Friday, May 31, 2013

Wanda's Picks Radio Friday, May 31, 2013

We open today with a conversation with Marcus Shelby, an award-winning musician and composer, is highly renowned and sought after for his discography, his theatrical and film scoring, and his music for ballet and dance.  His empathy as a human being who understands the impact of social justice for all Americans will propel the writing of original music for Gwah Guy: Crossing the Street. Gwah Guy will musically explore poignant memories from Edward K. Wong aka Baby Jack, Flo Oy Wong’s husband.  Ed Wong lived in Augusta, Georgia at the time of segregation when Chinese Americans were identified as "honorary whites." 

The June 7 and 8 performances at ODC Dance Center in San Francisco, will also include memories of Flo Oy Wong's childhood in Oakland California's Chinatown near West Oakland, the historical district where many African Americans resided.  Marcus will compose original music inspired by Flo Oy Wong's literary re-imagining of her husband's Southern childhood experiences and actor Peter Macon will narrate.

ODC is located at 351 Shotwell Street in San Francisco. Tickets and more information are available at info@apiculturalcenter.org  or www.odcdance.org/theater.php or via the ODC Theater Office: Box Office Hours: Wednesday-Friday 12pm--3pm, Tel (415) 863-9834, Fax (415) 863-9833.

We are then joined by Jinho Ferreira or The Piper is a rapper, actor, and screenwriter from Oakland, California. In 2009, Piper won the best screenwriter award at the Tribeca Film Festival for his CIA thriller: Walter’s Boys.

Piper’s latest effort, and first venture into theater, is entitled Cops & Robbers. It is a revolutionary look into the relationship between Law Enforcement, the media, and the Black community. He performs this weekend, tonight, Friday, May 31, 8 p.m. and Sat., June 1, two shows, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Kaiser Center Theatre, 300 Lakeside Drive, in Oakland. Visit http://pipedreamzent.com/

We close with a conversation with Antoine Hunter, Urban Jazz Dance Company; Colette Ewoi, El Wah Movement Theatre and Julie Mushet, Executive Director of the 35th Anniversary of the Ethnic Dance Festival, June 7-30, 2013, about this year's program.Visit  http://www.worldartswest.org/main/edf_index.asp


Music: Amikaeyla's "Hambone"
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2013/05/31/wandas-picks-radio-show

Bios:

The Piper is a rapper, actor, and screenwriter from Oakland, California. He is one-third of Flipsyde, an alternative hip hop band that has toured internationally with artists such as Snoop Dogg, The Black Eyed Peas, Akon, The Game, Bustah Rhymes, etc. Flipsyde has written anthems for the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics. The band continues to enjoy several song placements in television and film, as well as sporting events.

In 2009, Piper won the best screenwriter award at the Tribeca Film Festival for his CIA thriller: Walter’s Boys. Piper’s latest effort, and first venture into theater, is entitled Cops & Robbers. It is a revolutionary look into the relationship between Law Enforcement, the media, and the Black community.

In the spring of 2010, Piper paid his way through a Bay Area law enforcement academy, eventually graduating in the top percentile and delivering the commencement speech. The paradox of having strong ties to the Black community and Hip Hop, while simultaneously working in Law Enforcement, served as the inspiration to write Cops & Robbers.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Wanda's Picks Friday, May 17, 2013 Art Transforming Lives Special

Our program opens with Quinn DeVeaux. Quinn is from Gary, Indiana, has packed houses and astounded audiences in the bay area for years with his smooth and dirty spank you voice and cool melodic songwriting. First he started an early Chicago Blues band and then a New Orleans soul and gospel band. Both groups had audiences clamoring for more. Now he has combined it all in the Blue Beat Review a self-styled crossroads of his many musical roots. He and Meklit Hadero have a show Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8 p.m.with Bhi Bhiman at St. Cyprian's Church, 2097 Turk, San Francisco. Visit http://quinndeveaux.com






Hamlet (Luke Padgett);  Polonius (Johnathan Wilson)
Next Marin Shakespeare Company's founding managing director, Lesley Schisgall Currier joins us to talk about inmates at San Quentin State Prison who will have the rare opportunity to see fifteen of their peers performing in Shakespeare's problematic comedy "The Merchant of Venice," a play about commerce, love, revenge, and mercy.

Marin Shakespeare Company, which produces an outdoor summer festival of plays at Dominican University's Forest Meadows Amphitheater in San Rafael, also offers year-round arts education programs for students ages 5 to adult.

