Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wednesday, March 20, 2019

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!

1. Leah Joki, No Joke Theatre at LAC-California State Prison, Lancaster, CA

2. L. Peter Callender, Director, Black Eagles by Leslie Lee at African American Shakespeare at the Marine's Memorial theatre Sat.-Sun., through March 31. Visit https://www.african-americanshakes.org/productions/black-eagles/

3. Rebroadcast of interview with Devin Cunningham and Robert Thomas Simpson re: Black Eagles (Feb. 20, 2019). 

Review

By Wanda Sabir

“Black Eagles” by Leslie Lee, directed by L. Peter Callender, currently on stage at African American Shakespeare Company challenges prejudicial notions of courage and patriotism. All the Fighting 99^th Tuskegee Airmen want is an opportunity to serve. What makes this story even more compelling is its double exposure. Three of the men have older and younger selves. The elders reflect in flashbacks – the younger men, including one dummy, are disciplined, recognize the bigotry and do not racism to divide their ranks or undermine their worth. What happened at Port Chicago was replicated on military bases throughout this country and in international theatres. Racism is a uniquely American export even in Nazi Germany white skin was more privileged, which made the Marine’s Memorial Theatre a perfect setting for Lee’s work. Add to that Bertram Clark’s Tuskegee Airman and African American WWII posters, photos and artifacts and the performance has a larger resonance when patrons walk into the theatre lobby, stand at the concession stand and look out the window nearby. Black history is everywhere.

The cast both elders and younger selves are excellent. The energy and excitement of youth balanced with the wisdom of age gives the audience a dual perspective on military life the younger selves have not lived yet. Stationed in Italy, 1944, the men escort white fighter pilots with less flight experience when technically if all were fair, the reverse would have been true. President Obama invited “over 330 of these men to his inauguration and in 2007, surviving airmen were invited to the Capitol rotunda to receive the Congressional Medal” (program notes).

30 years ago Callender originated the character I found most intriguing, Roscoe (actor Ron Chapman), because he is a ventriloquist and plays with a doll. I don't know how many officers share their vulnerabilities through such a vehicle, but it works. That Sunday, Opening Weekend, Callender had on his leather bomber jacket from his performance at the Manhattan Theatre Club. He told me in a follow-up interview that he got called into the production late and the men in the cast formed such a bond they all had their jackets personalized with a Tuskegee airman design. Also special to the director is his son, Brandon’s (as Nolan) first performance with the AASC.

America is at war, at war both domestically and globally, yet the men are optimistic that they will get a chance to prove their humanity. Strange how death validates life. The Black Eagles are also young and as youth, they know how to have fun. The jitterbug drill is a moment in the play that you don’t want to miss. Choreographed by Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, the men are steppin’ tall, steppin’ with pride. And this is just one of the many wonderful moments we share with the men both in the air and on the ground—another is when the black officers call on the white officers, their peers, to challenge the unfair restrictions on black soldiers. The play closes March 31, with two shows: Sat., at 8 p.m., 3 p.m. on Sunday at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre

609 Sutter Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA. The nearest BART Station is Powell. For tickets visit African-AmericanShakes.org or (800) 838.3006. To listen to an interview with the director, visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2019/03/20/wandas-picks-radio-show

Invitation to a United Nations Civil Society Briefing, March 28, 2019

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, March 15, 2019

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! 

1. Rev. Kamal Hassan, facilitator, OneLife Institutes' "Healing Black Lives, A special day of healing and renewal for people of African Descent" at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church.

Visit https://www.onelifeinstitute.org/healing-black-lives. 2019 dates: Saturdays, March 16, June 8, Aug 17, Dec 7  (9:30 am-4:30 pm)

Rev. Hassan, OneLife Board Member and Spiritual Co-Director is also an educator, and community servant. He currently serves as Pastor/Teaching Elder at the Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church in Richmond California, a position he has held since 2008. Before this call Reverend Hassan spent more than three decades as both a public and private school educator, community organizer and religious worker. Rev. Hassan is a founding member of both the New Afrikan People’s Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He has worked for social justice and Human Rights locally, nationally, and internationally.

