Don’t Bring No Bad News, photo exhibit at DCAC
@
District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC)
2438 18th Street NW
Washington DC 20009
202.462.7833
www.dcartscenter.org
gallery hours: Wed-Sun 2pm-7pm
April 28 - May 21, opening reception Friday April 28th 7-9pm
Featuring the work of:
Michael Platt,
Harlee Little,
Kasha Stewart +
Kim Johnson
The exhibit entitled,
“Don’t Bring No Bad News”, will focus on positive imagery that reflects the African American experience. It captures our spirit, our hopes, our joy, our laughter, our faith and the inspiration we encounter everyday in our lives.
It is essential that we show the African American experience is the human experience, as our stories share a common history with our families, friends, and neighbors. These images will include everyday messages of love, hope and appreciation. The overall aim of this exhibit is to share visual stories whose good news should be told. - Barbara Blanco
A Hunger for Justice
A Hunger for Justice
Playwright Wole Soyinka Is Driven by His 'Overactive Sense of Right and Wrong'
By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 27, 2006; C01
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. The oak-paneled colloquium room at Harvard's Barker Center is too small for the noontime crowd. Another 25 chairs arrive before the speaker does, but with the body count nearing 100, there still aren't enough seats. Several women in the back corner perch on a table, beneath an outsize portrait of a Harvard notable in academic robes, as the 72-year-old winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature strides in.
"Quite simply, Wole Soyinka is Africa's most acclaimed writer," the professor introducing him says.
Soyinka has a new memoir out this month and before something more urgent seized his attention, he'd been planning to speak about it today. He was going to call his talk "How Not to Write an Autobiography."
Don't start on a negative note, would have been his most important advice. In the late 1990s, as he began his book, he was in exile from his native Nigeria -- forced to flee because he opposed the brutal dictator Sani Abacha. At first, he allowed his rage to take over the narrative.
Not that anyone could blame him for being angry: As long as Abacha remained in power, Soyinka was a marked man. Previous Nigerian dictators might have hesitated to go after a Nobel laureate, but Abacha had shocked the world by hanging writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, and he was trying Soyinka for treason in absentia.
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SIGNS OF THE TIMES
click on flyer for a larger view
The 5th L, EYECON Ent., & The Black Circle Group Present...
SIGNS OF THE TIMES, "Lyrical Soul in Concert" Vol. 1
Saturday, May 6th 2006
8pm-11pm
@ Center Stage, PearlStone Theatre
700 N. Calvert Street
Baltimore, Md 21202
ft. E the Poet-emcee & LOVE of Torchlight Ent.
The J ROCK Project (J S.O.U.L. & Ab Rock)
Olu Butterfly
The 5th L (Native Son & The Dri Fish) ft. Chuck The Madd OX
& The Next Movement
Hosted by Ad-Lib
Tickets $20 in advance, can be bought on line @ WWW.5thL.COM
$25 @ the door
For additional information call 443-921-0596 or e-mail thedrifish@hotmail.com
Ticket can be bought off line at...
The Yabba Pot
Vegetarian delight restaurant/ Vegan hot spot
771 Washington Blvd, Baltimore, MD
410) 962-8638
Everyone's Place
African Cultural Center
1356 W North Ave, Baltimore, MD
(410) 728-0877
support the anacostia museum
The Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture has got some really dope stuff going on,
check out their calendar here, and then come around my way and visit
updates and big ups
Thanks to everyone who came out to my group reading at BusBoys it was a really good time. I could not have had a better birthday weekend...hanging with poets, telling funny poet stories, workshopping poems it was great. A dope way to ring in 31.
Anyway, enough about me here are some updates, N'Digo Rose is a featured artist (w/interview) on
Open Mic Magazine.com go and check that out.
At the reading this weekend I met Joseph Lapp, who has written a booklet on the history of the Kenilworth neighborhood. He got a grant from the Humanities Council of Washington DC to publish the booklet. Here is an excerpt:
"African American neighborhoods in DC have a rich history that is being lost as older residents pass away, and I wanted to help document some of the history of the neighborhood before it disappears. Also, the public housing complex here, Kenilworth Courts, has a very proud history associated with it, and I wanted to help record and promote the history of part of this city's public housing before all these communities get torn down.”
