In honor of the ongoing struggle for peace and justice in the Congo and the International Violence Against Women Act that is making its way through Congress, please join us for an evening of film, poetry, awareness, and fundraising for Friends of the Congo.
Presented will be: * A 20min film on the DRC * A speaker from the organization Friends of the Congo ... Also: * Jonathan Tucker – D.C Slam Poet, activist, and winner of the 2010 C.O.U.P. (Community Oriented Underground Poet) Award from the National Underground Spoken Word Poetry Awards. He has represented Washington, D.C. at the National Poetry Slam for two years (2009 and 2010) on the Busboys and Poets 11th Hour Slam Team and is frequently working in schools and community organizations leading workshops on spoken word performance poetry.
* Anna Mwalagho – African Spoken Word Artist / Poetic Afro Beat Artist. Anna has entertained dignitaries such as NOBEL PRIZE winner Nobel Laureate Mrs. Wangari Maathai, but she has graced the stages of high profile venues including: The Kennedy Center, The World Bank, US Army Material Command, UNAIDS, America’s 400TH Anniversary, US Africa Business Conference, Embassy of Kenya, Washington Convention Center, Zanzibar on the waterfront restaurant and club, Smithsonian Museum of African Art, State Department and many more. She has been featured on MHZ-TV, WHUR 96.3 FM, WETA 90.9FM, Voice of America, CBS TV/WUSA9 TV, XM Satellite Radio, Harold Channer TV and many more.
Learn how you can help push the International Violence Against Women Act through Congress.
Light Refreshments will be provided. Please donate as much as you can to Friends of the Congo. $10 suggested minimum donation.
This is a clip from Na nga def: Diasporics Encounter Africans, a stirring documentary about five Brazilian activists who spearheaded a pan-African women's collaborative in Gorée, Senegal. However, the documentary has a sad epilogue. Angel Wainaina, the young Kenyan hiphop activist interviewed in the film, died tragically in Nairobi last year (2009) during a supermarket fire.
"Black women are treated differently from normal people." (If viewing from Facebook, click here.)
tags: Kenya, Senegal, hiphop, afro-feminism, activism, brazil
African American scholar, Ron Walters, has made his Homegoing at the age of 72. I have looked over several tributes and I wanted to add that while in Ghana I had the honor of attending a lecture by Professor Walters on the relevance of pan-Africanism in the 21st century. The event was hosted by the W.E.B. Du Bois Centre for Pan African Culture in Accra. Professor Walters was a Black Nationalist and a Pan-Africanist or at least he was in my view. His commitment to black struggle was not enunciated with powerful rhetoric. Rather, he made his case with impeccable scholarship, the power of the keyboard as it were.
May his journey to the world of the Ancestors be sweet.
Axé! **** Ron Walters, Community's “Tallest Tree,” Dead at 72(Dap @Mark Anthony Neal)
For more than four decades, Ronald Walters, PhD. served the African-American community, the United States and the world as a consultant, teacher, writer, mentor and friend. His service came to a close Sept. 10, when he lost a battle with cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 72 years old.
Walters was born in Wichita, Kan. in 1938. He earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from Fisk University and earned a masters degree in African studies and a doctorate in International Studies from American University. Walters was a professor since the early 1970s, teaching at numerous institutions including at Georgetown, Syracuse, Brandeis and Howard universities and the University of Maryland. He was chairman of the Howard University Department of Political Science and chairman of Afro-American Studies at Brandeis.
He also served as a visiting professor at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Walters’ longtime friend the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Howard University had recently convinced Walters to come out of retirement and return to teaching, and that Walters was looking forward to the opportunity.
U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) met Walters while a student at Howard. “As a teacher, he always found time for his students,” Cummings told the AFRO. “When he was at Howard, we would fight to get in his classes. He was always telling us to reach high, to be a part of the political process.”
Walters also made his mark as a dedicated scholar, authoring and co-authoring more than 10 books and hundreds of academic articles and commentaries. He was awarded the Ralph Bunch Prize for his book Black Presidential Politics in America. He was also a political consultant, serving as policy adviser to former congressmen William Gray and Charles Diggs. He worked with a number of organizations and serving as director of public policy for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns.
