching the heated presidential race how in line Team Trump is with Team Cobb. After 9/11, the federal government shifted attention away from domestic terrorism to an inarticulate international terror, so if it weren’t for organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Project monitoring white supremacist activities, the Leith invasion might have gone unnoticed, especially given the fact that Leith has a population of 24 people. It is a registered ghost town. To check local times visit http://itvs.org/films/welcome-to-leith/
Lorraine Hansberry Theatre at the AAACC for “Thurgood”
Steven Anthony Jones framed by the stars and stripes has the look of Supreme court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who has returned to his alma mater, Howard Law School to tell all, well maybe not all, but enough. In a stunning work, reprised for a limited engagement, April 7-17 at the Burial Clay Theatre, 762 Fulton Street, in San Francisco, Jones brings this remarkable man to life in George Stevens, Jr.’s remarkable work. Jones, who is artistic director of the LHT, says he was born during a time when Marshall’s court battles were topical, and had a major impact on southern family members whom he’d visit during the summer. However, Jones and Marshall’s lives run parallel in other ways over a generation apart.
SAJ: “Thurgood Marshall was such a great man. I thought I knew him, but I did not know what a great and important person he was to all of our lives. He was the foot soldier under Charles Hamilton Huston, professor at Howard University who established the law school. Marshall led the civil rights movement in the courts. He fought so many battles, put his life on the line for so many things we take for granted,” Jones said in a recent interview. He is a man who was getting Dr. King and other Civil Rights activists out of jail.” (If I remember my history, Marshall was also the person who told King to distance himself from Bayard Rustin—but that is not this story (smile).
“He was responsible for Brown vs. Board of Education. Under the guidance of Professor Huston, they fought all the small battles in the court. It was just finding out the details of that struggle and then walk in that man’s shoes for a couple of hours was a real thrill. It might be of all the things I have done on stage, my favorite. He was just an amazing human being. I am happy to get this story out for another generation.”
WS: Talk about how your walk in the arts has allowed you to do justice to such a character, such a life? You are at a point in your career when it fits, wouldn’t you say?
Jones laughs. “Well I am the right age. It presents him after he retires. He says at the beginning of the play, ‘I have given 50 years to the law.’ I have given 43-44 years to the theatre. I have the fortune to have started at the Negro Ensemble Theatre with Turner Ward. I originated a role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, A Soldier’s Play. I worked with the brothers, Denzel and Sam Jackson, who went on to become major box office stars, and I can’t emphasize enough how important it was to be able to work with Douglas Turner Ward (Day of Absence). He is responsible for mentoring and teaching generations of African American actors, playwrights, designers. He put so many people into the business. We needed forget that Douglas created the modern black theatre movement in the early ‘60s when he wrote the editorial in the New York Times, “Theatre for White People Only,” and that led to the discussion that led to the creation of the Negro Ensemble Company and pushed the door open which led to the creation of all the ethnic theatres. We’re talking Asian, Native American or woman’s theatre, Gay and Lesbian, all the sub-groups that eventually began to function in the structure of American theatre and give voice to their stories. I think all of this is possible because of the work of Douglas Turner Moore.” To hear more visit: http://tobtr.com/8558877 To see “Thurgood” visit: http://www.lhtsf.org/tickets.html
THE FORUM CONVERSATION SERIES LAUNCHES WITH LEGAL PANEL DISCUSSING ISSUES OF COURTROOM BIAS, RULINGS, ELECTION
Prominent Civil Rights defender Attorney John Burris hosts evening with legal experts, judicial candidates.
Attorney John Burris, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights defenders, in conversation with legal experts Otis Bruce, Jr. (Senior Deputy District Attorney, Marin County), Paul Henderson (Deputy Chief of Staff, Public Safety for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee), Scott Jackson (Law Professor, Director of the Litigation Center, Golden Gate University) and Jennifer Madden (Assistant District Attorney, Alameda County). Reception to follow.
The conversation will be candid, with the objective of gaining an insider’s perspective on the criminal justice system from these accomplished professionals, together in discussion for the first time. Timing is everything, and in this election year, these four impressive African Americans are also candidates for four different Bay Area Superior Court Judicial seats – Bruce (Marin County), Henderson (San Francisco County), Jackson (Seat 1, Alameda County) and Madden (Seat 2, Alameda County).
