Wanda's Picks Radio Show Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King and Bill Withers

Dr. King in Memphis, April 3, 1968

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!

Bill Withers

We celebrate William Harrison Withers Jr. "Bill Withers," today.  Born in Slab Fork, West Virginia, July 4, 1938 in a family of 13, he the youngest, most people know him as an American singer-songwriter and musician who performed and recorded from 1970 until 1985. He recorded several major hits, including "Ain't No Sunshine", "Grandma's Hands", "Use Me", "Lean on Me", "Lovely Day", and "Just the Two of Us."

Damani Baker & Alex Vlack, directors, "Still Bill."

However, he was so much more and we learn about these other dimensions of a man who stopped recording for 33 years to have a family and a life with that family. The film, "Still Bill," co-directed by friends and colleagues, Damani Baker and Alex Vlack, is a wonderful portrait of this complex man's life from growing up in a coal mining town, to joining the navy to working in the air force making toilets, to fame in his 30s.  I am going to play a little of the audio here this morning following an archival
interview with director, Damani when the film was debuting in a free community screening at the Kabuki Theatre in San Francisco 11 years ago.

We open with Amikaeyla Gaston singing "Lovely Day," then shift to the conversation with the director, Damani Baker for 40 minutes and then play Nina Simone's To Be Young Gifted and Black, her tribute to Lorraine Hansberry. The sound quality is not as great as it could have been. Straining to hear the artist's comments are worth it though. I like the play on the Simone Missick and Nina Simone.

Simone Missick, actress, portrays the character Camae in Katora Hall's play "The Mountaintop" which closed at
TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA April 7, 2013.
Between the two segments I read a review I wrote entitled: Through the Looking Glass

After Simone and I finished talking we play Nina Simone's moving Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)  After that song, well what could anyone say? So end the show with thirty minutes of  "Still Bill" .

Dr. King on Lorraine Motel Balcony, April 4, 1968

Oh, we kick off the King segment, we play an excerpt of King's famous speech the title of the Hall play is derived.  (I also play "Look what the Light Did" by Meklit & Quinn.)

The show is Wanda's Picks tribute to two great men from a generation of men and women slipping into other dimensions so quickly we need to pay attention and enjoy their gifts now before they return to the earth. .

Aṣẹ, Aṣẹ, Aṣẹ-o.


Show link: http://tobtr.com/11708099