2. Deborah Santana, editor, All the Women in My Family Sing (recorded 07.03.2018).

Dina Zarif

3. Dina Zarif, curator, Iranian artist, join us to talk about "Music of the Banned" concert March 16, 2019. Dina Zarif is a performer, vocalist, designer, and art manager whose sound combines Western classical singing 

with Middle Eastern styles inspired from her Persian roots. 

She has performed in various festivals, venues, and productions such as SF Palace of Fine Arts, the chamber opera The Passion of Leyla in San Jose, the theatrical dance performance Home, and Golden Thread Theater Company’s staged reading of Layla and Majnun at BAMPFA. Zarif was also a featured singer in Syria Mon Amour, Golden Thread’s 2017 celebration of International Women’s Day that was dedicated to Syria.

As an actress, she performed in three of Iranian playwright and director Bahram Beyzai’s plays: Ardaviraf’s Report (2015), Tarabnameh (2015-2016) as the role of Dancer/Singer, and Crossroads (2018) in the Stanford Iranian Studies department. Additionally, Zarif is a costume designer and performer in the shadow production Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic. As the character Princess Roudabeh, she has performed at SF Cowell Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wallis Annenberg Hall, and has internationally toured in Poland, Taiwan, and Canada between 2015 and 2018.

As a working artist in the community, Zarif is the program director and a lead performance host at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. She most recently curated the project Music of the Banned in response to the travel ban, highlighting the music of eight countries—the majority Muslim nations—Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, and North Korea. The project has been performed at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival in June 2018 and Red Poppy Art House in August 2017. Zarif received her MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Tehran, College of Fine Arts.


MARCH 16TH PROGRAM
SUDAN: Tarawa ft. Seoulstice
Sudanese Roots, Global Expressions
Tarawa – ukelele, calabash drum, ngoni, Sudanese bongos
Seoulstice – guitar, loop and effect pedal

IRAN: Emad Bonakdar & Mizuho Sato
Persian Music Meets Flamenco
Emad Bonakdar – tar, tanbur, guitar
Mizuho Sato – flamenco dance

VENEZUELA: Trio Caminos
Venezuelan Grooves in California
Carlos Caminos – acoustic guitar
Marlon Aldana – cajón flamenco, bongo
Angelo Tomandl – harmonicas

ABOUT MUSIC OF THE BANNED
Since January 27, 2017, President Trump has issued three travel bans to citizens from countries deemed by his administration: Chad, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, North Korea, and Venezuela. In the face of the president’s travel ban, Music of the Banned (MOTB) seeks to build a sonic bridge between peoples. The ten countries of the ban are a source of rich music and art that we can explore in a journey of peace and understanding.

Amara Tabour Smith

4. Amara Tabour Smith, Nkeiruka Oruche, Amber McZeal join us to talk about: House/Full of Black Women's Black Women Dreaming "divine darkeness" March 24-April 14, 2019 Visit http://www.deepwatersdance.com/

Nkeiruka Oruche

Amber McZeal

Show link: http://tobtr.com/s/11238447

Deep Waters Dance Theater is an ensemble of performing artists creating work that is rooted in ritual and explores the issues facing people of color and the environment. Drawing from the folklore of our cultural heritages and traditions we are committed to creating dance theater that promotes healing from environmental, sexual and racial oppression.