The event takes place, Thursday, April 28, 2016, 7:00 p.m. at Impact Hub Oakland, 2323 Broadway Oakland CA
Visit the event page: www.bit.ly/theforum-justice
Open Engagement@ Oakland Museum of CA
Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) hosts Open Engagement (OE) 2016. We will explore the theme of POWER. This befits the legacy of Northern California’s radical politics such as the black power movement represented by the Black Panther Party founded fifty years ago in Oakland. This particular installment of OE is the first chapter in a trilogy of themes and institutional locales that will consider JUSTICE at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2017, and in 2018 returning to the Queens Museum in New York to explore SUSTAINABILITY .
Open Engagement’s 2016 keynote speakers are activist Angela Davis and artist Suzanne Lacy. These iconic figures bracket the unique space that OE is becoming as a site of care for the field of socially engaged art and as the meeting ground for aesthetics and social activism.
Power is the ability to make desired results happen. OE believes in the genius of the many so we invite presenters and attendees to define what power means for themselves as individuals and communities.
What is it? The digital age may have forever transformed the path to power. Now it is less about the individual and physical control and more about the crowd and influence of information. But liberation and dystopia have gone hand in hand. The Arab Spring and #BlackLivesMatter movements have had profound and far reaching effects, in part through the aid of digital tools, yet the core concerns for humane societies haven’t changed – and may have gotten worse. What is the calculus of new and old power that we seek?
How do we get it? We can grab or make it. When not given fairly and freely, how do we effectively demand opportunity? When strident and just calls for equity are met with further resistance, then what? What are the innovations to create new DIO (do-it-ourselves) avenues to power? How can we grasp our independent agency to influence and turn this influence into change?
Conference panel:
April 30, 2016
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Lecture Hall — Level 1
Gathering together some of the most provocative voices of the Bay Area, our panelists speculate on the role of arts practitioners to record and amplify the experience and concerns of disabled people 25 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act. We will discuss current projects that present creative challenges to mental illness and police violence, race and disability poetics, medical/ technological interventions, and political activism. We are united in the belief that authoring contributions to the cultural and historic record is crucial to empowering people with disabilities.
Discussants are author / artist Corbett O’Toole, filmmaker/ artist Lisa Ganser, artist/ curator Cara E. Levine, poet/ performance artist Leroy Moore, photographer/ disability rights activist Anthony Tusler, and community activist/ oral historian Alice Wong. Moderated by artist Jennifer Justice.
An Easter Story: Jerusalem, California
by Wanda Sabir
Black man seated on a shopping cart wearing a sweater as slacks, smoking a cigar in Oakland’s Chinatown is an anomaly, so as I walk by him, I turn around and look again. Was I really seeing this? I was flabbergasted. I could not believe my eyes: a naked black man? I called RJ and told him what I was witnessing and asked him what I should do. He told me to go to the Salvation Army and get the slightly built man some clothes. He suggested a men’s size 8 ½ shoe.
When I walked into the busy store a couple blocks away, I see a friend trying on a faux fur stole, which looked good on her. Might be a bit warm for Easter Sunday in Oakland – but two of us tell her to go on and buy it. As I wandered the store looking for jogging pants, tee-shirts, and shoes, I learn that most of the men’s shoes are kept for Army men. I find sandals which might have been too small, but I hoped not. I pick up canvas shoes, but they are too large and there are no socks, so I put them back. I purchase a pair of khaki walking shorts, flannel shorts, two tee-shirts, long jogging pants and a hooded front zipped sweatshirt.
There was only one check stand open and the line was long. I didn’t want the elder to leave, so I requested another checker and one came to the register and rang up my purchases. I then raced back across the street where the regal elder sat calmly smoking a cigar.
I was kind of nervous. I didn’t want to intrude, but I went up to him and told him I bought him some clothes as I began taking the items out of the bag and showing them to him. I told him I would leave the bag with him for the items, but he took the shoes and another item and put it in his cart. I repeated what I said about the bag and stepped back so that he wouldn’t take the items from my hands. Each item was greeted with a “thank you Ma’am.”