Read more about this booklet here
Big ups to Maori whose film Scene Not Heard, will be screening as part of the HIP-HOP 4 REEL Series at
FilmFest DC starting April 19, info is below.
Scene Not Heard
MAORI KARMAEL HOLMES
USA, 2005, 44 minutes, Color
In Person: Director Maori Karmael Holmes for April 22 screening only
Scene Not Heard is a kaleidoscopic overview of a movement at once vibrant and nationally overlooked. "Philly is soul; Philly has always been," explains one of the mostly female performers, promoters, and DJs interviewed by director Maori Karmael Holmes. "Hip-Hop is incorporated in that soul." The film coalesces around The Black Lily, a performance space within the city's hot Five Spot club that hosted a female-centric open mic jam from 1999 to 2005. "Do we have to be in a bikini in the background?" wonders poet Ursula Rucker. "Is that all we're good for?" On the strength of this eye-opening, performance-filled tribute to a scene that must be heard, the answer is obvious. -Eddie Cockrell
Shown with Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Official website (www.karmalux.com)
Saturday April 22 7:00 PM
Regal Cinemas (701 7th St. NW)
Sunday April 23 8:45 PM
Regal Cinemas (701 7th St. NW)
For more information visit www.filmfestdc.org
Guinea Pig Kids: New York's HIV experiment
As I was reading
this article I could not help but think of
Tuskegee...or more recently it reminded me of that movie
The Constant Gardner
when was U Street not cool?
April 14, 2006
U Street: The Corridor Is Cool Again
By ALICIA AULT
SAUNTER down U Street in northwest Washington almost any night and you'll hear the pulsing beat of urban nightlife: the tinny pop of a snare drum, the caustic sneering of an indie rocker, the smooth melodies of a lounge singer, the plaintive picking of a folkie and the driving chunk-a-chunk of hip-hop.
The U Street Corridor, the center of Washington's African-American nightlife for much of the 20th century and the birthplace of Duke Ellington, is vibrant again and the newest and hottest place in town for getting out on weekends after dark. The transformation that began in the late 90's, after three decades of decline and neglect, continues to gather speed, with boarded-up buildings reopened and transformed into galleries, shops, cafes and clubs, and nightlife seekers migrating over from Georgetown and Adams Morgan for a slightly older, less raucous scene where the patrons have a bit more money to spend.
"Adams Morgan is not new anymore," said Melih Buyukbayrak, who sold his interest in a restaurant there last year and is a co-owner of the new Tabaq Bistro in the U Street Corridor. "U Street is new and hip."
On weekend nights and even during the week, throngs from the city and suburbs, along with hip city visitors, crowd the dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs of the corridor, a strip of U Street from 9th Street to 16th Street and blocks nearby.
"When I come to U Street, I'm coming more for a laid-back, jazz kind of thing," said Katarro Rountree, 24, a Georgetown University graduate student dressed preppily and drinking a Corona beer at Busboys and Poets, a bookstore, cafe and performance space that opened in September at 14th and V Streets. The cafe's high-ceilinged, loftlike space would be at home in San Francisco or Seattle, and it draws a multicultural stew of aging liberals, young antiestablishment types and college students. Although he likes hardcore partying in Georgetown, Mr. Rountree said, he prefers U Street for food, music and date nights.
In the heyday of jazz, artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Shirley Horn, who was born in Washington, made regular stops on U Street. One club where they played, the Crystal Caverns, is now called the Bohemian Caverns and still books jazz acts. Another, the landmark Howard Theater, was closed in 1970 but later bought by the District of Columbia, which is soliciting redevelopment offers.
Click here to read more
around my way...
For Commuters, A New Way to Travel Through The District
$300 Million Span to Replace Aging Douglass Memorial
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 13, 2006; T03
Drive over the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge from Anacostia toward the U.S. Capitol and try to spot the river's edge. Look hard for the Washington Navy Yard on the right or Buzzard Point on the left, where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers swirl together.
