Wanda's Picks

Bud E Luv salutes Sammy Davis Jr. at The Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF, Sunday, October 11 at 7 PM. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at www.therrazzroom.com or directly through www.ticketweb.com or (866) 468-3399.

Bud E. Luv is lounge singer and parodist and is the creation of Robert Vickers. He turns any room where he performs into a Las Vegas showroom while singing tributes to many of today’s popular singers, and rocks the house with his hysterical versions of everyone from The Spice Girls to Sinatra and Tom Jones. We will air a prerecorded interview with interview with drummer Lenny White who is in town with Stanley Clark and Hiromi this weekend at Yoshi's. Visit www.yoshis.com We close the morning with David Roach, artistic director for the Oakland International Film Festival opening Thursday, October 8, 2009 at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. Visit www.oiff.org The festival runs through October 14 at various venues throughout Oakland, with Family Days planned, along with workshops. The OIFF closes with the wonderful film, "Sabar: Life is a Dance," directed by Chike Nwoffiah. Visit http://www.sabarthemovie.com/

Maafa Awareness Month begins! Featuring Ise Lyfe, poet, teacher, businessman who is opening for Gil Scott Heron at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, CA. Doors open at 8 PM. We feature the music of Gil Scott Heron from his "Spirits" album. We also play Thaddeus Edward's Peace not War. We close with a prerecorded interview with Helmer Pablo Trapero, director of Lion's Den (2009), the story of mothers incarcerated in Argentina.

Rie Shontel, playwright, actress, brings her one-woman show "Mama Juggs" back to the San Francisco Bay Area for a one night run at The Marsh Theatre, 1062 Valencia Street (near 22nd street in the Mission). The show is at 7:30 PM. In this one-woman show, three women face late puberty, breast-feeding, old age - and breast cancer - in their Oakland Housing Project living room. Rie Shontel delivers an intimate view of these women through song and laughter. Visit http://www.themarsh.org/ HuNia Bradley is "Mama" in "Mama at Twilight: Death by Love" written and directed by Ayodele Nzinga, currently on stage at the Thea Bowman Theatre, 920 Peralta Street, in Oakland. It's the Lower Bottom Playaz doing theatre in the yard at the Prescott Joseph Center, Fridays & Saturday, 8 PM, Sundays, 2PM, through Oct. 11. The play is a beautiful and complex view of a family. The play touches on universal issues of love, family and gendered roles. It also looks specifically at the challenges of a black family facing the tragedy of HIV/AIDs infection. The play is bold, fresh, courageous and not to be missed; one of the Bay's finest productions of the season. This production is not recommended for small children. Teenagers and family groups are encouraged to attend. Tickets are $10.00 for seniors, students and( per person) for groups of 5 or more, $15 general admission, $20.00 table side seating with amenities (group rates available). Call the box office at (510) 208-1912 or via email contact: [email protected]

Today I will host two renown DJs: Jeremiah Kpoh& the Afrobeat Nation from Monrovia, and DJ Said Adelekan, (Fatsouls Records), from Lagos to talk about Africa Rising shows: one on Friday, October 2, 9 PM, at BAOBAB VILLAGE (FORMERLY BOLLYHOOD), 3372 19th St., San Francisco, CA 94110,(415) 970-0362, Tickets $10 in advance, and the second show, "Fela Kuti Birthday Bash," on Saturday, October 10, 9 PM at Cafe Du Nord, 2174 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94114-1319,(415) 861-5016. Tickets $12 in advance. Another two shows have been added for October 31, at both venues: the DJs will be at Baobab Village holding it down, while Sila and the AfroFunk Experience will be at Cafe Du Nord. Visit http://maishaproductions.com/calendar.html and www.fatsoulsrecords.com, www.myspace.com/djsaidfatsouls, www.myspace.com/fatsouls

Halifu Osumare, Ph.D., Fullbright Scholar, Associate Professor, African American & African Studies at UC Davis; Traci Bartlow, dancer, choreographer, host of the Oakland Hip Hop Dance Institute No. 1, at East Side Arts Alliance at 2277 International Blvd., Oakland, 94607, $10 youth/$25 adults, (510) 533-6629; Kathleen Ann Thompson's "See Me! Hear Me!" is Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m., Sept. 27, 8 p.m. Tickets are $10.00 general admission. Call (510) 568-3314. Sins Invalid with Leroy Franklin Moore Jr., co-founder and community relations director. Leroy was also a poet, journalist, community activist,feminist and consultant on race and the last 13 years. Patty Berne, co-founder and director of Sins Invalid. Her background includes advocacy for immigrants who seek asylum due to war and torture, and within the Haitian Diaspora.

