Wanda's Picks Radio Show: Habari Gani? UMOJA!

We open the show with Ann Chinn, Executive Director of Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers (MPP), an organization that began this year to Commemorate the nearly 2 million Africans who perished in the Middle Passage of the transatlantic human trade;

Research and identify all ports of entry for Africans during the 350 years of the transatlantic human trade and then Sponsor remembrance ceremonies at each of more than 175 middle passage ports in 50 nations of North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe; Plan final ceremonies on the east and west coasts of Africa by 2020;

Baba Achebe Hoskins, member, The Brotherhood of Elders Council speaks about Kujichagulia or Self-Determination, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, at the Malonga Center, 1428 Alice Street, Oakland. He is a 2011 City of Oakland Humanitarian Award Winner, a father, cultural worker and playwright. Baba Achebe currently facilitates a Transformative Manhood Group which is made up of fifteen elders who conduct a weekly, multi-ethnic intergenerational “Critical Thinking” session for between ten and twenty youth, thirteen to twenty five years old.

Artist, Activists: Malik Seneferu and Brotha Clint join us to talk about the Kwanzaa 2012 kick-off in San Francisco today at 12 noon at City Hall. Visit www.thevillageprojectsf.org

We close with a conversation with Adimu Madyun and Ayodele Nzinga Ph.D. who talk about Warrior Spirit Art Experience this Saturday, UJAMAA or Cooperative Economics. The evening features: "WolfHawkJaguars: A Band of Hunters" at the 57th Street Gallery, 5701 Telegraph. The Cleansing starts at 5 p.m., show 8:30-11 p.m.

Visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/12/26/wandas-picks-radio-show


Music: We run out of time and don't get to play all of the Hunter Poetry songs we start such as Cowrie Shells and Nothing Else Seems to Matter, but listen for them on Friday's show beginning at 8 a.m.


Guest Bios:

Ann L. Chinn, Executive Director

Ann L. Chinn, executive director of the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPP) is a self-described community activist. Ms. Chinn's work has included children and family advocacy with Washington D.C. government and work as a retailer, textile artist, and organizer of a collective artists' market. She has also written an extensive family history in collaboration with family members.

As facilitator and founder of the project, she writes, “My professional career has encompassed many avenues: municipal and federal civil service, community organizing and training, owning a small business, producing textile art, and writing. Those are simply the principal roads with branches into more personal interests of cultural anthropology, history and travel.

“During the next decade I am completely devoting myself to this undertaking as the fulfillment of a vocation and a promise. Only once in a while is a person fortunate to know clearly the purpose of a life; for me this project is that. Having put it aside, asking the ancestors to wait just a little bit longer for 25 years, I am keeping my commitment to remember them.

“What is unique about the project is that it demands from each of us the personal acknowledgement of losses and contributions within the struggle to survive enslavement. No matter whether our relationship to the horror was as the victim, as the perpetrator, or as indirect beneficiary, it is a shared arc of history that needs to be physically marked. This project reinforces, and in some cases reestablishes, our humanity as we begin to honor our dead in the Atlantic.

“I was born and raised within a loving, diverse family whose history in this land spans more than 300 years of Tidewater Virginians, New England patriots, and District of Columbia and Georgetown residents. I attended public and parochial schools, Mt. Holyoke College and The George Washington University. In this life my treasures are three children and three grandchildren, a daughter by marriage, three grandchildren, a patient spouse, numerous relatives, wonderful friends, and four acres of land on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.”

Achebe Hoskins

CULTURAL AND PERFORMING ARTS
Achebe Hoskins has been active in the cultural and performing arts since the age of six. He is an actor, vocalist, storyteller, gumboot dancer, videographer and acting coach. He has written and directed five full-length plays and written over two hundred one acts, sketches and skits. Achebe is the founding director of the Bay Area Performing Arts Collective and has produced, directed and collaborated on over eighty five productions in the past 25 years.

Achebe is a skilled craftsman in the designing and building of theater sets. He has also developed himself in the area of special effects and has honed his skills as an illusionist into an exciting and entertaining performance that has delighted audiences of all ages.

2011 City of Oakland Humanitarian Award Winner Achebe Hoskins is a father and grandfather who has raised seven children as well as assisting in the rearing of several nieces and nephews. He has been a social father mentoring scores of children and young adults throughout San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. His ongoing community work with youth has earned him the title of “BABA”(Father in Kiswahilli).

PROFESSIONAL
Achebe Hoskins is currently employed by The Mentoring Center as a Project Director, Reentry Specialist and Case Mentor. Achebe services a contract with the City of Oakland in collaboration with The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to give pre and post release services to twenty four young men annually returning to the City of Oakland. Achebe is also a Certified Anger Management Specialist servicing a large number of clients each year.

Achebe currently facilitates a Transformative Manhood Group which is made up of fifteen elders who conduct a weekly, multi-ethnic intergenerational “Critical Thinking” session for between ten and twenty youth, thirteen to twenty five years old.