You won't see much. Truncated by ramps, the vista consists of smokestacks, the top two floors of a U-Haul self-storage building and a Budweiser billboard.
That's why city engineers and planners are excited by plans to replace the 56-year-old Douglass bridge with an approximately $300 million new span designed to emphasize the waterfront and create a grand southern gateway to the heart of the District and up to the U.S. Capitol.
"This is an opportunity to provide an iconic structure, to bring people's attention back to the waterfront," said Kathleen Penney, deputy chief engineer of the District's Department of Transportation.
Click here to read more
Read poetry!
Joel Dias-Porter, aka DJ Renegade is dropping some bomb poems over on his blog, check him out
here
big ups....
Congrats are in order to
Haki Madhubuti's Third World Press, for breaking into National Best-Seller List for the first time in its almost 40 year history ( next year Third World Press will turn 40).
Read the story here
big ups to Felicia Pride (who runs the
thebacklist.net) and
her blog , where i found out about this story.
big ups....
Cloudy Day Art.com did an interview with Bro. Yao, the founder of Karibu Books; talking to him about art, institution building, poetry, etc.
Check it out here
Booker T. Washington Conference?
I know i am probably going to take a few lumps for this, but I wanted to putit out there regardless.....
I read a lot of "Black" conservative (BC) blogs and websites to balance out all of the "liberal" stuff i read on a regular basis; while surfing one of the said BC blogs i came across a link to some info on the Booker T. Washington Conference, happening here in DC. As i looked at the guests and panelists (some of who's ideas i am not familiar with), i noticed quite few BC's in the bunch and did not see any more moderate or liberal folks. I know that panels and conferences are held all the time in the name of many people, groups and movements, and voices still get left out, silenced or omitted, etc (just look at the criticism that has been stirred around the recent 2-Day Black Arts Movement Conference at Howard...
read criticism one....
read criticism two....
read criticism three).
But i think the the thing that bothers me most is i think that Booker T. Washington is victim are incomplete scholarship and simple rhetoric revolutionary bandwagoning. When engaging some folks in conversation about Washington, particular as contrasting with DuBois, the best that a lot of folks can come up with is he was and "uncle tom", for me that argument is just not sufficient; granted he did not go to Havard and did not constantly speak about such sexy topics as politics, but he did talk about hard work, ownership, and building institutions. I think that a lot folks simply speak the praise of DuBois without really grasping what either of them (but more specifically Washington) was saying or the point of view from which they were both speaking. As far as I am concerned, we need to re-exmine Washington and release ourselves of the rhetoric of some of our intellectual elders.
The lack of more moderate or liberal folks' presence at this Booker T.Washington Conference, in my opinion, will allow BC's to control how Washington will presented and allow his words and ideas to become foundation for their own rhetoric. I am no expert on either Washington or DuBois, but i do believe that they wanted the some of same things, but were using different methods and tools to get there.
Links:
http://www.celebratebookert.org/events.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.E.B._DuBois
more later...
RIP Jackie McLean, Jazz Saxophonist
April 3, 2006
Jackie McLean, Jazz Saxophonist and Mentor, Dies at 74
By PETER KEEPNEWS
Jackie McLean, an acclaimed saxophonist who took a midcareer detour to become a prominent jazz educator, died on Friday at his home in Hartford. He was 74.
His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the University of Hartford, where Mr. McLean had taught since 1970. No cause was given.
Mr. McLean was one of many gifted young musicians who burst onto the New York scene after World War II in the wake of the musical revolution known as bebop. He worked with Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he was out of his teens, and later he gained valuable seasoning in the bands of Art Blakey and Charles Mingus before he began leading his own groups.
Also a prolific composer, Mr. McLean was one of the first alto saxophonists to absorb the pervasive influence of Charlie Parker and shape it into a distinctive personal style. While the influence was clear, especially in his approach to harmony, Mr. McLean's astringent tone and impassioned phrasing marked him as more than just another Parker disciple.
His career had a second act as well. In the late 1960's he put performing aside to concentrate on teaching.
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