Felt funny to be thanked so formally, considering he might be my elder, but looks are deceiving. I have learned over the past few months that people who look to be my elders are actually younger than me. So perhaps I am his elder (smile).
When I finished speaking I gave him the bag which he added to his cart where the red floral blanket and other items were stored. I then left. I forgot to ask him if he was hungry, but he didn’t mention it, so I hoped that his day continued to go well and that he had a safe place to sleep that evening. I was tempted to go by the site later that evening about midnight when I was driving home from a play, also about a displaced man, Johnny “Rooster” Byron. Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, produced by Secondwind Productions March 4-26, in San Francisco, is set in Wiltshire, England during the holiday celebration honoring St. George.
Rooster, portrayed powerfully by actor Ian Walker, has occupied a forest just outside of town for 26 years when real-estate developers want to expand their housing stock and get an ordinance against Rooster to take the land where he has lived in a camper undisturbed up to now. The town kids love him. His place is one where there is no judgement; they can experiment with drugs, sex and feel free. Located deep among the trees in a sacred forest, Rooster’s sanctuary is a place where the elder tells stories, gives guidance and sets the kids on their way, when they eventually journey into the lives carved out for them by a larger social order. A social order which appears in orange vests, loud speakers, clubs, video cameras waving threatening legal papers which they paste on a noncompliant, unruffled Rooster.
In Candomblé, St. George (or Saint Sebastian), the syncretized orisha or black diety, Ogún (also spelled Ogum) is the warrior, fighter of injustice, defender of his people. He is said to have been the first orisha to descend from “orun,” heavens, to the earth “aiye,” to make it habitable for humanity and orisha. In establishing the ile aiye or house of the earth, Ogún is seen as “the father of civilization. It was his tools and labor that cleared away the wilderness to build cities, homes, and roads. He is the cutting edge of the knife and as such is often misunderstood. The knife can be used to kill someone, or to save someone in surgery – such is Ogun’s nature.
“Ogún lives in the wilderness and forested areas of the world. He is often found hunting with his best friends Eleggua and Ochosi. Ogun can be a loyal and loving father who works tirelessly at his forge making new inventions, or he can be a blood thirsty warrior that swings machetes and decapitates his enemies.” [1]
“He is believed by his followers to have wo ile sun, to have disappeared into the earth’s surface instead of dying, in a place named Ire-Ekiti. Throughout his earthly life, he is thought to have fought for the people of Ire thus is known also as Onire. In Dahomey religion, Gu is the vodun (deity) of war and patron deity of smiths and craftsmen. He was sent to earth to make it a nice place for people to live, and he has not yet finished this task.”[2]
Butterworth’s character certainly captures much that is African deity and folk hero, Ogún. There is a mystical element connected to Rooster concerning his birth and resurrection. He has special blood and seems incapable of dying. Townsfolk whom he grew up with visit so that Rooster can recount their creation story. He holds their sacred memories sacrosanct, even if he is often the topic of ridicule or harassment. Rooster represents a rite of passage for boys and girls into adulthood. For those kids who listen, the Rooster moments are singularly life changing, shape-shifting.
Johnny Rooster Byron says he was born on the tip of a speeding bullet, which he pulls from a pocket and tosses to Ginger to see. Ginger tosses it back in disbelief.
“A Byron boy comes with three things.” Rooster tells his skeptical young audience. “A cloak and a dagger, and his own teeth. He comes fully equipped. He doesn’t need nothing. And when he dies, he lies in the ground like a lump of granite. He don’t rot. There’s Byron boys buried all over this land, lying in the ground as fresh as the day they was planted. In them’s cloaks. With the teeth sharp. Fingernails sharp. And the two black eyes, staring out, sharp as spears. You get close and stare into those black eyes, watch out. Written there is old words that will shake you. Shake you down.”
Ian Walker as Rooster looms as tall as the trees surrounding him. These evergreen soldiers are fitting companions as is the youth, Ginger (Nickolas Rice) who loves Rooster, even when he ignores the wannabe DJ. Other interesting characters are Phaedra, (portrayed by Tyler Barnes). The fairy queen with wings that light up, wears a crown and hides out with Rooster. Other interesting characters are: the multiple adolescent boys, one about to leave for Australia, the singing professor and the dancing bartender, Westley (actor, Stefin Collins). The play is set in Ireland, 2014.