Today is the birthday of John Coltrane. Born John William "Trane" Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. We'll be featuring music composed and performed by Coltrane, his late wife Alice Coltrane and son, Ravi Coltrane from Alice Coltrane's "Translinear Light" and John Coltrane's "Ballads" with the JC Quartet and perhaps a selection from his last live recording at the Olatunji Cultural Center April 1967. Also today we look at the life of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, whose birthday, Monday, Sept. 21, would have been his 100th. He was the first president of a free African nation, who dedicated his life to his people--a Pan African nation. That his noble life was concluded in exile, reminds me of that of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and for that matter Richard Wright. His was a vision of a United States of Africa. We'll play excerpts of his speech to the UN Sept. 23, 1960 and I'll share an introduction to the UN address, written by his good friend, W.E.B. Dubois who lived out the later portion of his life in Ghana. I also have another couple of jewels by the very prolific writer and scholar, Dr. Nkrumah. We are joined in the studio by Ghanaian native sons and daughters, musicians, choreographer and singer: Kwama Thompson, Nii Armah, and Pope Flynn to talk about their patriot and world leader who passed April 27, 1972. The Nkrumah excerpts are taken from http://www.nkrumah.net/un-1960/index-nkun-1960.htm We also want to remember the life of writer/scholar Elsie Washington, whose life will be celebrated this Sunday, Sept. 27, in Oakland. She was the first author of a romance novel with black characters. I remember when my husband brought home a copy to surprise me. I recall thoroughly enjoying it. Never would I have imagined meeting the author, let alone calling her friend. She was a lovely women and we miss her tremendously.

Stanley Bennett Clay’s Armstrong's Kid, Raymond Leigh Clark, Oakland Dinner Club, Tory Scroggins, actor, Roosevelt Mosley-Executive Director, SMACC (Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County), Jesse Brooks, journalist, filmmaker, activist. “Armstrong’ Kid” starring Clay and Tory Scroggins… will play September 18 at 7:30 p.m., 19th and 20th at 2:00 p.m. at SMAAC Youth Center, 1608 Webster St., Oakland California. “Armstrong’s Kid” is about a school teacher falsely accused of child molestation by his best friend’s 14 year old son. The night of the 18th proceeds will be given to SMACC, a youth organization created to give a safe environment to gay youth in Oakland http://www.myspace.com/smaacyouthcenter.

Gary Graves, playwright, director, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Sept. 18-19, 8 p.m. and Sept. 19, 2 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA, (510) 848-7800, $14-$25, www.centralworks.org.

Suga-T, artist, business woman, http://www.suga-t.net/, performs at A Safe Place's Walk-a-thon, www.asafeplace.org, Saturday, October 3, registration 8 a.m. at Lake Merritt Boat House, via the artist's "Be About It Movement."

Dr. Lance Webb, "Qi Gong for Success," prescriptions for health, wealth and happiness; Karen (Muki) , "Take a Chance: Sit for Change," Sat., Sept. 19, 2009, 10 AM to 4 PM, at Martin Luther King Civic Park in Berkeley, and Una Aya Osato (writer/performer), "Recess," in SF Fringe Festival and at East Side Cultural Center, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009.

Mali’s bluesman Ali Farka Touré has passed the torch onto his son Vieux Farka Touré, whose self-titled first album on World Village Music (www.worldvillagemusic.com, US release: February 13; Canada, February 6, 2007) features the final studio recordings of the older Touré before his death in March 2006. The album, which also features kora-player Toumani Diabaté, draws heavily on the same blues-inflected North African desert traditions that Ali Farka Touré made famous on such albums as the Grammy-winning Ry Cooder collaboration Talking Timbuktu (World Circuit). Vieux’s debut pays musical homage to his father’s roots with familiar trancey guitar-work while incorporating new musical influences from reggae to rock. He will be singing many of these songs on his debut North American tour in July and August.

“Here in Africa, he who teaches you in life, you will follow his path,” explains Vieux in his austere yet grounded way. “Our lives here in Mali are like that. Much of what I sing on the album was his wisdom, teachings that he passed down to me. As he neared the end of his life, I knew that the wisdom he imparted on me was important to spread.”

8:00 AM Professor Manu Ampim on Ivan Van Sertima Tribue Sept. 12

8:30 AM Sin By Silence, Director, Olivia Klaus Sin By Silence, Subject, Brenda Clubine

9:00 AM Molly Snyder-Fink and Kiran Goldman, co-directors of "Fast As She Can”

9:30 AM: Missing child, 5 year old Hasanni Jamil Campbell

9:55-10:30 AM: Tanya Windham, Director, On Both Sides of the Wall: The Two Way Struggle”