Amara Tabor-Smith is San Francisco born choreographer/performance maker who lives in Oakland. She describes her work as Conjure Art, and her dance making practice utilizes Yoruba spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity and belonging. Amara is a 2018 USA Artist Fellow, a 2017 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, and is a 2016 recipient of the Creative Capital Grant along with collaborator Ellen Sebastian Chang. Amara is the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater and was the co artistic director of Headmistress with dance artist Sherwood Chen. Her latest work, House/Full of Blackwomen is a five-year, multi-site specific ritual performance project that addresses the displacement, well being, and sex-trafficking of black women and girls in Oakland.  Created in collaboration with director Ellen Sebastian Chang and a group of black women artists and abolitionists, House/Full of Blackwomen asks the question, “How do we as black women and girls find the space to breathe, rest and be well in a stable home?” Amara is a lecturer at UC Berkeley, and is an Artist in Residence teaching at Stanford University. www.deepwatersdance.com

Nkeiruka (Nkeeraka) Oruche is an Igbo cultural producer and multidisciplinary performer specializing in the expressions of urban culture of the African Diaspora and its intersections with personal identity, public wealth and sociopolitical action. Since 2002, Nkeiruka has played a crucial role in ushering African culture unto the global stage from working as Editor-in-Chief of Nigerianentertainment.com, a digital magazine, and as co-founder of One3snapshot, an art collective.  Currently, Nkeiruka is focused on expanding and sustaining grassroots change-making and community health through the production, performance and embodiment of art and culture. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music education organization, and Director of Afro Urban Society, a meeting place for urban African art, culture and people. Learn more about her work on nkeioruche.com

Amber McZeal is a writer, vocalist, sacred scholar, liberations arts practitioner and cultural change-agent weaving somatic practice with social justice and spirituality. Amber has been heavily influenced by her lived experience in the post-Hurricane Katrina social and political climate; navigating historical systems of oppression and white supremacy exacerbated by the conditions of a natural disaster and dominated by a disaster capitalism agenda. 
As an activist, artivist, and organizer, Amber’s approach centers on the imagination as foundational in our movements to end racism, oppression and injustice. As an imaginal midwife, she encourages our collective movement beyond what we wish to disrupt and deconstruct, toward what we want to create. Her commitment to radical utopian futurity is an expression of her embodiment of love-driven politics, rooted in the radical love tradition of African American mothers.
Amber has studied sound therapy, trauma, somatic, community, liberation and ecological depth psychology at Goddard College and Pacifica Graduate Institute. Through a decolonial lens, Amber’s work focuses on the ways that systems of oppression distort relationships—interpersonal and collective—in order to personally and collectively re-imagine strategies for transforming both relational dynamics and the social constructs that they exist within. 
Workshop Title(s):
- Centering Post-Traumatic Growth: Moving From Damage-Centered Narratives to Promote Resiliency and Integration ||  This workshop explores the somatic, psychological and social conditions that facilitate and support the resiliency and innate healing capacities of individuals. Through mindfulness practices, storytelling and group discussion, this workshop will explore the ways that practitioners can interrupt the cycle of damage-centered narratives to support the rewiring of the nervous system and promote integration, healing and growth. 
- Locating ourselves within the landscape: How systems of oppression affect and distort interpersonal relationships || This workshops explores the ways that systems can contribute to the marginalization of minority communities. It emphasizes methods for cultivating cultural sensitivity to disenfranchised populations through experiential practices that explore the ways in which communities are impacted by unequal distribution of resources. This is a full day retreat that will utilize liberation arts practices, decolonial philosophy, and reflective writing to explore the psychological and somatic impacts of institutional racism on individuals and communities.
- Transforming Rage: Tending the Anger that Accompanies Loss and Grief for African American Youth ||  This workshops explores rage from a depth perspective. It re-centers rage as inherently connected to love and explores the socio-historical context within which African American anger has been distorted and misunderstood.  The goal of this workshop is to unpack rage as an archetypal dynamic and reposition caregiver's understanding and reaction to rage through a deepened analysis of the socio-historical factors which accompany it. The workshop will focus on the transition from individual to collective contexts as essential to understanding and tending to rage and grief.  

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, January 25, 2019

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!

8 to 9 AM Jo Kreiter, Flyaway Productions' The Wait Room, the first episode in her Decareration Trilogy

9 AM Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics & Black Futures at SF Art Institute Jan 21-Apr. 7. We speak to Jeff Gunderson who was the professor that led the class that developed the Vanguard exhibit which opens tomorrow evening: 5-8 p.m. SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries are open to the public Tuesday 11 AM – 7 PM and Wednesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM and are free. Visit sfai.edu or call (415) 749-4563. SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries are located at 800 Chestnut St., San Francisco, CA.