“Jerusalem” directed by Misha Hawk-Wyatt, perhaps questions the notion of the antihero as Rooster is both beloved and hated. What of his story is true and what is make believe? Was he really born of a virgin with teeth and a spear as were all his descendants? Did Rooster meet the giant who built Stonehenge? What of the sacred drum the giant gave him to summon the mighty giant and the giant’s family, if Rooster ever needed their help?
With a gorgeous soundtrack featuring blues artists, rock and other dialectic discursive digressions, the youthful and more mature characters, emboldened by a stellar cast, tell a remarkable story. The tale sits on lilting tongues within a world which is rapidly changing despite Rooster’s up to then solitary, yet heroic efforts against the big machine. Even the earth spirits or gnomes and leprechauns cannot save Rooster’s home in the woods from “progress.”
If our lives are nothing but a series of narratives, collections of stories strung together or linked to a larger dynamic, yet human tapestry, then “Jerusalem” and what Rooster faces when his time runs out, is a terminus or conclusion we can all anticipate. Rooster serves as the canvas upon which the uninitiated shoot like arrows into a sky then return. For at least a generation, he has welcomed the local kids with caustic or cautionary humor. He loves “the vermin,” even when they do harm his fabric—piercing or tearing away at his soul.
As the bulldozers approach, the eviction imminent, we wonder where Rooster will fly too next or if he plans like his relative, the Phoenix, to also go up in flames. It doesn’t hurt, even as Secondwind Productions strives for race and gender neutrality, it works politically that Ian Walker, as protagonist, is a strapping black man.
The intimate set has the audience privy to various activities, whether this is the outdoor tub filled with fresh water where Rooster dips his head in the morning or the sofa which is a welcoming sight for travelers who come in peace. The space is large enough for the kids to have a party, yet, small so that they can’t hide from fate when the sun rises and well . . . accounts are tallied for payment. Good humor seems to be the way of this world, and when humor fails, Rooster gets on his post and crows.
Notes:
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[1] http://santeriachurch.org/the-orishas/ogun/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogun
Theatre
Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, directed by Marilyn Langbehn, is at at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Avenue, El Cerrito, April 15-May 8. Visit http://ccct.org/the-mountaintop/
On April 3, 1968, after delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to re-evaluate the meaning of his life, confront his destiny, and come to terms with his unfinished legacy, as every person must do. A compelling and thought-provoking reimagination of events the night before the assassination of the celebrated civil rights leader.
DAVID MURRAY & CLASS STRUGGLE BACK IN TOWN
Saturday, April 9, 2016 8:00pm, EastSide Cultural Center, 2277 International Blvd. Oakland. Tickets are from $10-25 (no one is ever turned away for lack of funds)
Tenor saxophone giant David Murray comes home with his guitarist son Mingus in tow to round out a local quartet called “Class Struggle”. Murray, perhaps the world’s most prolific recording jazz artist, has revolutionized the 70s-80s avant-garde and expanded the music’s reach throughout the African Diaspora. Equally innovative on bass clarinet, Murray has recorded with various quartet and octet combos, poets Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange and Ishmael Reed, and is a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet.
Performing at the EastSide Cultural Center on Saturday, April 9th David Murray & Class Struggle come to East Oakland with the intent to perform the music in Black communities to retain its historic and soulful roots. As sponsoring hosts, EastSide Arts Alliance recognizes that cultural gentrification – the mainstream commercializing of the music – is a key component of community gentrification. The annual Malcolm X JazzArts Festival and efforts to establish a Black Cultural Zone in Oakland are part of the resistance against the onslaught of gentrification, while over a quarter of the Black community has been uprooted in just the past decade. Maintaining the music and arts in our schools and independently-run cultural centers is critical to the survival and livelihood of healthy empowered families and neighborhoods.
The music will be GREAT! This is an event not to be missed.
