Wanda's Picks

We are opening with an interview with Antoine Hunter, Artistic Director and Founder, Urban Jazz Dancechoreographer, teacher, deaf advocate and creative force behind DEAF LOUDER, the Bay Area's 2nd Annual Deaf Dance Festival this weekend at Dance Mission in San Francisco, Fri., AUG 8 &, AUG 9 at 8pm; Sun., AUG 10 at 4 pm. There will be dance, poetry, song and rap by deaf and hearing performers. Starring Def Motion from London, Michelle Banks, Fred Beam, Joey Antonio, Rosa Lee, and Antoine Hunter. Other performers include James L. Taylor the 3rd, CODA Brothas, Sister Master, Half N Half, Deaf ASL singer Tonique Hunter and poet Joy Elan Sledge.Tickets: $25  For a discount use the code: “DeafLouder” (for an $18.00 ticket at Brown Paper Tickets); $12 for children 10 and under). For groups of 5 or more contact Ms. Stella Adelman 415-826-4441 dancemissiontheater@yahoo.com  There will be a special workshop Saturday with Michelle Banks at EBCPA in Richmond and Sunday from 12-2 there will be dance workshops at Danc

We speak to Antoine Hunter, Artistic Director and Founder, Urban Jazz Dance, about DEAF LOUDER: The 2nd Bay Area Deaf Dance Festival this weekend, Friday, August 8 and Saturday, August 9 at 8pm; Sunday, August 10 at 4 pm at Dance Mission Theatre in San Francisco. DEAF LOUDER proudly presents a festival that celebrates deaf culture. There will be dance, poetry, song and rap by deaf and hearing performers. Starring Def Motion from London, Michelle Banks, Fred Beam, Joey Antonio, Rosa Lee, and Antoine Hunter. Other performers include James L. Taylor the 3rd, CODA Brothas, Sister Master, Half N Half, Deaf ASL singer Tonique Hunter and poet Joy Elan Sledge.Tickets: $25  For a discount use the code: “DeafLouder” (for an $18.00 ticket at Brown Paper Tickets); $12 for children 10 and under). For groups of 5 or more contact Ms. Stella Adelman 415-826-4441 dancemissiontheater@yahoo.com  There will be a special workshop Saturday with Michelle Banks at EBCPA in Richmond and Sunday from 12-2 there will be dance workshop

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!

We open with an interview with author, Doris I. Mangrum, whose A Soiled Identity: From Triumph to Tragedy and Back Again, tells the story of Darnell Cookson, former Marine and former felon as he rejoins society. However, this is not a typical rehabilitation story. Told in the protagonist's voice as if we were seated in his home one evening getting to know one another, we meet Darnell just as he arrives home from prison to new wife, new child and many relationships he has to restore, like that between he and his two older daughters by a prior marriage, and his kid brother who is making a bit too much money fast. Darnell tries to hold his head up when applications are rejected and interviews have no follow-up calls, but it is hard. Darnell's reentry is a community venture; each chapter ends with what Mangrum calls, "Choice Moments" where her audience gets to imagine a "what if?" In "Live Your Life," the reader is invited to learn from Darnell's experiences while we also gear up to participate in an "Idea Infusi

AmikaeylaGaston is a multiple-award-winning singer, international best-selling recording artist and cultural change catalyst working at the intersection between science and the arts - particularly music. As the Founder and Director of ICAHSI, the International Cultural Arts & Healing Sciences Institute, she travels the world as a cultural ambassador furthering surprising connections in unexpected places through the arts, activism, and advocacy.  Her Music As Medicine - Healing with an Artful Purpose programming - a multi-faceted therapeutic approach through music, movement, & theater modalities - has taken her around the world.  Special Concert: She is featured in a special performance with John Santos this Sunday, July 27, 2014, in Spirits Lifted:A Musical Celebration featuring John Santos and special guest Amikaeyla Gaston, Sunday, July 27th  3:00pm, EastSide Cultural Center, 2277 East 14th Street, Oakland, $15 at the door.  Kristoff St. John is best known for his role on ‘The Young and the Restles