Under the direction of Currier and Suraya Keating, the San Quentin troupe has been studying this year's play, creating characters, learning lines, practicing fight choreography, and preparing for the performance for the past eight months. The lead role of Shylock will be undertaken by inmate Luke Padgett, who has appeared in previous S@SQ productions as Hamlet, Malvolio, Lysander, Mercutio, Don Pedro etc. Padgett is serving a life sentence for murder, arson and robbery. She is joined by former company member, Johnathan Wilson (JW) who speaks about the transformative power of art now that he is on the other side of the prison walls.  Music: Nina Simone, Leon Thomas, Meklit & Quinn.

Quinn DeVeaux, from Gary, Indiana, has packed houses and astounded audiences in the bay area for years with his smooth and dirty spank you voice and cool melodic songwriting. First he started an early Chicago Blues band and then a New Orleans soul and gospel band. Both groups had audiences clamoring for more. Now he has combined it all in the Blue Beat Review a self-styled crossroads of his many musical roots.

Next Marin Shakespeare Company's Lesley Schisgall Currier joins us to talk about inmates at San Quentin State Prison who will have the rare opportunity to see fifteen of their peers performing in Shakespeare's problematic comedy "The Merchant of Venice," a play about commerce, love, revenge, and mercy.

Under the direction of Currier and Suraya Keating, the actors have been studying the play, creating characters, learning lines, practicing fight choreography, and preparing for the performance for the past 8 months. The lead role of Shylock will be undertaken by inmate Luke Padgett, who has appeared in previous S@SQ productions as Hamlet, Malvolio, Lysander, Mercutio, Don Pedro etc. Padgett is serving a life sentence for murder, arson and robbery. She is joined by former company member, Johnathan Wilson (JW) who speaks about the transformative power of art now that he is on the other side of the prison walls.  Music: Nina Simone, Leon Thomas, Meklit & Quinn.


Surprise guest, Johnathan Wilson joins the conversation with Lesley. He is a former participant or company member of Shakespeare at San Quentin. The conversation is uplifting and speaks to the power of art to transform lives.

SHAKESPEARE AT SAN QUENTIN

Started in 2003.

Weekly Shakespeare Classes for Inmates.

Inmates rehearse a Shakespeare play for 8 months and give one performance.

The audience is made up of inmates and invited outside guests.

The inmates also write and perform autobiographical plays inspired by themes from the Shakespeare play.

This year, Marin Shakespeare Company has added a second class, to share this work with an additional group of men.

Shakespeare at San Quentin is led by Lesley Currier and Suraya Keating.
Suraya is a writer, actor, and director and also a licensed Drama Therapist.

Shakespeare at San Quentin also provides internships each year for students working on Masters degrees in

Drama Therapy; this year three interns are working with the program.

To see past performances visit: http://www.marinshakespeare.org/pages/outreach_SanQuentin-Videos.php

Friday, May 10, 2013

Let the Fire Burn

This weekend is the anniversary of the Philadelphia police departments bombing of the MOVE organization where 11 people died, adults and children. The story is the topic of a new film Let the Fire Burn, dir. Jason Osder.  Osder uses archival footage to retell a story too few know about the events of May 13, 1985 (Mother's Day weekend) where under the orders of then Mayor Goode, a bomb was dropped on a house in a residential neighborhood on Osage Street, the resulting fire allowed to burn down an entire community. I saw the film last night at Pacific Film Archive as a part of the 56th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

The only survivors were one adult and one child, Ramona Africa and Birdie Africa. Both were alive, though injured. Everyone else was killed. Though I knew the story, seeing it on the screen, hearing the inquiry held to evaluate the call to "let it burn," coupled with antagonism against MOVE members by Philadelphia police and municipality which had already been charged with excessive use of force when arresting nine members in a previous altercation, made the atrocity and the callousness of the perpetrators, more horrific. It was worse than Rwanda. Men charged with saving life, let a building with living people inside burn to the ground with no apparent regret or remorse when queried later at the hearing.

Only one officer, after seeing the child, Birdie Africa come out of the basement through the flames, decided to rescue him when he sees Ramona unable to get to him. This officer later quits the force because of PTSD. At the hearing, his testimony was the only one that conveyed sincere regret over what happened. From the police chief to the fire marshal, to individual officers involved in altercations with MOVE members, no one cared enough to put the fire out or at least protest the tactics used to stop this "terrorist group"

As one resident said as she watched her home burn to the ground, "It was war."

We remember these fallen comrades 28 years later, the MOVE 9 who are still being denied bail, and Mumia Abu Jamal whose sentence to death was commuted to life behind bars. He was one of the journalists covering the unfolding story 28 years ago.