On the Fly
San Francisco International Film Festival 59, April 21-May 5
http://www.sffs.org/sfiff59/about/welcome-to-sfiff59 Crowns @ Theatre on San Pedro Square, April 8-May 1, 29 N. San Pedro Street, San Jose, Top of Form Friday, Apr 8-May 1. Visit http://www.tabardtheatre.org/tickets.html CROWNS, starring Tabard’s original 2009 cast strutting their “hattitude”: Glenna Brambill-Williams, Debra J. Crenshaw, James Creer, Juanita Harris, Tracy Perrilliat, and Paula Warren. In this moving and celebratory musical, hats become a springboard for the storytelling and exploration of coming home. Written by Regina Taylor, adapted from the book Crowns, Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry. Alonzo King’s LINES Contemporary Ballet in collaboration with Jason Moran and Charles Lloyd open April at Yerba Buena Center for Theatre, April 21-30, www.linesballet.org, 415.978.2787 Youth Speaks Grand Slam Finals! April 16, 7:00 p.m., at Davies Symphony Hall, Grove Street between Van Ness & Franklin, San Francisco, http://www.youthspeaks.org The 14th Annual Oakland International Film Festival is April 5-9 featuring more than 50 films screened at the Grand Lake Theater, Holy Names University, Impact Hub Oakland, Geoffrey’s Inner Circle and other Oakland venues. The Festival opens at Holy Names University in Oakland. Visit http://www.oiff.org/
Uppity Edutainment: Films by and about Black People Every Thursday in Oakland
Uppity Edutainment screens films by and for black people every Thursday at Oakstop. There is a special screening of “Black Friday: What Legacy Will You Leave,” Thursday, April 21. What is special about this screening at Oakstop, 1721 Broadway, Oakland, is the Economic Literacy Workshop in conjunction with the film and skype conversation with director, Ric Mathis.
The film will be screened in multiple locations throughout the North Bay. Films screen at 7, dinner is at 6 p.m. For information call (510) 592-8733 or visit http://www.up-ed.com/home.html The last Thursday in March 31, Uppity screens “Not For Sale: The Oscar Wright Story,” directed by Michael Lange.
Keeping it Wild @ Sixth Annual SF Green Film Festival
San Francisco Green Film Festival returns Thursday, April 14 through Wednesday, April 20, for its biggest year yet. For its sixth edition the Green Film Fest will be a city-wide celebration and focal point for the week of Earth Day. As the West Coast’s leading green doc destination, the Festival is bringing together films, filmmakers, experts, and audiences to spark the next great environmental ideas.
The Festival will present 70 internationally acclaimed, eco-focused films. Over 90 visiting filmmakers and guest speakers will be in attendance to delve into some of the most pressing environmental issues and innovative solutions. Audiences will be inspired to move beyond their theatre seats, with tangible ideas and connections to take positive environmental action.
Scaling the country’s highest peak in AN AMERICAN ASCENT; fighting to make rivers run free in A RIVER BETWEEN US; celebrating the National Park Service Centennial in KEEP IT WILD shorts program; and honoring the 50th Anniversary of the film that started a conservation movement, BORN FREE. Additional events in this theme include: WILD VR (an immersive workshop on virtual reality); and PARROTS, PELICANS, AND PEOPLE: OH MY! (a discussion with wildlife filmmaker Judy Irving).
Opening Night will take place at the Castro Theatre – a new venue for Green Film Fest – on Thursday, April 14, before moving to the Festival’s main venue the Roxie Theatre from April 15 through 19, and returning to the Castro Theatre for Closing Night, April 20. Other Festival Venues include: FestHQ at 518 Valencia; Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch; YBCA; Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center in Berkeley; and the Banatao Auditorium in Suturdja Dai Hall on UC Berkeley Campus.
Pricing for all regular screenings: General Admission $15; Students, seniors and disabled adults $14; Members $13. Tickets for receptions and parties are individually priced. There are free events held in FestHQ (518 Valencia) on April 16 & 17; and at San Francisco Public Library Main Branch on April 19. Visit http://www.greenfilmfest.org/
Theatre
Retired firefighter, Charles Johnson, scores another success as a playwright in “Ain’t It So…”
World Premiere of Charles Johnson’s “Ain’t It So,” directed by Richard Harder and produced by Multi-Ethnic Theatre, runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, April 21 – May 14 at 8:00 pm, plus Saturday matinees, April 23 and May 14 at 2:00 pm at the newly redesigned Gough Street Playhouse,1620 Gough Street (at Bush) in San Francisco, in the west wing of Trinity-St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
In “Ain’t It So…,” it is 1983. Two older African-American women, born and raised in Alabama, live on the South Side of Chicago, wait for the husbands to retire from their factory jobs. The wives hope to return down home, but the husbands share a secret from the past that stands in their way.