Rebroadcast from July 23, 2014. We open with an excerpt of a conversation with Professor KC Williams about a Hate Crime she experienced at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina. To support: www.gofundme.com/Fight-the-Hate-in-NC  Gerald Lenoir is the founding Executive Director and currently the Co-director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration founded in Oakland in 2006 to support fair and just immigration reform and to bring African Americans together with immigrant communities to fight for social and economic justice.   He is a founding steering committee member of the national Black Immigration Network, a co-founder of the Priority Africa Network in Oakland and a board member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. www.blackalliance.org Martha R. Bireda, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of the Blanchard House Museum of African American History and Culture of Charlotte County (FL). She is Director of the Museum’s Maroon Study Center, and the

We open with an excerpt of a conversation with Professor KC Williams about a Hate Crime she experienced at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina. To support: www.gofundme.com/Fight-the-Hate-in-NC  Gerald Lenoir is the founding Executive Director and currently the Co-director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration founded in Oakland in 2006 to support fair and just immigration reform and to bring African Americans together with immigrant communities to fight for social and economic justice.   He is a founding steering committee member of the national Black Immigration Network, a co-founder of the Priority Africa Network in Oakland and a board member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. www.blackalliance.org Martha R. Bireda, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of the Blanchard House Museum of African American History and Culture of Charlotte County (FL). She is Director of the Museum’s Maroon Study Center, and the New Image Project, a project de

Today on the 100th Anniversary weekend of the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Organization (UNIA), Professor Kimberly C. Williams shares with audiences a hate crime whe was subjected to and administrations response and punishment. Professor Williams teaches Sociology at a small, southern U.S. college. She has written about and studied race and gender dynamics throughout her career, including her undergraduate and graduate research on race in education. Her current research focuses include analyzing the portrayal of women and people of color in media and the contrapower harassment dynamic prevalent on college campuses. She is beginning a new career in public speaking and writing on feminism and race. She blogs for the Rebel Researchers Collective http://rebelresearchers.com/ 2014/06/08/death-by-a-million-papercuts-are-prestigious-degrees-really-worth-the-trouble/ on her personal blog, Radicalize Me! (http://wp.me/4cdDt) on Facebook at “Blackademia” (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blacka

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! 

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!

TaSin Sabir joins us to talk about her new book, Madagascar Made. Her artwork can be described as vibrant and full of powerful and emotional messages. Skilled in a range of mediums (including photography, painting, film, web & print design, and screen printing), TaSin uses this love for art making to express topics that are of an importance to her. In 2004 TaSin graduated from California College of the Arts, where she received a BFA in Fine Arts Photography. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, TaSin’s artwork has been exhibited all around the Bay Area and Nation. Such galleries include, The Oakland Museum of California, The African American Historical and Cultural Society Museum, The Richmond Art Center, The Judah Magnes Museum, Pro Arts Gallery, Joyce Gordon Gallery, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. TaSin has also published another photography book: 100 Families Oakland. In 2007, TaSin took her passion for art and love of her community and opened a galley in Oakland called The Oakpod. During

We opened with a prerecorded interview with Nefertina Abrams, Royal House of Makeda Productions, and Melame Gange, ModeAfrika apparel, (first aired 7/2/2014) re: Ubuntu-Faqir Simunye or Pan African Love and Unity Festival on its concluding night, July 4, 2014, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Humanist Hall on 27th Street, in Oakland. We open with Gange’s “African Suns.”  We then play a segment from an interview with Civil Rights Movement architect, Dave Dennis, who is just returning home from a successful 50th Anniversary Conference at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. The goal of the conference was to answer the following questions: What were the lessons learned? How do they apply to today’s challenges? What is the next phrase? How will an appropriate response be developed for the next phase? While speaking to Mr. Dennis about the conference and current issues on the stove top boiling over presently like Voter’s Rights and Educational Opportunity, especially for black youth as access to higher education still is not e

1. Rebroadcast of Ms. Bonnie Boswell, niece of Civil Rights Leader, Whitney Young, Executive Producer and Producer of Power Broker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights, aired Feb. 6, 2013.  http://wandasabir.blogspot.com/search?q=whitney+young 2. Nefertina Abrams and Melame Gange join us to talk about the first annual THE 'UBUNTU-FIQIR SIMUNYE' PAN AFRICAN LOVE & UNITY CONCERT, July 3 nd 4, 2014, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. (both days) at the Humanist Hall in Oakland, CA. Admission is $10 for adults, children are free. 3. We close with part 1 of an interview with Civil Rights Maverickthe Hon. Dave Dennis, Freedom Rider and Co-Director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) in Mississippi. Dennis was the Mississippi director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), but he worked with SNCC members and other civil rights activists in Mississippi under the COFO umbrella to avoid intra-organizational conflicts. COFO organized activists for a Mississippi voter registration drive during "Freedom Summer."