There was supposed to be this huge arsenal of automatic weapons, and even after the search did not yield any such weapons in the MOVE house, the police chief would not admit that his men were the one's responsible for shooting other officers, not MOVE members whose cache consisted primarily of props: inoperable guns.

The hearing found the police and fire department guilty of wrong doing, but no one was imprisoned or fined or even lost their jobs while innocent lives were permanently disrupted, from little Birdie who is interviewed at length (in a separate query, in the judge's chambers) about MOVE that day and in general. He is quite an articulate little boy.

What emerges is a collective who cares about its children, believes in natural clean living and in the primacy of life and truth over darkness and deceit. There was a lot of love in this community which ate raw food, lived simply and didn't believe in hurting others.

Though young, Birdie understood the assault against his family and who the enemy was. After the officer(s) rescue him, he says to them, "Please don't shoot me."

The director said in a Q & A after the screening that his hope is to show the film in October to facilitate a healing conversation for the residents on Osage Street whom still have not recovered.

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, May 10, 2013



Dr. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
Dr. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author, visual artist, drummer, and Zen Buddhist priest, lives in Oakland, CA where she teaches at East Bay Meditation Center and leads a small practice group in her home. Zenju, her dharma name meaning complete tenderness, was ordained by Zenkei Blanche Hartman, former abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, and her priest training is being guided by Abbess Kiku Christina Lehnherr. She is also the author of the Black Angel Cards, "a book of messages accompanied by a deck of 36 cards to help us recognize, she says, wisdom and unearth our true nature which is innately awake and filled with healing capacities." See www.blackangelcards.com

Her book Tell Me Something About Buddhism (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2011) includes a foreword written by Thich Nhat Hanh, with poetry and illustrations by Zenju Earthlyn. In addition, she is contributing author to many books, including Dharma, Color and Culture: Voices From Western Buddhist Teachers of Color (Parallax) and Record of the Hidden Lamp: 100 Koans and Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women (Wisdom Publications) edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon and and “What Unknowing Things Know: The Zen Liberation in the Art of Romare Bearden in the International Review of African American Art.”

She holds a M.A. degree from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Transformation and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She had been guest teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Green Gulch Zen Center, and the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. From http://www.sfzc.org/zc/display.asp?catid=2,6,127&pageid=1885


Monica Anderson,  the founder and owner of Sankofa Events Project Management. www.SankofaEvents.com joins us to celebrate the successful Oakland premiere of Shola Lynch's Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners, Tuesday, May 7, 2013. The venue was sold out and Dr. Angela Y. Davis was in the house and entertained a few questions afterward. The film has another screening Sunday, May 19, 2013 at the New Parkway Theatre in Oakland, at 3 p.m. There will be poetry and a panel discussion with the audience preceding and following the film.

Ms. Anderson created Sista to Sista in 2009 to connect Queer Women and Gender Variant Folks to free wellness workshops. Each workshop included a special awareness of the needs of those most marginalized within the LGBTQ community. During her Taboo Tuesday workshops, Monica used films and other forms of multimedia to seed discussion about topics that Queer folks rarely spoke of and yet often experienced. Films like Kortney Ryan Zeigler's Still Black, which takes a close up and never before seen look at realities encountered by Black Transmen, were paired with an open group discussion. Each workshop offered direct access to organizations that address issues raised by the topics.

Monica launched SPECTRUM Queer Media last year to offer LGBTQA films on a weekly basis here in the Bay Area. A demand to see her work expand has yielded screenings which include other U.S. cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.

Monica also is touring those same cities and reading her poetry - some of which is part of the published anthology "Letters to My Bully".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kergan-edwardsstout/letters-to-my-bully_b_1807212.htm


Our next guest Mia Pascal is a woman with many talents. She joins us to talk about her 30 minute solo piece,  "Heartbreak Velocity", in two group shows, one at DIVAFest in San Francisco, week 2, May 18, 8 p.m. at the Exit Theatre on Eddy, www.theexit.org and the second performance, at The Marsh in Berkeley in its Tell It on Tuesdays solo performances, May 28, 7 (music, 7:30 (show) http://www.tellitontuesday.org/

She says, "Heartbreak Velocity" is a dark comedy about love, linguistics, and swinging your heart as hard as you can, like a funky marching band all up and down the street.