Tickets are $20-$40. 415-420-8000 $20-$40 www.wehavemet.org. There is a $10 discount on all ticket prices on Thursdays. Visit www.wehavemet.org
W. Kamau Bell’s #UNITEDSHADES
United Shades of America, a new CNN Original Series hosted by W. Kamau Bell, premieres on Sunday, April 24, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The eight-part series follows the comedian as he explores subcultures across the country, using comedy to start a conversation about race and how our differences unite and divide us. The series takes Kamau from the far corners of Alaska to Florida’s retirement homes to America’s most notorious prison. Each hour-long episode strives to show the country is not built upon just one, but many diverse and colorful definitions of America.
In the premiere episode, Kamau heads to the South to challenge the ‘new’ Ku Klux Klan. This generation of Klansmen claims they have rebranded and Kamau must see for himself. The series will regularly air Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT following new episodes of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Series trailer: http://cnn.it/1TePum4
Miles Ahead, a Review
In his directorial debut as Miles Davis, Don Cheadle certainly calls forth a creative yet deeply troubled spirit. In his Miles we see what happens when astral self-splits or loses sight of what is earthy. The Davis we meet is in a slump; after a period of profound artistic success he slows to a creative crawl. A ghost haunts him, her name is Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). The beautiful dancer from Chicago captures his soul and the mercurial master of sound chases her away. “Sketches of Spain,” and “Someday My Prince Will Come,” are just two of the many ways his love, their love manifest in the world then and even now. She knows she is his inspiration and sacrifices her own love of dance and movement for a solo performance on Miles’s stage 24/7. We watch Miles watching her, no longer there, but a presence nonetheless. Perhaps it is her beauty in the midst of so much ugliness—the infidelity, the coke, booze, disrespect and violence, that captivates us as much as the man who courts her until she says yes.
“Miles Ahead” speaks to karma and the fact that ugliness has a price and Miles was not immune. He paid for his trespasses on time, 3-4-6 years dry, record company calling for new music, his public assuming he’d died despite the absent body. The artist lives like a hermit in his multiple stories apartment alternately painting, listening to the radio, recording notes—thinking, daydreaming.
Cheadle’s Miles is unpredictable and dangerous—a reporter comes to his door unannounced and Davis punches him in the nose. Later he teaches this same guy how to use his sparing bag. They get high together and even though Miles shouldn’t trust him he does. Cheadle’s raspy voice, curly hair and audacity that is his Miles has a truth that makes a heart race or a hand tremble in the face of such genius wrapped in such unpredictability. Being in the man’s company could get you killed. Even without a pistol, Miles is dangerous. Several times he puts his pistol to someone’s head and pulls the trigger shattering ideas about black manhood and fear. On screen, Davis is fearless, which is perhaps another reason why he got away with so much and lived as long as he did.
An enigma, Cheadle’s film adds a bit of light on a man to know him, one seems to have to step into a darkness his soul occupies. Shadowy, his horn served as a flashlight dispelling demons—slaying dragons, releasing June bugs and shoeflies. There seems to be a tranquility about the character when he is in his zone—never quite captured by the moment, but separated from his internal madness long enough to have perspective. Davis’s rages were constant and well known; however, Frances loves him and it is something he recognizes like King Macbeth recognizes in Lady Macbeth – this thing that hearts do, “bend and break,” even when their paths diverge and part; even when he realizes that she was his strength and anchor.
Davis loses his way, and the film has him chasing a score, a tape, stolen goods. However, what he gets is a younger, more articulate and assured self he thought gone. In Cheadle’s hands, there is grace for the wicked. Yes, Miles is wicked. He is mean and arrogant, brash and hard to take, yet if music soothe the beast, then certainly Miles played on to heal or to forget, perhaps to move on after Frances?