9.30 The Last Sermon of Sister Imani by Cleavon Smith at TheatreFirst in Berkeley.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2019/01/25/wandas-picks-radio-show

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., March 13, 2019

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!

1. Cheryl Fabio has been working in documentary film since 1976. She attended Fisk University, (BA/Sociology/Photography); then Stanford/Communications/Documentary Film program. Then freelancing when eventually she became a producer/director bringing many projects to fruition for KTOP TV and other community-based organizations. She was Program Director at Black Filmmaker’s Hall of Fame, Inc. (Oakland, CA), she taught at City College of San Francisco and Managed EATV, Operations Manager at KTOP TV – City of Oakland, and in 2009 she graduated from John F. Kennedy School of Law. Her non-profit, Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice, is co-producer of Evolutionary Blues … West Oakland’s Music Legacy.

She joins us to talk about her film and conversation series: Resilience, Resistance, Anticipation: A Fresh Look at the Black Arts Movement at the Oakland Public Library, 1021 81st Avenue.
https://www.swfcenter4sj.org/

2. Michael Wayne Rice (Geoffrey Dean) joins us to talk about Lucy Thurber's Transfers, directed by Ken Savage currently at Crowded Fire through March 23 at the Potrero Stage.
http://www.crowdedfire.org/transfers/

Music: Meklit Hadero's "Call."

http://tobtr.com/s/11238443

24th Annual Collage des Africaines March 7-10, 2019 at Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts in Oakland

Sharon Baird in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

The 24h Annual Collage des Africaines concert Sat. evening, March 9, 2019, opened with a wonderful film, featuring excerpts from the "Alice Street" documentary, directed by Spencer Wilkinson, that highlighted the history of the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. Many of those interviewed were in the audience tonight.  In the morning, March 10, from 9-10 a.m. is the annual community breakfast potluck followed by a day of drum and dance workshops. It is the conclusion of another wonderful Collage.

Sharon Baird
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Sharon Baird
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Val Serrant on djembe in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Val Serrant on djembe with Sharon Baird and Paul Snagg in
"From Drum to Steel Drum! (From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Paul Snagg in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

This year the theme: "Resilience through Resistance" echoed in the various company performances from the youthful Prescott Circus Theatre dancers to the more seasoned elders who could still cut the rug (smile).

Prescott's "Higher Ground: A Tribute to West African Roots of Stilt Dancing!" featured an amazing cast of dancers who were twirling on piney feet of varying heights.  As each dancer took his or her solo, the oohs and ahhs were audible. Their performance, choreographed by Ceara Walton to live percussion, reminded me to the days when the Bay Area could look forward to The Africans Are Coming pageantry at Calvin Simmons Theatre when at the start of the evening dancers on stilts would come into the auditorium as the audience stood and clapped as these tall dancers boogied African-Diaspora style up and down the aisles.

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Dimensions Dance Theatre, Inc. presented an excerpt of a new work, a tribute to General Harriett Tubman, "Ain't No Turning Back." This is precisely what the fierce warrior would say to those people who decided to board her train to freedom. LaTanya d. Tigner was Harriett Tubman, however other Tubmans joined her as the vision and its reach grew larger covering more landscape. This is Andrea Vonny Lee's work which we saw a shorter version last year.

Dimensions Dance Theatre, Inc. in a tribute to
Harriett Tubman, "Ain't No Turning Back."
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Just before intermission, Diamano Coura West African Dance Company gave us an excerpt of "Diola," music and dance of the Mandinka people. Years of living together developed a fusion of dance styles characterized by the "'flying bird dance'" with hand clapping, sometimes amplified by wooden sticks which the women dancers used to hit the floors too as another dancer blew a whistle. This dance was also from last spring choreographed by Danielle Delane and Nikka Maynard. It was high energy and featured solos by some of the famous teachers who are here this week for Collage.