ACHEBE HOSKINS, DIRECTOR/WRITER
Culturalshows@aol.com

http://themarketingdepartment.biz/ftybr/achebe.hoskins.html

ARTIST STATEMENT
MALIK SENEFERU

Memories of my childhood play a tremendous role in my approach to creating art today. In my early years my mother a single parent lived in fear for my health due to the environmental hazards of San Francisco’s Hunters Point district. I suffered with asthma. Therefore, my innate interest to drawing and painting became that of a marriage over sports modeling my pursuit for constant spiritual mental and physical elevation. Having siblings among others as viewers of my work challenged me to go beyond my limitations. I remember my late grandmother a Barber and tailor sewing for hours at her machine after coming home from work. I would sit at her feet and draw on a paper bag with a pen, marker, crayon or a number two pencil.

Art is an absolute liberation of my imagination, a tool I use to communicate and share my “inner-light.” I have regular memories of my childhood working at the local super market, helping elders with their shopping bags. Receiving tips helping my grandmother in her barber shop by sweeping up the hairs to find money mysteriously hidden in large clumps. At the end of each service, those who knew me would say, “Keep up the good work and never stop doing your art.” From these experiences, I have learned the treasure of focusing on minuet details. Eventually, I realized in my artistic process that I too would hide treasures.

Living with this artistic expression is ritualistic in act and meditative in thought. Many times in the midst of creating, I experience dejavu. The realization of a single moment is obsolete only until it is captured by a memory of a stroke; a thought or pause for observation that I have discovered represents reincarnation of that tangible moment. Because of this, the very act of creating fine art is imparted with the relationship and responsibility I have with THE CREATOR. “The purpose of my existence.”

I also feel it is my duty as self taught artist to have an internal dialog with the viewer and in many cases the ancestors, where at this point I find inspiration for artistic expression. Fathering my child, serving my community, drumming, martial arts, poetry, philosophy and ancestral facts (history), all helps with the enhancement of my expression, to captures the Black, experience in America. I enjoy manipulating dry water-based paints, oil pastels, ink pen, found objects or assemblage. Book illustrations, portraiture, and public art projects have brought me closer to my community. The purpose of my compositions is to elevate the social, political, environmental and spiritual issues of people deeply challenged by oppression. This has been my greatest enrapture.

Kenya and Haiti are places for instance that influence the bold and dramatic colors in my works. Henry Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, John Biggers and Jean-Michel Basquiat (to name a few) has inspired my artistic direction. Being an artist and growing up with-in low-income housing projects, surrounded by the early stages of Hip-Hop, had an immense impact on my ability to create freely. Although this bold life style of music, poetry, art, dance, and intense research today seems barbaric. It nevertheless has influenced me to be boundless in my creative efforts to deliver messages of empowerment to the indigenous peoples of the world.

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/malik-seneferu.html

Brother Clint Sockwell II

Brother Clint describes himself as a Griot and a Speaker. He has worked with the San Francisco Unified School District since 1995 and created and implement a service organization, which is a continuum for manhood from boys to men referred to as: Community Intentions.

He recently retired as the Elementary Adviser at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco, California. Where “Peacemakers Rule the Playground” after nine years. Having worked in the schools for more than a decade, has afforded him the opportunity to meet thousands of children in the Bay Area where his presentations of the concepts of the Virtues of Maat & Nguzo Saba are included in the memories of not only the children of San Francisco, but also children and educators throughout the Bay Area. 

His collaborations with the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators, the IRISE Initiative, BAYCAT and Cable 29/ AccesSF has afforded Brotha Clint the acumen and opportunity to teach and inspire youth to believe in themselves, have faith in their dreams and aspire to achieve them.

He says he has faith in the children and hope for the community, because he is truly our brother. 

Ayodele WordSlanger Nzinga, Ph.D.

Ayodele WordSlanger Nzinga has been called a renaissance woman. She is a director, playwright, poet, performance artist, artist-educator, and a scholar-activist.

Ishmael Reed describes her as tour de force. Marvin X says her performances are orgasmic. and she is one of the best in the Bay. The late Pri Thomas called her one of the best poets of our time. 

Nzinga is the founding Director of The Lower Bottom Playaz and The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater located in West Oakland CA has provided Oakland with 11 Theater Seasons and her Troupe The Lower Bottom Playaz are the life behind the footlights in the theater the press describes as one of Oakland's treasures.

Nzinga holds an MA & MFA in Writing and Consciousness and a Ph.D. in Transformative Education and Change. Her motto is: I create therefore I am. Now in the states for the last five years Adimu Madyun is making headway with his controversial award winning film Operation Small Axe.

Wolf Hawk Jaquar


As a solo artist, his latest manifestation as WolfHawkJaguar, we'll see the artist staring in the film Hunter Poetry and recording the soundtrack. The film centers on his musical journey through the African Spiritual Tradition of Orisa. Adimu has been blessed to share the stage with artists such as The Abyssinians, Gyptian, Saul Williams, Pressure, Norris Man, Dead Prez, Slim Kid Tre of Pharcyde, Thandiswa Mazwai and Zion I.  WolfHawkJaguar is a dynamic stage performer with a fresh new sound that is guaranteed to uplift the masses! To hear the warrior sounds: http://wolfhawkjaguar.com/