Jed Rothstein, Director/Producer, Before the Spring, After the Fall. Three years before the Arab Spring, a group of young Egyptian rock musicians struggled for freedom amidst the stifling dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Two brothers among them, the sons of a dissident political prisoner, would help lead the uprising in Tahrir Square and the struggle for the future of their country.  Airs tonight on ITVS. Bio: Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Jed Rothstein specializes in hard-to-get stories from around the world that help people understand one another better.  Whether seeking out  heavy metal musicians who become Arab-Spring revolutionaries (PBS's Before the Spring After the Fall); pioneering doctors (HBO's Coma and Pandemic); Al Qaeda terrorists (The Oscar-nominated HBO documentary Killing in the Name);  defenders of free speech (The 2009 Sundance film Shouting Fire); journalists on the front lines (Independent Lens' Democracy on Deadline) or fundamentalist Christian college kids training

1. Ayodele "WordSlanger" Nzinga, Ph.D., joins us to talk about the August Wilson Century Cycle, part 7, Two Trains, which is opening this August, 2014 in Oakland. 2.Arielle Julia Brown (Project Director/Founder)speaks about Love Balm for My Spirit Child--- A choreo-play based on testimonies from Bay Area mothers whose children were lost to gun violence, directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, opens at Brava! For Women in the Arts, Theatre Center in San Francisco, 2781-24th Street at York, July 11-20, 2014 shows Fri-Sat 8 p.m.; Sun 3 p.m. Tickets are: $10-25. Visit http://www.brava.org/ Actors/Artistic Collaborators Ayodele Nzinga is an Actor/Artistic Collaborator in the work, so she joins us as well. 3. American Experience presents: Stanley Nelson's Freedom Summer. The award-winning director joins us by phone from the largest 50th Anniversary Freedom Summer Conference at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi: http://freedom50.org/ The film, along with Nelson's earlier, Freedom Riders is up for viewing on t

JOHN PIERRE, JD, speaks about MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER 50TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE Inter-generational Action Agenda at Tougaloo College - Jackson, Mississippi, June 23 - 29, 2014 John K. Pierre has been on the law faculty of the Southern University Law Center since 1990 and was promoted to vice chancellor in 2006. Pierre is a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association and the Texas Bar Association.  He has previous teaching experience as a visiting and adjunct professor at California State University, Southern Methodist University School of Law, Loyola University Law School, Southern University College of Business, Saint Leo's College, Webster University, Louisiana State University, and Baton Rouge Community College. He received the bachelor's degree in accounting from Southern University in 1980, a master's degree in tax accounting from Texas Tech University in 1982, and a juris doctor degree from Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1985. Pierre has published numerous articles on tax law, s

We open with an interview with Angelique Kidjo, Grammy award-winning recording artist deemed "Africa's greatest living diva" by NPR. In addition to international touring, she has used her visibility to campaign for women's rights, provide education opportunities for girls, and support environmental initiatives. She performs Sat., June 21, 2014, 8 p.m. at the Nourse Theatre, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA (415) 392-4400 www.ciis.edu/publicprograms We close with an interview with Thomas Allen Harris, dir., Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photography and the Emergence of a People, which is a part of Frameline38 and scenes June 21, 2014, at 1:30 p.m. at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco. Visit www.frameline.org Following an award-winning festival run, which saw Through a Lens receive an African Oscar for Best Diasporic Documentary (African Movie Academy Awards,) Social Justice Award (Santa Barbara International Film Festival,) Programmers' Best Documentary Award (Pan African Film Festival,) along with a TED

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!

This morning we have a special broadcast featuring awardwinning director, Yoruba Richen, documentary filmmaker who has directed and produced films in the United States, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. Yoruba’s award-winning film, Promised Land, premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Festival and has screened at numerous festivals around the world. It received a Diverse Voices Co-Production fund award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and won the Fledgling Fund Award for Social Issue Documentary. Yoruba has produced for the investigative unit of ABC News and the independent news program Democracy Now. In 2007, Yoruba won a Fulbright Award in filmmaking and traveled to Salvador, Brazil, where she began production on Sisters of the Good Death, a documentary about the oldest African women’s association in the Americas and the annual festival they hold celebrating the end of slavery. In 2012, Yoruba won the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award and became a Guggenheim fellow. She is a g

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!