Wanda's Picks Radio Show, May 31, 2019

Linda Steel II
photo: Jason Lam

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. East Bay Dances, hosted by Oakland Ballet Company, features among others, dancer, choreographer, Linda Steele II, who is a improvisational dance artist and creator, formally trained at Marin Ballet and Marin School of the Arts before receiving her BFA from Dominican University of CA where she also studied Art History. She has been honored to have performed original works by Alonzo King, Drew Jacoby, Maurya Kerr's tinypistol, Sidra Bell, Katie Faulkner and recently with Joslynn Mathis Reed, Urban Jazz Dance Company, Dazaun Soleyn, Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble, .fLEE dances and Capacitor Dance, among others.

Linda Steele II has presented her solo work in various dance festivals and art events including the renowned Ebony Fashion Fair. She has studied and choreographed Dance for Film with MADE in France and has performed internationally with Anandha Ray's Quimera Tribe, Urban Jazz Dance Co, Corina Kinnear and others. She is deeply grateful to have met and collaborated with such amazing artists.

East Bay DANCES
Hosted by Oakland Ballet
Sunday June 2, 2019
4pm
Laney College
Odell  Johnson Theater
900 Fallon St. (across from Lake Merritt BART)

Tickets
$25 adults
$20 seniors
$15 children and students

2. Jackie Wright joins us to talk about the 21st Annual San Francisco Black Film Festival, June 12 (preview) to June 16, 2019 Visit https://sfbff.org/wordpress/official-selections-2019

3. Juneteenth 2019 in Oakland
Wanda Ravernell, Executive Director is the visionary of Omnira Institute and promoter and manager for Awon Ohun Omnira, (Voices of Freedom) and serves as the narrator for its performances. She has been the administrator and booking agent as well as the publicist for all of its activities.

  
A former journalist who worked for 20 years in the newspaper business at the Alameda Newspaper Group, the Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle, she also was an activist for minority journalists including developing and implementing a workshop for minority high school journalists. From 2003 to the present, Ravernell developed and implemented a Juneteenth ritual commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation using that included all the faiths of the captives who would become slaves during the Slave Trade Era.

Beginning in 2009 to the present, Ravernell developed and implemented several lecture demonstrations drawing on the African traditional knowledge and applied it to African American history using a choir comprised members of an African American church and the Lucumi community, who also provided the musical framework and expertise of the sacred drum tradition known as Bata. The choir, Awon Ohun Omnira (Voices of Freedom) received the 2010 Negro Spirituals Heritage Award from the Friends of Negro Spirituals, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of the music.

In 2015, through Ravernell, the institute received a Certificate of Recognition from California State Assemblyman Nate Thurmond.  In 2014, Ravernell with Sauda Burch led the institute in developing and staging the first Black-Eyed Pea Festival, held in Oakland’s Mosswood Park. Concerned about the impact of the deaths of young, black men and women at the hands of the police, Ravernell, with Dennis Toabji Stewart, decided to bring healing through traditional music to the surviving families. They have worked with Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant who was killed by BART police in 2009 and Phelicia Jones with The Justice for Mario Woods campaign. Woods was killed by S.F. Police in 2015.  Visit omnirainstitute.org

Kathy Lynn "Kanika" Marshall
Michael Fitzwater Photography

   

4. Kanika Marshall, author, artist featured in the Sac Black Book Festival, May 31-June 1, 2019 https://www.kanikamarshall.com/mbr_bio.php

Kurt Edward Fishback chose Kanika Marshall
to be a part of his tribute to women artists.

Visit  http://tobtr.com/11358841