Wanda's Picks

Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco tonight. We broadcast an interview recorded Friday, July 1, 2011. She speaks about Nina Simone and the artist's impact on her life and music. We close with another prerecored interview, this one with activists: Intisar Ibrahim. Mrs. Ibrahim, RN, speaks about her clinic in Somalia, which she will return to when she retires later this year. We'll find out information on how we can support her work and that of our other guest, Ebony Iman Dallas, who is now in Somaliland for the next three months. Her organization is Africanation.com. Announcements: Al Hajjah Karimah Ali's janaza is at Chapel of the Chimes in Hayward this morning, 11 AM. The repast is at the Elijah Mohammed Cultural Center in Oakland.

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the writing, visual and performing arts of African people in the Diaspora. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work filled with raw unfettered passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay! Remember to tune in on Wednesdays from 6 AM PST to 7 or 8 AM and on Fridays from 8 AM to 10 AM. We also host special broadcasts from time to time.

René Marie, the award winning singer whose style incorporates elements of jazz, soul, blues and gospel, has quickly become a heroine to many; a woman of great strength exuding stamina and compassion; often explaining how finding her voice and self through singing gave her the courage to leave an abusive marriage. But since the release of her recording debut, Renaissance, this Colorado based heroine has also evolved into one of the greatest and most sensuous vocalists of our time. Unmistakably honest and unpretentious while transforming audiences worldwide with her powerful interpretations, electrifying deliveries and impassioned vocals — René Marie has drawn a legion of fans and music critics who find themselves not only entertained, but encouraged and even changed by her performances.With her latest release Voice of My Beautiful Country (Motema Music), listeners will hear her trademark vocals but will also be struck by the wide variety of songs that she interprets. During the course of the album, Marie brings her personal touch to everything from Motown to Tin Pan Alley to “America the Beautiful.” But Voice of My Beautiful Country is much more than a demonstration of Marie’s eclectic musical tastes; it is an ambitious celebration of Americana and the cultural diversity of these United States. She is on tour with stop in Oakland, CA, Thursday, June 30, 2011. Bill Doggett joins us to talk abiout his exhibit at the SF Public Library, African American Center, The Underground Railroad: Songs of Hope and Freedom.  It focuses in on the value of the Negro Spiritual for survival and in its coded use of passages that are used as coded language. The opening is July 2, 2011, 1 p.m., and features Omnira Voices of Freedom Choir, in the Koret auditorium. A reception follow. Director, Mark S. Wexler, speaks about How to Live Forever, opens July 8, 2011 at Landmark Opera Plaza.

Ebony Iman Dallas, Painter, Founder/Executive Director of Afrikanation Artists Organization which is having a fundraiser party Saturday, June 25, 2011, 6:30 PM tp 10:30 PM at Full Circle: An InterCultural Celebration of Art and Fundraiser @ Addis Habana Dance Studio, 366 Grand Ave., Oakland, CA 94610.

Other guests are: Mark LeGrande Trotter, Painter, Art Therapist- (participant in the "Afrikanation InterCultural Art Exchange" with an artist in Somaliland/Somalia.) Linda Pomerantz, Dancer, Founder of Intercultural Dance Alliance- (participant in the "Afrikanation InterCultural Art Exchange" with an artist in Somaliland/Somalia) & Laurel Lee, Painter- (donated a painting to auction): afrikanationartists.org VIVARIVA! is the feature film debut of writer-director-producer Djo Tunda Wa Munga, the first film made in the Democratic Republic of Congo in over two decades, the first Congolese feature film in the Lingala language,  and the first Congolese feature distributed in the U.S. Munga's film opens today in San Francisco and Berkeley. This weekend is Ethnic Dance Festival Week 3, featuring the Nimely Napla Pan African Dance Company performing at the Novellus Theatre @ YBCA, Fri.-Sun., June 24-26, 2011. Napla is a director, master dancer, craftsmen, costume designer, and choreographer who has extensive knowledge of Liberian culture. As former director of the Liberian National Cultural Troupe, Napla came to the United States in the early 1980s. During this tour with the Cultural Troupe he performed at the Louisiana World Exposition. In August of the same year he also began work with the New Orleans Public School System’s Artist in School program. Napla's community based Dance Company focuses on positive attributes of our youth through discipline, study of cultural heritage, and performing arts. Visit on Facebook.com & www.diamanocoura.org (bios).

