This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the
African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and
theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in
the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of
expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of
art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and
their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true
revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion.
They are our true heroes. Ashay!
Show link: http://tobtr.com/8558807
Guests:
1. Sheila S. Walker
Ph.D., featured speaker March 29 at the UN program, and Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, Dos Amigos Slave Ship Replica Project, join us to talk about the United Nations
General Assembly designation of March 25, as International Day of
Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
(program moved to March 29), as well as African Ancestor Commemorations this weekend, specifically in Key West, FL.
2. Nana Farika, Vice President of WADU will
join us to talk about a recent forum in Washington to look at The State
of Africa and Its Diaspora (3/20/2016).
http://www.wadupam.org/
3. We close with a
conversation with a representative about a special program in Oakland,
March 27, to honor the legacy and work of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Political
Prisoners, Prisoner of War. We were looking forward to his release at
his recent parole hearing.
mutuluriswelcomehere.com
Dr.
Mutulu Shakur, a member of the New African People’s Organization and
the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is one of the longest held political
prisoners of war in US federal detention at this time. He has been
locked down and kept from his people for over 30 years since his capture
on Feb. 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. Dr. Shakur was set for release on Feb. 10,
2016 but his release never occurred. Just before this date he was
informed that he would only be scheduled to get a hearing for parole on
April 4, 2016.
Bios:
Sheila S. Walker Ph.D
Cultural anthropologist and filmmaker, Dr. Walker is Executive Director of Afrodiaspora, Inc., a non-profit organization that is developing documentary films and educational materials about the global African Diaspora. She has done fieldwork, lectured, con-sulted, and participated in cultural events in most of Africa and the Diaspora, and has numerous scholarly and popular publications. Her most recent works are the documen-tary, Slave Routes: A Global Vision, produced for the UNESCO Slave Route Project, and an edited book, Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Sto-ries, featuring articles by Afrodescendants from all the Spanish-speaking countries of South America. She also edited the volume African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas and produced the documentary Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora based on the international conference she orga-nized on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World.” Dr. Walker was Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, the Annabel Irion Worsham Centen-nial Professor in the College of Liberal Arts, and Professor of Anthropology at the Uni-versity of Texas at Austin, then Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program and Professor of Anthropology at Spelman College.
Watch this recent interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNF5tVedFI&feature=youtu.be
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie: Brief Biography
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie is a New York born, Miami-based visual artist, semi-retired educator, writer, independent researcher, and activist in historic preservation and cultural affairs, with a formal academic background (including a Fulbright scholarship) in foreign languages and linguistics. He has taught at virtually every educational level from pre-school to university, including adult education in community schools and in penal institutions.
As a visual artist, he specializes in original drawings, painting, and sculpture, in graphic design, and, most recently, in monument design, as well as in museum and gallery exhibition design and installation. He is has recently completed a Richmond Heights Pioneers Monument for a historic community in Miami and is lead designer for the artwork for the Key West African Cemetery memorial monument.
His written commentaries have frequently appeared in local African American newspapers and he has published articles, often related to his research on the history of the Middle Passage and specifically the Dos Amigos/Fair Rosamond Slave Ship Replica Project, in a number of periodicals, including Florida History quarterly, FlaVour Black lifestyle magazine, Islas bilingual Afro-Cuban Journal, and the venerable Journal of African American History, as well as in local South Florida newspapers.
Mr. Tinnie serves a number of boards, including as Chair of the City of Miami Virginia Key Beach Park Trust, charged with the restoration and operation of Miami’s fondly remembered one-time only “Colored Beach” of the segregation era; the New Birth Corporation in Daytona Beach, keepers of the Historic Home and legacy of theologian Howard Thurman; the Palm Beach County-based Florida Black Historical Research Project, Inc., which gathers and preserves Seminole Maroon heritage; and the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, home to the Henrietta Marie slave ship artifacts and touring exhibition.