We could really use some more Baldwins right about now (dap @ shoba and marcus). And speaking of James Baldwin we really need to stop disrespecting our Black same gender loving (gay) sisters and brothers. One luv. GI
"The [American] South is not half as bad as San Francisco." To view click on video below or here.
Comrade: My brother, don't you know that the white man used it to colonize Africa!? How can you call yourself an anthropologist?
Kwame: Have you ever heard of Katherine Dunham?
Comrade: Katherine who?
Kwame: If you have never heard of Katherine Dunham then you only know the white man's version of anthropology. When I claim anthropology I invoke great Ancestors like Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston.
*** "How can you be down with black/Afrikan people and call yourself an anthropologist?" I get that question occasionally. It's a good question. It's an important question. I sometimes go into long ass explanations. But now that I have fielded this question many times, I have concluded that it makes more sense to name anthropologists I admire and do my best to produce work that honors their efforts, reflects our heritage and advances our political aims. The formal practice of anthropology was a child of colonialism, no doubt. But our Ancestors appropriated anthropology in ways that could never have been anticipated by those early white male founders. Furthermore, curiosity about cultural diversity is very Afrikan and fundamentally human. So imma take the good, the bad, and the ugly and try to create things that are more good than bad.
Axé!
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006)
"It was never just about steps--it was about your soul" Dunham student (click on video or here)
As a graduate student in anthropology during the mid-'30s, Ms. Dunham spent nine months in Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica and Martinique filming indigenous dances. "When I got to Haiti," she said in the 1988 interview, "I saw that some of the body movements in their dances resembled the body movements I had seen in the black storefront churches of Chicago."
Ms. Dunham returned to the United States and incorporated the motions she had observed into the vocabulary of modern dance and ballet. "What I tried to do," she said in a 2002 interview, "is take the meaning and the feeling and the intensity of the things that were portrayed and prepare them with a well-trained company so that they would convey to the audience the full meaning of that particular ritual or act."
What resulted from this synthesis became known as the Dunham Technique. It proved influential not just in dance but also in other performing arts. "Miss D.," as Ms. Dunham was known to associates, oversaw for many years the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts, in New York. Among its students were the choreographers Arthur Mitchell and Peter Gennaro, the ballerina Nora Kaye, and the actors James Dean, Marlon Brando and Chita Rivera.
Ms. Dunham saw the Dunham Technique as a spiritual as well as physical discipline. "Anyone who seriously works in Dunham Technique," she said in 1988, "comes out not only a good professional dancer, but also a humanist."
Such a melding of motion and morality was central to Ms. Dunham's life. One of her most famous dances, "Southland," portrayed a Southern lynching. Ms. Dunham, who would not let her company perform before segregated audiences, was enraged to find out during a 1944 appearance in Louisville, Ky., that no blacks had been allowed in the auditorium. Upon learning this, she went on stage wearing a "White Only" sign attached to her bottom.
There are many Gods in the Vodou spiritual system. The Yanvalou dance honors the Ayisyen (Haitian) Lwa (God), Damballah ("Snake God"). For a demonstration of the Dunham Technique's interpretation of Yanvalou, click here. Incidentally, while I was in Ghana conducting dissertation research I had some fascinating conversations with Australian Aboriginal cultural performers touring in Ghana. One of the members explained to me that the indigenous people of Australia have a reverence for snakes. I can't recall all of the various qualities he named but they included the observation that snakes were nurturing and protective. This was all fascinating to me given that many Americans have a dreadful fear of snakes and snakes are literally demonized in Christianity. [Also check this link which claims that Australians are "well afraid of snakes." The entry should have said white people in Australia are "well afraid of snakes."]
Katherine Dunham on the "Circle of Energy" click here.
Katherine Dunham speaks on the Afrikan God Shango (click on video or here)
Charles Moore Dance Company performs Shango (click on video or here)
Katherine Dunham: Queen Mother of Black Dance by Courtney Thompson (click on video or here)
Katherine Dunhum's oeuvre showcased in St. Louis exhibit click here.
tags: activism, African traditional religion, anthropology, culture, dance, haiti