This morning we rebroadcast from June 21, 2011, the interviews with directors of two films, Peter Sorcher, director, Eat the Sun &Katie Wolfe, director, Kawa. Kawa is screening at Frameline 35, this evening, June 23, 2011, 9:30 PM, at the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley, CA. The director, producer and Moari writer of international note, Witi Ihimara, will be there. Witi's novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain forms the basis of the film about a Maori man, Kawa, who outs himself after a life of untruth. Kawa is also Witi's story too; it is the story of a very patriarchial family (and society) which Kawa is an intergral part of coming to grips with Kawa's life. Will initial shame, hurt and anger give way to love? Can Kawa's father whose views on masculinity certainly don't include a gay son, respect this man of integrity? Can a woman whose friendship with Kawa preceded their marriage trust him again? The film Kawa looks at how closely connected one's identity is tied to family, to the point that one will let family particularly parents shape one's personality and life, even when it feels wrong. Kawa looks at the way others see you can warp one's perceptions of self. Parents need to think about this as they unconsciously project themselves onto their children. It can come back to haunt them as the child and eventually adult tries to please us and ends up hurting, in Kawa's case, his wife, children and himself. Visit http://www.cincocinefilms.co.nz/ Music Somi, "When the Rain Comes;" Abraham Burton, "Aminah." We open with an interview with Djo Tunda Wa Munga, director of Viva Riva, opening June 24, 2011, in San Francisco & Berkeley.

Rebroadcast of Summer Special, aired June 21, 2011.

Eat the Sun screens on the Documentary Channel on the Summer Solstice, June 21, 8 PM ET/PT.

Peter Sorcher, director, spent 11 years in New York City honing his storytelling and branding skills as a commercial and documentary film editor with Red Car.  He has worked on commercials for Nike, Coke, Reebok, IBM, and The North Face, among others as well editing documentary films that have garnered theatrical and televised release. He'll talk about how he met a young former Olympian hopeful, Mason Dwinell, who set out on an incredible cross-country journey to uncover the truth behind the ancient art of Sungazing, where people stare at the sun, the sun's energy literally acting as food for some of the subjects interviewed for this film. For others the sun is a source of spiritual enlightenment.  I wonder what happens when the sun is not visible--storms, inclement weather or in places on the planet where daylight is limited?Our next guests flew in from New Zealand for the American premiere of Kawa, based on Witi Ihimaera's novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain. KAWA is a psychological drama of a family in crisis as Kawa, a successful Maori businessman in Auckland, New Zealand, is forced to reveal his lifelong secret that he is gay. Wiki joins us, along with director, Katie Wolfe & producer Nicole Hoey.  Visit http://www.cincocinefilms.co.nz The film is featured at Frameline 35, June 21 at the Castro & June 23 at the Elmwood. Novalima's Rafael Morales closes the show. The AfroPeruvian band is in town June 25 at the Brick & Mortar and in CA from June 23-28. Visit www.novalima.net Music: Meklit Hadero performs at The Independent in SF, June 23. She'll share clips from her recent tour of Ethiopia; Novalima's Concheperla & Africa Lando;Amina by Abraham Burton.