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie is the recipient of numerous local awards and honors, including a Pillars Award from the Miami Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board, recognition by the Talladega College Alumni and by the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command, a Miami ICON award from the City of Miami, the 2013 African American Achievers Award in Arts and Culture from Broward County-based JM Family Enterprises, among numerous others.
He is often called upon as a lecturer and panelist in historic preservation, cultural arts, and African World Heritage, and as a judge in art competitions, and to serve on public grant review panels at the State and County level. He is presently an adjunct professor of African American history and French at historically Black Florida Memorial University in Miami, FL.
3.
BIO OF NANA FARIKA
Nana Farika Berhane is a poet, fiction writer, storyteller, oral historian, journalist and cultural activist. Born in Kingston, Jamaica of Garveyite parents, she was a familiar face in the island’s artistic and media circles during the sixties and the seventies. She has written for several newspapers and magazines in Jamaica and the USA. Her novella “The Story of Sandra Shaw,” was at the heart of the Cultural Revolution taking place in Jamaica according to Professor Kamau Brathwaite, distinguished historian and poet. Her plays, short fiction and poetry won prizes in the literary section of the island’s annual festival of the arts. She wrote radio documentaries for Jamaica Information Service and scripts for its celebrated serial “Life in Hopeful Village.” She also wrote the island’s first local television sitcom “Life with the Littles.” The Jamaica Nationals Association awarded her for “excellence in the literary arts” on the occasion of Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of independence in 2012.
Her work has been published in Jamaica, London, Europe and the USA. Her language and use of Jamaican patois gives a musicality to her poems. Her short story “Brother Ben,” was a prize winner in an international short story contest for Black writers and was adapted as a play and staged at Lambeth, England. She was nurtured as a writer of Jamaican patois by Jamaica’s icon folklorist Louise Bennett who was a family friend. Farika”s work is featured in the following books: “22 Jamaican Short Stories published 1n 1992 by LMH Press in Jamaica, WPFW Anthology, published in Washington DC , “The Mother of us All, Karla Gottleib, “Africa World Press and in the Jamaica Journal, Institute of Jamaica Press as well as in many Rastafari publications. Her first anthology of poetry, “Sing I a Song of Black Freedom, was published in Palo Alto, California and has had several editions published by Queen Omega Communications.
Nana Farika was an arts educator and reading specialist in public schools in, California, Detroit and Washington DC. She was with California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) a programme funded by the California Arts Council, the US Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts. She received many grants from the DC Commission on the Art and Humanities for her arts education projects. Starbucks and faith based organizations also supported them. She worked with the Nairobi Institute of Cultural Arts as a performing poet while she was in California. She also worked there with Stanford University and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture in Oakland as an ethnographic researcher. Her cultural and historic tours that she conducted to Maroon settlements had the Accompong Maroons appointing her as their representative in the United States from 1984-1994. She lobbied for community building projects for them through grants from Canadian Save the Children Fund, Oxfam America and the OAS.
The Smithsonian Institution awarded her in 1992 for her work on Maroons and so did the Caribbean American Inter Cultural Organization. The city of Cambridge gave her its keys on behalf of the Maroon people. She is presently the Vice President of the World African Diaspora Union www.wadupam.org and the CEO of Queen Omega Communications. She is an international associate of the Women Institute for Freedom of the Press. She has travelled to Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania and Ghana on Pan African affairs. Contact her for storytelling, poetry readings, Oral histories, Maroon tours and reports on AU summits and Rastafari women at queenomegacommunications@gmail.com Visit
http://www.wadupam.org/
4. Omar Hunter is a Detroit born, Oakland based, Science Teacher, Father, Cuber and a community activist. He has been a part of the 5% Nation of Islam, Ausar/Auset Community, and NCOBRA. He is currently a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement ( MXGM). As a member of MXGM Omar sat on the design team, as well as taught, at the School Of Social Justice and Community Development and participated in the campaign to
Free the San Francisco 8.
