Destination Freedom Black Radio Days

Seven Coffins is a drama of abuse, trafficking, and also awareness. Told via poetry and dialogue. Listen in.

Written by Confidence Zora Simone Omenai. Produced and directed by donnie l. betts for No Credits Productions, LLC..

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Playwright Nadiya Jackson of Round Solstice says, "The play was inspired by a compilation of poems I wrote referencing the relationship humans have with nature. Over time it became an experimental play adaptation of those poems where I explored the potential consequences of climate change in a more abstract way."

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Trigger warning: This powerful drama has scenes of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.

Living on the streets Lashawn Hughes a young girl dim of sight and hard of hearing, she is homeless, and hopeless. Then that quiet voice her soul became stronger, louder, leading her spirit true and powerful. Now, all can see her, her strength, her mind, and her heart. The voice of the spirit is clear.

Written by Hugo Jon Sayles and produced and directed by donnie l. betts.

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Join us for our conversation with Charles Wright. Mr. Express Yourself himself. Charles Williams Wright (born April 6, 1940) is an American singer, instrumentalist and songwriter. He has been a member of various doo wop groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as a solo artist in his own right. He is also the former leader and writer of hits for the group, Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band.

Wright was born on April 6, 1940, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States. The seventh of twelve children, he was raised on a cotton plantation. Years later, he would refer the sharecropping era as "The next shade after slavery". According to the book Up from Where We've Come, the sharecropper that owned that plantation was a cruel man by the name of Edward Miles. When Wright was 12, the family moved to Los Angeles. Contrary to his father's rule of not allowing his children to listen to secular music, he began listening to popular music and became mesmerized by it. Jesse Belvin was a singer that he heard on the radio was to have a significant influence on the young Wright and who became his mentor. After hearing Belvin on the radio, he looked up his number in the phone book and contacted him. He was told by Belvin to stop copying his sound and find his own. Later, Belvin took Wright under his wing and helped him get started. This association lasted until 1960, but stopped because Belvin died in a car crash at the age of 27. The following year, Wright had his first hit record.

Wright is best known for his role as band leader of the group Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, which had the classic 1971 hit "Express Yourself". He has been associated with Johnny Guitar Watson, touring with him and playing on early recordings by him. He also added his vocals to an album by The Watsonian Institute. For a very brief period, Wright managed singer Bill Withers

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Join me for my conversation with AG Keith Ellison. We hear his thoughts on what can be done the break the wheel of use of force by police against our communities. With this powerful and intimate trial diary, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asks the key question: How do we break the wheel of police violence and finally make it stop?

The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the center of the conflict and the controversy, Keith Ellison grappled with the means of bringing justice for Floyd and his family. Now, in this riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial, Ellison takes the reader down the path his prosecutors took, offering different breakthroughs and revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.

Each chapter of BREAK THE WHEEL goes spoke to spoke along the wheel of the system as Ellison examines the roles of prosecutors, defendants, heads of police unions, judges, activists, legislators, politicians, and media figures, each in his attempt to end this chain of violence and replace it with empathy and shared insight.

Ellison’s analysis of George Floyd’s life and the rich trial context he provides demonstrates that, while it may seem like an unattainable goal, lasting change and justice can be achieved.

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Our guest is author and award-winning journalist Patti Hartigan. Her recent book August Wilson A Life is receiving praise from literary circles, theatre circles, and academic circles alike. I am joined in conversation with Patti next on Destination Freedom Black Radio Days - The Eclectic.

August Wilson (né Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle (or The Century Cycle), which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

His works delve into the African-American experience as well as examine the human condition. Other themes range from the systemic and historical exploitation of African Americans, race relations, identity, migration, and racial discrimination. Viola Davis said that Wilson's writing "captures our humor, our vulnerabilities, our tragedies, our trauma. And he humanizes us. And he allows us to talk." Since Wilson's death, two of his plays have been adapted into films: Fences (2016) and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). Denzel Washington has shepherded the films and has vowed to continue Wilson's legacy by adapting the rest of his plays into films for a wider audience. Washington said, "The greatest part of what's left of my career is making sure that August is taken care of"

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Destination Freedom Black Radio Days Year in Review 2023. Interviews with David Byrne, Lynn Nottage, and others, plus audio dramas. Enjoy.

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Our guest is artist Allison Semmes. One of Allison's latest achievements is that she is part of the Barry Manilow/Bruce Sussman musical Harmony. She portrays the artist and activist icon Josephine Baker.

Allison Semmes is a multi-genre singer/songwriter and Broadway actress. She studied vocal performance as a coloratura soprano at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana, then musical theater at New York University where she received her Master's in Music.

Broadway & National Tour credits include Motown the Musical (Diana Ross U/S), Book of Mormon (Swing, Nabulungi U/S) & Motown the Musical (Diana Ross), and The Color Purple (Squeak).

Other Theatre credits include Little Shop of Horrors (Kennedy Center), A Wonderful World (Miami New Drama), Shout Sister Shout (Seattle Rep), OoBlaDee: Bebop Musical.

She has recorded and written with Stevie Wonder (2020), performed with Erykah Badu & BK Philharmonic in Ted Hearne's "You're Causing Quite the Disturbance" at BAM, and Kurt Elling's "The Big Blind", a noir jazz musical with Dee Dee Bridgewater at Jazz at the Lincoln Center

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Join us for our conversation with artist Sheryl McCallum. McCallum is a graduate of Denver South High School who found lasting success on Broadway playing several roles in Disney’s The Lion King.

Connection is also a recurring theme in how McCallum and David Nehls came to make “Miss Rhythm,” which is based on the 1996 book “Miss Rhythm: The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend” by Brown and Andrew Yule. McCallum and Nehls first met in New York in the 1990s, reconnected in Denver a few years ago doing musical theater, and seized the opportunity that the COVID pandemic afforded them (in that “lemons, meet lemonade” way) to create the show.

Since returning from New York City to take care of her mother, Denver native McCallum has been making inroads in the area’s theater scene. In New York, she was in the Broadway cast of “The Lion King” as well as a performer in City Center’s Encores! concert series. In her first Denver show, McCallum played a town elder in the Curious Theatre Company’s production of “Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet,” part of MacArthur Fellow Terrell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays.

Since then, McCallum’s appeared in shows at Curious, Cherry Creek Theatre, the Aurora Fox, the Arvada Center, and Miners Alley. It was at that Golden theater — during artistic director Len Matheo’s much-needed Quarantine Cabaret — that McCallum and Nehls test-drove a tribute about the woman who became known as the Queen of R&B.

Ruth Brown, After a string of hit songs — “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and “5-10-15 Hours” among them — the Atlantic record label where she switched from ballads to R&B was referred to winkingly as “The House That Ruth Built.”

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In the summer of 1961, Rutha Mae Harris was home visiting her family after her first year at Florida A&M University. Protests had been erupting in Albany, her hometown, and Harris had to face a question that many young people involved in the struggle asked themselves – would she go back to school or stay and organize?

She knew the need. Harris grew up with strong roots in the community. Her father, Rev. Isaiah Harris, was the founding minister of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and had been providing literacy classes and encouraging members of his congregation to register to vote since the 1940s. He taught his children to always think that they were as good as anyone else and to never fear any man. Her mother was a schoolteacher and was supportive of the Movement, “She told me that as long as I came back to finish my schooling, it was alright with her.” And so Harris stayed, fueled by the opportunity to fight for her freedom.

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