LaTanya d. Tigner as Harriett Tubman (DDT)
in a tribute to "Ain't No Turning Back."
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Sister Linda Johnson as Program Host

Sister Linda Johnson, the emcee-- her presence a libation, introduced the program and the companies. We also got to meet Diamano Coura Board members before intermission. The Drum Call was another treat, the men and women really skilled in percussion this evening whether it was the participants in the drum call or the steel pan drummers who performed first: Val Serrant on djembe with Sharon Baird and Paul Snagg on steel pans in "From Drum to Steel Drum! (From Africa to the Caribbean) or the wonderful Dandha Da Hora in "Amor Negro: Forçe e Resiliência/Black Love: Strength and Resilience (Brazil) or the many  cajón percussionists in De Rompe Y Raja's "Afro Peruvian sounds. 

Reginald Ray-Savage's Savage Jazz Dance Company featured its women dancers in a work, "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, A story about searching, seeing and survival" that had the audience affirming loudly as the dancers performed in stunning solo work, as well as larger ensemble work -- characters struggling together and alone to overcome barriers. It was fitting for the moment we are currently facing as women are standing up and demanding a safer world, a more just world, a world where women and girls can live free of fear, oppression and pain.

In the Rompe Y Raja work, there was a section when different dancers performed a little soft shoe choreography combined with hambone. I'd never seen dancers from elsewhere in the African Diaspora perform this kind of dance before. I wonder if the dance developed in Peru just as it developed here in North America.

The evening closed with another wonderful Diamano Coura work, this one, "Resilience Medley, A Tradition of New Cultures" is the work of choreographer, Ibrahima Diouf. He says in the program notes that his work looks at what has happened to colonial Africa when parceled landscapes meant national cultures co-existed along porous borders. Countries like "Guinea, Liberia and the Ivory Coast represent a shift and a re-imagining of identity reflected in the Soko, Kuku, Jomokai, and Mandingo rhythms."

The colorful costumes and the even more colorful rhythms had all of us tapping our feet as dancers flew in the air. I guess at the November performance after Thanksgiving we'll be able to see the complete work.

It was a wonderful evening as all Collage events are. So many members of the audience raised their hands when asked who was attending for the first time. Also many people raised their hands when asked if they'd traveled to attend the evening concert. Just the capacity audience and the wonderful vendors in the lobby selling cloth, clothes, soaps, baskets and jewelry lent the warmth of home-- Africa in America.  Thanks to events like this in a space like the Malonga Center for the Arts traditions are established and institutions created to hold such traditions such as Diamano Coura's Collage des Africaines.

Collage is one of the many reasons why Oakland is truly a home away from home for so many Diaspora Africans. Diamano Coura is one of the many reasons why the link between the Diaspora and home cross generations grows tighter each passing year. The work Diamano Coura does and by extension the work of the other Pan African companies represented in Collage do collectively is to repair what was lost while we were separated from one another.

Collage is what reparations looks like. I am not saying we don't want the money; however, mending the riff is a multi-tiered process.

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wednesday, March 8, 2019

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!

1. Nicia De'Lovely, Oakland native, is an acclaimed published Poetess, Multifaceted Artist, Antichild molestation/ trafficking/ exploitation ARTivist, spirited Survivor and Entrepreneur.



2. Mariam Diakite –Lead Vocals, Percussion, Dance with Orchestra Gold and Erich Huffaker, guitar, multi-instrumentalist. They have a show 3/9 at Starry Plough and 3/29 an EP Party at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center, both in Berkeley.
 

Mabiba Baegne

3. 25 Annual Collage des Africaines continues, 3/8-10, with a concert Sat. evening, 3/9. Naomi Gedo Diouf is the Artistic Director of Diamano Coura West African Dance Company. She is joined Mabiba Baegne, an internationally acclaimed dancer, dance teacher and choreographer of traditional and contemporary African Dance.
 

