Rightnowish

A few days ahead of April 15th -- 415 Day -- we're talking to two artists from San Francisco who have lived, fought, partied, and made art for their hometown.

Jules Retzlaff (Cereal For The Kids) and Sachiel Rosen (Baghead) are the duo behind the film and album, Dedicated To Those Who.

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Jackie Keliiaa is a stand-up comedian raised in Hayward and based in Oakland. She's unapologetically Bay, and proud of her Yerington, Paiute and Washoe roots. She's also funny af.  

Building off Charlie Hill's legacy, Keliiaa cracks jokes about colonialism, Native culture and family, alongside her trials and tribulations with dating.

Before the pandemic, you could catch her shows at Punchline San Francisco, Comedy Oakland and Tommy T's. She's featured alongside other Native comedians in the televised 'First Nation Comedy Experience'. She also produces events that showcase woman of color comics, and she just launched a podcast where she interviews creative friends.

One of her latest endeavors includes contributing a chapter in the newly published book, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy. It's a deep dive into the under-appreciated legacy of Native comedians, taking its name from an iconic Charlie Hill joke, "My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York... We had a little real estate problem."

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Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye is a legend. She’s best known for her seminal film, Watermelon Woman, which takes a critical look at the depiction of Black women in cinema; 2021 marks 25 years since it debuted.

In making that film, Dunye, a graduate of Temple University and Rutgers University, created her own style of filmmaking known as “Dunyementary.”

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Oakland-based filmmaker Theo Hollingsworth knows about nerds. Back when he attended Howard University, he was given the nickname “spoken nerd” because of his personality and passion for poetry.

More recently, Hollingsworth’s independently produced comedic sci-fi series, Sirius Lee: The Problematic Time Transplant, dives into its own nerdom with quantum physics while addressing outdated perspectives on masculinity, gentrification and much more.

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San Francisco State graduates Alba Roland Mejia and Jon Warfield Harrison are in the early stages of their careers as filmmakers. They’ve released a handful of short films which are artistic, a bit experimental and occasionally include a dash of science fiction.

Their first collaboration, My Own Mecca, looks at a day in the life of a young man at a crossroads, learning to navigate relationships, rent and the world around him. Their most recent work, Blackness is Everything, is an experimental film that features the faces and talents of some pretty well-known Bay Area-based Black artists. The short film, made possible with the support of BAYCAT, debuted in February and made for a quality visual experience in the middle of Black History Month.

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Maya Cueva makes documentary films that cover the heavy topics: immigration, reproductive justice and xenophobia.

Cueva says her journey into professional storytelling began after covering current events at Youth Radio (now YR Media) as a teen. While attending Ithaca College in New York, she began work on her first film, The Provider, which follows Dr. Shannon Carr as she performs abortions in Texas in the midst of a heated battle for reproductive rights.

That film led to another, On The Divide, which looks at the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border; the film is currently in production. Between creating those films, she's produced an animated film about her father’s immigration experience to the U.S. from Peru, Only the Moon/ Solamente La Luna.

And earlier this month Cueva debuted Ale Libre. This story follows reproductive rights organizer and undocumented activist Alejandra Pablos in her fight against deportation. The film recently debuted at the Big Sky Doc Fest, and later this month will be showing at the San Diego Latino Film Festival, Salem Film Festival and the Thin Line Fest.

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Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco's eighth poet laureate, says it's not enough to simply be a poet.

"The poet needs to just come on down to the trenches," he says. His suggestion for writers out there is to get involved in your community, whether that's passing out flyers or organizing a mutual aid program. "That experience is what you synthesize good revolutionary poetry from."

This week on Righnowish, Eisen-Martin joins us for a brief but powerful interview that includes a performance of his poem, "A Sketch of Genocide." 

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Antoine Johnson stands at the intersection of hip-hop culture, HIV/ AIDS history, and the great institutions of higher learning in Northern California.

A graduate of Oakland's Castlemont High School and Sacramento State University, Johnson is now a PhD candidate at UCSF where he's researching the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and how the community-- including a group of Black women in Oakland-- responded.

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Lyricist Champ Green is probably your favorite Bay Area rapper's favorite rapper. He's been putting in work for some time, and over the past calendar year he's been on a music-making mission. And he's not showing any signs of slowing.

His clever wordplay and wisdom-filled rhymes can be found on a project with DJ Basta, a recent single and video with Mistah FAB, and multiple tracks with the Grand Nationxl collective. And next week he's scheduled to release Pleasantly Plump 2 with DJ Twelvz.

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Neo-soul and hip-hop artist Jada Imani gets her inspiration from a range of lived experiences: parking tickets, lessons from her parents, and Mac Dre lyrics.

Despite the pandemic, Jada has been dropping three-track EPs every first Friday since October, and plans to continue to do so until March. It's a legacy of the collaborations and vibe she cultivated while organizing and hosting First Friday events at the Alan Blueford Center in Oakland for over 3 years.

While honoring her origins, she's also incorporating inspiration from her new surroundings -- like Hawaiian tree frogs.

This week on Rightnowish we talk to Jada Imani about astrology, 'high vibration clapbacks' and how music was her access to culture when she was a small girl in a small town.

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