Friends of the Negro Spirituals presents: There’s a Bright Side Some Where - A Juneteeth Community Sing featuring guests: Wendell Brooks, who will lead the sing-a-long, is a song leader; vocal music and history instructor at Berkeley High School, professional Baritone soloist; slave documents scholar, and a Negro Spirituals expert; Dr. Martin C. Jones, tenor saxophonist and reentry program specialist for incarcerated persons, will give demonstrations of a form of the oral tradition, the musical cries of street peddlers selling their products in post slavery years heard the street of his native New Orleans; Sam Edwards, therapist and co-founder of FNS; Harold Jackson III, director of “BURN: The Evolution Of An American City,” about a little known but worse recorded race riot in American History: Tulsa Oklahoma Race Riot of 1921 premiering on the Documentary Channel, June 28, 2011, 8 PM (PT/ET), salt2light.com; Risk This at Cutting Ball present: TENDERLOIN by Annie Elias, June 24-25, cast and theatre co-founder, Paige Rogers, Associate Artist David Sinaiko and Actress Rebecca Frank join us to talk about this final free performance 2010-11. Visit cuttingball.org Frameline 35, features two films: T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s, dir. Robert Philipson & the world premiere of Bumblef--k,USA, dir. Aaron Douglas Johnson, w/Cat Smits, lead actress and co-writer and Heidi M. Sallows, actress. Bumblef--k screens at the Victoria Theatre tonight, June 17, 7 PM. Visit frameline.org & outfest.org/fest2011 re: July 13 screening in LA; T'Ain't is at the Victoria June 21, 7 PM. Highlights 6/18: Waited For (Roxie), Bashment (Victoria), Frameline Greenroom Conversation with Dee Rees & Nekisa Cooper, 1:30 @ Victoria; 6/19: The Muppets Take Manhattan (Castro); Spork (Castro); Kawa (Maori, 6/21&23).Don't forget SF Black Film Festival June 17-19: sfbff.org

Dinizulu Gene Tinnie joins us this morning to speak about the 17th Annual Sunrise Ancestral Remembrance of the Middle Passage Ceremony, beginning at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, 4020 Virginia Beach Drive, off Rickenbacker Causeway on Virginia Key. The date this year coincides, appropriately, with Fathers Day, and with Juneteenth,  the growing commemoration of June 19, 1865. The Ancestral Remembrance also takes on special significance this year because 2011 has been declared by the United Nations General Assembly to be the International Year for People of African Descent. For further information, please call 305-904-7620. Both Dinizulu Gene Tinnie and Runoko Rashidi speak about our fallen heroes this morning. Runoko Rashidi is a historian, research specialist, writer, world traveler, and public lecturer focusing on the African presence globally and the African foundations of world civilizations. Rashidi's list includes: Abdias Nascimento, Ms. Sisulu, Asa Hilliard, Ivan Van Sertima, Gil Scott Heron. We play a prerecored interview with Shabaka Henley & Jaquie Taliaferro, LaiHiTz.com, who both have films screening at the SF Black Film Festival this weekend. We also play an interview with actors, Kimberly Drummond & RogerGuenveurSmith, from the film Moozlum available now on DVD. Music: Billy Harper's "Knowledge of Self" w/Amiri Baraka on Blueprints of Jazz Vol. 2, Gil Scott Heron's "We Beg Your Pardon America," Regina Carter's "Nteri" from her Reverse Thread.

Rebroadcast of June 9, 2011 show featuring: Pee Wee Ellis's STILL BLACK, STILL PROUD - An African Tribute to James Brown at Yoshi's in Oakland. Eurydice Ross and Tanya Marie's Grown Women Dance Collective's "Fallen Heroes, Rising Stars: A Juneteenth Celebration through Dance," June 18th, 2011, 8:00pm at Diablo Valley College Theater in Pleasant Hill. Call (925) 680-4400. Brother Osei Terry Chandler and Deborah Wright, join us to talk about the 14th Annual Libations for the Ancestors this weekend, June 11, 2011, 9 AM PT, at FortMoultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. The ritual there is 9 AM-1 PM. We close with a conversation with two programmers and directors from the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, June 10-12 at Brava Theater in San Francisco, Kebo Drew - QWOCMAP's Managing Director and Filmmaker for this year,"Ain't I A Woman" (2011) and Meja Tyehimba – Filmmaker “Cantelop” (2009). Visit http://www.qwocmap.org/festival.html It is a free event.  We close with music from Rupa and the April Fishes's Este Mundo.