(l to r) Victor D. Ragsdale (as Clarence Matthews) and Michael Wayne Rice (as Geoffrey Dean) break the interview ice with a shared love of Octavia Butler in the West Coast Premiere of Lucy Thurber’s TRANSFERS, running February 28 – March 23, 2019.

Photo by Adam Tolbert

 4. Transfers through March 23, Crowded Fire Theatre cast: Caleb Cabrera (Cristofer Rodriguez), David Everett Moore (David DeSantos), Victor D. Ragdale (Clarence Matthews). 

Show link: http://tobtr.com/11191939

Commemorating the Life of John Iverson

Wanda's Picks Special: "World AIDS Day 2009"

Karla Brundage and John Iverson at the AIDS Walk East Bay
at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Photo by Wanda Sabir

We'll be speaking with John Iverson about his "mission" in Uganda, what it's like being HIV+ for 30 years, living with AIDS for 18.

We might be joined by representatives from Africa Action, who can address the epidemic in Africa. WORLD AIDS DAY 2009, RALLY AND MARCH, December 1, 2009; TIME: 12:00 - 2:00PM at Lafayette Park to Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC.

Every December 1, activists around the world commemorate World AIDS Day as a way of focusing the world's attention on fighting the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic that has killed more than 25 million people in the last 3 decades.

This year Africa Action is working with HIV/AIDS groups in and around DC to mobilize for a rally and march in front of the White House. We want to put pressure on the U.S. government to fulfill commitments to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.

This year's World AIDS Day commemoration will take the form of a mock funeral procession, as we highlight the sad fact that every day 5,500 people die from AIDS while our leaders backtrack on funding commitments.

Africa is the hardest hit accounting for 76% of AIDS deaths. Further, only three out of ten Africans needing drugs have access to treatment.We highly encourage all "mourners" to wear black funeral attire. In line with this year's World Aids Day theme of "Human Rights and Universal Access," Africa Action is calling for: * Universal access to drugs * Universal access to prevention services * Universal access to Care and * Universal respect for the human rights and dignity of those affected by HIV/AIDS. We will be demanding from President Obama that the U.S commits a fare share of resources to fighting global HIV/AIDS by fully funding the Global Fund and PEPFAR. Email: outreach@africaaction.org; 202.546.7961 Visit http://www.africaaction.org/ for more information on Africa Action's campaign against HIV/AIDS

Link to show: http://tobtr.com/804684

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., March 6, 2019

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! 

1. We speak to Zachary Whelan, ED, Avary Project, and director, John Beck, to talk about Invisible Bars, the effects of mass incarceration on children. The hour-long documentary Invisible Bars is a rare look at families caught in generational cycles of imprisonment - and those who are determined to break those cycles. The film debuts on KQED on March 19, 11 p.m., and screnes again on March 20 at 5 a.m. and on March 21 on KQED Plus at 10 a.m.

Black Choreographer's Festival Here and Now 2019:
BCF Co-founder Kendra Barnes, (KKDE), who has made a dance for a quartet of women. Set to the sultry voice of Jennifer Johns, the piece, titled ReD zONE, explores various healing rituals for survivors of sexual violence, while tackling subjects like gaslighting, catcalling and the silencing of women. Shawn Hawkins, choreographer, joins us to talk about the duet for himself and Nafi Thompson titled "Stages of Love."

Julia Hughes, choreographer, together with her husband Julio Remelexo, directs a large ensemble of dancers, musicians, actors and capoeiristas called Tô Aí: We Are One People. The two set the choreography of Brazilian artist Dayse Brasil on their company. It's a dance and musical performance about the Orishas Exu and Pombagira, divinities in the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition, Candomblé.

3. Laura Elaine Ellis re Soul to Soul at Walking Distance Dance Festival 2017 at ODC, 5/12-19/2019 this year.

4. Albert Mazibuko, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mar. 2013. the ensemble is at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, March 9-10.

Show link: http://tobtr.com/s/11191933