Mia Paschal, Actress, Solo Performer, Playwright
Born in Marvell, Arkansas, Mia Paschal moved to San Francisco from Milan, Italy to study with Ed Hooks.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Mia studied acting with David Wheeler; she later studied with Bill Hickey at the HB Studio in New York. In Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki and Milan, she appeared in a number of independent films and video projects. In San Francisco, she has also studied with Bruce Williams and David Ford.

Mia has performed in a number of plays and independent films in the Bay Area. She produced and performed in Heroes Theatre Company's St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a collection of comedic and dramatic scenes about dysfunctional relationships. She produced, directed and acted in After the Fall by Arthur Miller (Maggie), Harold Pinter's The Lover, and Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra). Mia also acted in several productions of the Rough Theatre Company's Daytrippers, one-acts conceived, written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours, one of which won Best of the SFFringe, as well as Best New Fringe Idea, at the 2001 San Francisco Fringe Festival.

One of her most personally gratifying theatrical experiences was performing in A Loud Little Handful, Greg Beuthin's site-specific production of works dealing with the aftermath of war and violence, directed by Emily Koch. She also wrote, produced, and directed the digital feature The Art of Etiolation which premiered at the EXIT Theatre's DIVAfest in May 2004. She made her singing debut in On the Sixes, a cabaret by Sean Owens and Don Seaver, which was part of the EXIT Theatre's 2006 DIVAfest, and her songwriting debut the following year, for the EXIT’s DIVA Cabaret.

In September 2004, her first solo show some life, directed by Emily Koch, won the Best Female Solo Performance award at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Her next work, This Lily Was (Fontana), received the Best of the Fringe - Best Female Dramatic Solo Award at the the 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival, and was performed at the Marsh in San Francisco, as part of the Marsh Rising series in January 2007, and at the 2007 Rogue Performance Festival in Fresno, where the Fresno Bee selected it as a Top Five Pick of the Rogue.

Her latest solo play, Along the Path of Larks and Swallows, premiered at the 2008 Rogue Performance Festival and was chosen as a Top Ten Pick of the Rogue by the Fresno Bee.  In April 2008, Theatre Bay Area awarded Along the Path of Larks and Swallows a CA$H grant for its extended production.

Mia participated in the Performance Initiative at the Marsh in San Francisco, where she was commissioned to write "My Soul for Rubies", a solo piece exploring exile,  loss, and linguistics, and "The Slaughterhouse Trapeze", an examination of sex and death.

Publications: "Some Life: three plays for solo performance",  a volume containing "some life", "This Lily Was (Fontana)", and "Along the Path of Larks and Swallows" is available for purchase. To make your order, please visit: www.lulu.com

Meklit & Quinn
Meklit Hadero hasn't graced our airwaves in quite sometime. We are excited to have her join us to speak about two creative projects, one with artist, Quinn DeVeaux, from Gary, Indiana, who with Meklit have released a new album Meklit and Quinn where the two friends share some of theirs and our favorite songs, sort of the staple diet of any healthy rhythm and blues fan, the songs that underscore this American soundtrack we live daily. Visit http://www.meklitandquinn.com/about.html

The two artists perform quite a bit this month and over the summer, beginning tonight, May 10,  at Davies Symphony Hall's After Hours, post concert music event with artwork by sculptor Cyrus Tilton, "The Cycle," "A Place In Between," and "Absence," courtesy of Vessel Gallery in Oakland. The artist's work express his concern for the environment and human psychological complexity.

This concert is free to ticket holders and is a part of the closing week of a two weekend festival May 2-11, of Beethoven's early music and lasting influence with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus with guest soloists. Program 3: MTT and Missa Solemnis. Meklit and Quinn will present a musical response to the piece. Should be interesting, Meklit's New York Jazzy with West Coast Funk meets traditional Ethiopian melodies juxtaposed and combined with Quinn's joy, grit and catchy crossroads Chicago Blues stirred and served a la New Orleans soul and gospel. Visit www.sfsymphony.org , http://www.meklithadero.com/ and http://quinndeveaux.com/site/

We will probably catch Beethoven smiling his approval tonight, as he was all about access, his music inspired by events of the day and its people (smile). 

Mina Girgis, Executive Director,
Co-founder The Nile Project
We then shift personnel a bit and Mina Girgis joins Meklit and the two of them talk about their joint venture, The Nile Project, an organization that brings musicians from the 11 countries which call the Nile River Valley home together to exchange and share cultural values connected to this important tributary, as well as make music which reflects a plan for a sustainable Nile River -- this relationship emblematic of this goal, Africa vision for the continent beginning with these 11 nations. Visit http://www.nileproject.org/team/mina-girgis/

Mina speaks about how these two Africans meet in the Diaspora, San Francisco to be exact and begin the planning for this project one which though in its infant stage at barely four months old, is a precocious child that will probably skip walking and just start running (smile).