On International Women’s Day I was in the theatre watching a film about a man infamous for his temper and fisticuffs. Also known for his musical brilliance, the film makes one question, at what inspired this creative genius and at what cost? For Cheadle’s Davis the creative package came with excessive baggage: drugs, sex, and a need to control. Davis reminds me a lot of Louis Armstrong, different generations, same Jim Crow. Armstrong knows what slice is up, while Davis thinks because he has a gig and his name is on the marquee that the police will not take offense at a black man seeing a white woman to a taxi, then standing on the corner smoking a cigarette like he owns the corner, if not the block and the street. Davis’s head is smashed and then he is arrested, thrown into the patrol car and taken to the precinct and booked.
One wonders just a short while after Cicely Tyson is given the Presidential Medal why this story, why now. Does it have anything to do with Davis’s 90th birthday next month, May 26? I wonder how many wives Miles had and what their collective story would say about privilege and sex and race. When the power dividends get parceled out, black women are still on the lower rung.
Hard to believe when rumor would have it that she is on top.
Miles lives in a swanky house filled with art and space for music. He is dabbling with ideas, his fans anxious for something new. It’s been three years and his record label is also pulling at the bit. Davis is alone and lonely. He is riding a white cloud, falling off just in time for it to crash—when he is annoyed by the doorbell.
With a temper that is legendary, he punches a reporter who says his label sent him to write a story and so begins the adventure which is a crime story with a bit of love thrown in. We don’t know much about the beautiful dancer, no one even says that the person driving Miles when they first meet, is Max Roach. The white guys are bigger than life, the black guys with talent, underdogs. Those who know who these creative geniuses are know, because we know, not because the script is clear.
Gangsters don’t know what they are getting into when they decide to mess with Miles. He is fearless limping with a gun into offices where he demands money. He is beyond cool and Don Cheadle has tapped into Miles DNA. If you blink you think, yeah, that’s him. I kept having to check to see what date Davis died. I looked at Cheadle and think, is that Miles? I didn’t know that Cheadle could blow, yet he held his own with alumni Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock and younger musicians, Esperanza Spaulding and Gary Clark Jr. Dressed in red, dark shades and elegant and cool Cheadle’s Miles was superb. I especially loved the framing of the closing moments of Miles the film. Artisitcally the film looks and sounds lush, with a depth fitting such a storied score/life — Miles Dewey Davis III.
Cheadle’s Davis didn’t say much. His vocabulary is his silences. Observant, his boxing bag which hangs in his study—I wondered if its presence was new. Davis seemed always ready to knock an opponent out—his enemy (hubris) similar to Macbeth’s . . . imagined, yet real, a presence so great he seems to never feel safe. Surrounded by enemies, trust centered in fear, it is hard for Cheadle’s Miles to be still, to want to be still—his character is kinetic motion, like atoms fired up ready to explode. The man is constantly moving.
So Miles’s tape is stolen and perhaps this is a metaphor for something larger—he loses something really central to his life. I don’t know if he grows any wiser because of it—he still beats his wives, but for a moment he is able to recapture the muse before she slips away completely. And for this, the world even Mrs. Davis seems to forgive him.
I am not certain about all that. I do not know if I would be as lenient towards a man who took my life, and trashed it.
Impulsive and medicated . . . Davis hallucinates. His hip is deteriorating and he is on pain meds. Maybe this was why he was forgiven? The medication just exasperated a situation his personality seemed inclined to exploit.
You be the judge.
Directed by Don Cheadle, written by Cheadle and Steven Baigelman, “Miles Ahead” (100 mins) a Sony Pictures Classics release, is MPAA rated R for strong language throughout, drug use, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. It opens April 8 at Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco, and April 15 in other Bay Area theatres.
Hospitality House presents: Celebrating Movement Warriors: A Conversation with Pam Tau Lee & Stephen Bingham
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
5:30PM to 7:00PM at Kelly Cullen Community Auditorium, 220 Golden Gate Ave (at Leavenworth) in San Francisco
Moderated by Steve Williams, Co-Founder of LeftRoots, hear the the incredible stories of true movement warriors!
ALSO curated by Hospitality House (http://hospitalityhouse.org/):
Mutual Ground/Varied Approach
Art Exhibition and Bazaar
Friday, April 8th 5:00PM to 7:00PM
Hospitality House’s Community Arts Program
1009 Market Street