Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, April 24, 2020

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!

Tosin Aribisala

Melanin Magic Sessions Take 9: A special series of shows featuring healers who will leave us with tools we can use to strengthen ourselves during a time when isolation is encouraged while the soul cries for communion.

We open the show with Tosin Aribisala, drummer, percussionist, singer, composer, who hails from Lagos, Nigeria. He joins us to talk about his single, released earlier this year, and Africa Rising (2016) and other projects.  

This is the final Friday, National Poetry Month. It has been really lovely sharing the airwaves with poets throughout the country. Thanks so much to Kim McMillon, Ph.D., poet, playwright, scholar, for curating with her friend, Lucinda J. Clark is the founder of P.R.A. Publishing and the Poetry Matters Project from Augusta, GA.  We close with a bang, an all women set featuring Bay Area poets: Joyce Young, Andrea Henderson, Adrienne Oliver, Kathryn Takara, in Hawaii, and Karla Brundage.
Co-hosts, Kim and Wanda, will close the program with a poem.

We'd like to open the show with something about jazz, and McCoy Tyner and the improvisational nature of life-- Black life. However, at this writing that is an idea without flesh.

Karla Brundage

Karla Brundage is the founder of West Oakland to West African poetry exchange. She is a Bay Area based poet, activist, and educator with a passion for social justice. Born in Berkeley, California, Karla spent most of her childhood in Hawaii where she developed a deep love of nature. A board member of the Before Columbus Foundation,  her work can be found in a variety of publications including Hip Mama, Literary Kitchen, Lotus Press, Bamboo Ridge Press, Vibe and Konch Literary Magazine. She holds an MA in Education from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Mills College. Her poetry book, Swallowing Watermelons, was published by Ishmael Reed Publishing Company in 2006.
Website: westoaklandtowestafrica.com

Adrienne Danyelle Oliver

Adrienne Danyelle Oliver is a poet-educator, hip-hop scholar currently living in Oakland, CA. Her previous work has appeared in Storytelling, Self & Society (Wayne State University Press 2018) and The Musuem of African American Diaspora’s poet corner. A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alumna, Adrienne enjoys writing about intergenerational healing and 1930s era history leading up to the civil rights era. Some of Adrienne’s favorite authors include Gloria Naylor, Tyembia Jess, Toni Morrison and Harryette Mullen. When she is not writing, Adrienne is reading or watching documentaries. She also leads a monthly writing and healing circle for Black women.

Kathryn Waddell Takara, PhD

Kathryn Waddell Takara, PhD, is the author of eight books of poetry, a biography, and a collection of oral histories. In 2010, she was honored with the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Takara is the owner and publisher of Pacific Raven Press, LLC, which has published 18 titles. She is a recognized scholar, celebrated intellectual, and performance artist.

Takara’s global travels are reflected in her work as footprints, phantasms, and wings to self-development, consciousness, and a call to conscience.

Recently Takara was selected as a recipient of the distinguished History Makers interview available in the Library of Congress and on line, delivered a lecture to a UN/NGO on Knighthood, gave several interviews and poetry readings, completed another poetry collection, Red Dreams Volcano Visions, and co-produced a jazz event featuring the music of Thelonious Monk.  She performed eco-poetry at Paliku Arts Festival at Windward Community College, published articles in writers of The Black Chicago Renaissance, Black Hollywood Unchained and The Chaminade Review. In 2018-2019, she gave poetry readings in New York City, Richmond Virginia, California and in the Hawaiian Islands. Some of her poetry has been translated into Chinese.

Born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, in the Jim Crow era, Takara is a long time resident of Hawai`i. Retired, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, where she developed and taught courses in African American and African history, politics, literature, and culture. During her tenure, she organized major conferences on a variety of African American, Black Diaspora, and minority issues, inviting national and international scholars to participate.

Takara earned her PhD in Political Science and an MA in French. An instructor of college-level French for over 10 years, she has given poetry readings in Bordeaux, France; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; and Niamey, Niger. In May 2017, she traveled to China for the eighth time to lecture and perform her poetry at Qingdao University and Beijing University of Foreign Studies. She has appeared in television programs and documentary films, and has given frequent interviews to publications and the media.

She is an active member of several service organizations and was knighted into the Orthodox Order of St. John, Russian Grand Priory, in 2014. The Order, founded in 1036 is committed to community and international service and healing. Members, originally known as “hospitallers,” have included dignitaries and philanthropists of all faiths.

Takara seeks a balanced and aware life. She enjoys her family, friends, pets, travel, meditation, qigong, some taiji. She continues to study, reading from her voluminous eclectic library and especially writing. She also spends time gardening, raising orchids, cooking and healing activities. She delights in the aesthetics of interior and exterior design.

Her fascination and up close experience with the eruption of a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii in summer 2018 inspired her to write these poems.

www.kathrynwaddelltakara.com  www.pacificravenpress.co/

  

Joyce E. Young lives and writes in Berkeley, California. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and California Book Award. She has taught creative writing with California Poets in the Schools and at Smith College, The Oakland Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Public Library, and La Pena Cultural Center. She has received grants from the California Arts Council and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. She was awarded a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, and residencies at Hedgebrook, Soapstone, Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a VONA and Community of Writers alumna. Her work has appeared most recently in WORDPEACE, and The Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Nomadic Press published her poetry collection How it Happens in 2018. She works as a tutor, writing coach and college instructor. She is currently writing more essays, a novella, and poetry.

Facebook Page: @writeinpeace

Radio Show link: http://tobtr.com/11720117