Born in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, she grew up in Iowa, New York, and Florida. After studying political science at Yale, she moved to San Francisco and became immersed in the city’s thriving arts scene. Her debut CD On a Day Like This party in San Francisco was one of those moments that really changes one's heart.  She was big before the release, but afterward, the travel began and nods from some of the industry's grandparents keep her at the top of the charts. It is not often that one can see a person make the Pan African connection between what is now and what was then, let alone what is to come, yet Meklit is an able conduit on this shifting platform with her embodiment or honoring of all that has come before.

Her work with other Ethiopian artists in diaspora through the Arba Minch Collective, a group of devoted to nurturing ties to their homeland through collaborating with both traditional and contemporary artists there or The Nile Project, her latest venture with co-collaborator Mina Girgis, this woman's creative life, whether that is as a 2009 TED Senior Global Fellow or the Co-director of the Red Poppy Art House, epitomizes ashay.  

Meklit and Mina's The Nile Project is a way to proactively affect what is to come--preservation of regional cultural values as the cultivation of new ways to enhance and preserve African antiquities is applied though technical resources we in the Diaspora often have easier access to.

Fatoumata Diawara from Mali shared as much when she took the audience in Berkeley last month (in April at Zellerbach) to her village and through both music and dance showed how one rhythm like our hearts connected those of us dispersed worldwide in the European slave trade as well as colonialism still remain one.

If you miss Meklit and Quinn tonight, she headlines with her band, the Charity Water Fundraising Event to dig wells in Ethiopia, May 22, 2013, 9 p.m., at Public Works in San Francisco:https://www.facebook.com/events/442572812503765/ 

Music: We open with an excerpt from Victoria Theodore's "I'm Your Angel" (Grateful); Meklit & Quinn's "This Must Be the Place" and "Salaam Nubia" from The Nile Project. Meklit who is one of the soloists on the tune, introduces "Sematimba ne Kikwabonga," but we are kicked out of the studio before it airs. Stay tuned, I will play it on the Wednesday, May 15, show.

Show link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2013/05/10/wandas-picks-radio-show






Monday, May 06, 2013

Tour de Cure for The American Diabetes Association

The Tour de Cure in Gold Country Saturday was grueling. I am still recuperating. But as the hills seemed unending and the sun grew hotter, I kept thinking about my dad and I'd say, "I'd riding for you Daddy," and from somewhere I'd get another burst of energy to keep going. . . not the 62 miles I'd planned to ride or even the 31, but 17 miles for a Cure for this dreadful disease.

A friend commented later on that Daddy was the wind (smile). My colleague, Stefanie, who is fifth generation diabetic was also with me as was Arvid who just retired, fell and now has just three months to live. (Just found out he died May 2.)

There were children with parents with diabetes, coworkers with a friend. I rode for a minute with the Funk Town Team. Our leader was born with diabetes.

The rest stops were fun, especially the second one where there was a wading pool filled with icy water for bikers to take towels and drip water on their faces and necks. There were bubbles and another pool with plastic fish for us to go fishing literally. This is where the 31 mile riders turned around for the ride back. I think we were the blue team. At times near the end, I had to get off my bike and walk it up the hills. My legs were like, nope, not another inch on two wheels (smile).

The snacks were good here too. Besides the oranges and red licorice candy, which I cannot eat, there were these vegan, gluten free energy bars. I got cashew butter, which were really yummy. There was also no sugar added almond milk.

Riders dealt with heat stroke, discourteous drivers--one hit a biker, and heat heat heat, with smiles. I was so sleepy when the ride was over and they'd run out of lunch, I had to pull off the freeway twice. The last time, I bought a cup of crushed ice and drank and chewed my way through Davis and into Fairfield (smile).

The old trick of sticking one's hand out of the window so the cold air will wake one up, doesn't work when the temperature is in the 90s. When I pulled off the first time I thought I was on International and High Street--the store so like Fiesta, the parking lot a bit too busy to close one's eyes (smile). So I ate my dinner and then drove back to the highway.  

That night my legs were killing me and yesterday, the soreness was gone, as I went for a short ride around town. The memory of all these folks riding for a cure, will never leave me. I put my badge: 135 on my altar next to my picture of Daddy and me when I was three.

For just under $200 I will meet my $500 goal. Please send a pledge to: http://main.diabetes.org/goto/wandasabir