‘Walkin' Talkin' Bill Hawkins: In Search of My Father'

Written and performed by W. Allen Taylor, this wonderful play closes this Sunday, March 2, at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St. in San Francisco. The show runs Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Visit www.walkintalkin.com and www.afrosolo.org or call (800) 838-3006 for tickets, (415) 771-2376, for information.

‘The Art of Living Black 2008' open studios March 1-2

Lorraine Bonner will be at Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Student Union, Oakland, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.therichmondartcenter.org/html/new_exhibitions.html.

At the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond, besides the TAOLB group show, is Emory Douglas' "The Art of Protest." Open studios continues next week. Gallery hours at the Richmond Art Center are Tuesday-Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m. Call (510) 620-6772 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Admission is free.

New Roots Band

The New Roots Band features two sisters who have been delighting audiences from the stage since they were youngsters growing up in Kansas City, trombonist Angela Wellman and vocalist Lori Wellman. New Roots performs spirited, contemporary music, creating new forms, style, and roots in the jazz tradition. The band also features the award-winning composer and trumpeter Mark Wright and the highly acclaimed contemporary jazz guitarist and genuine national jazz treasure Calvin Keys. New Roots was recently featured at the San Francisco de Young Museum's "Jazz at the Intersection" series and has performed at many Bay Area jazz festivals.

The band is performing Friday, Feb. 29, at Anna's Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way, Downtown Berkeley. Reservations are recommended. Call (510) 841-5299 after 5 p.m. Visit www.AnnasJazzIsland.com. The club validates - $3 for the evening - for Allston Parking Garage, a half block west of Shattuck. A map is on the web site.

Robert King, shown here at Malik Rahim's house in Algiers in New Orleans, will speak in a symposium at SF State on Saturday. Photo: Wanda Sabir

This Saturday, March 1, 12 noon to 6 p.m., there is a symposium entitled "Prison Culture: Art, Issues and Dialog" with a keynote address given by Angela Y. Davis from 2:30 to 4 p.m. This will be followed by original performances from Intersection for the Arts' Prison Project. Earlier that day, 12-2:30 p.m., there will be break-out sessions on juvenile justice, prison poetry, the abolition of the death penalty and more.

Robert King, Angola 3 representative, is in town and will participate in one of the workshops earlier in the day. King recently celebrated seven years of freedom. Visit www.angola3.com and www.kingsfreelines.com. For information about the symposium, visit www.gallery.sfsu.edu or call the gallery at (415) 338-6535.
You can also visit www.theintersection.org for information on their exhibit, "The Prison Project," up until March 29. The symposium is in Jack Adams Hall, Student Center, SF State University, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco.

SFBAAAM Concert Sunday, March 2

"Beware of the Vibes March: A Vibraphonist Summit" features Yancie Taylor, Herb Gibson and Roger Glen with string section on violins, cello and viola, Sandy Poindexter; rhythm section featuring Glen Pearson on piano, Marcus Shelby on bass and Babatunde Lea on drums. It all happens Sunday, March 2, 4-7 p.m., at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Tickets are $20 general and $15 for seniors and children under 18. Gourmet delights by Dial-a-Chef are included in the ticket price. Order tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com. Tickets are also available at the door.

Remember when Yoshi's came out with a CD to celebrate their anniversary and omitted Black artists from the CD? Well SFBAAAM, which stands for San Francisco Bay Area African American Musicians, was formed after a series of meetings over a number of months for jazz artists to have a vehicle to control the medium, share resources and develop community. These concerts occur periodically at the Oakland Public Conservatory, the site of those intense and extremely rewarding gatherings last year.

‘Rivets,' new musical based on Rosie the Riveter at Richmond's Kaiser Shipyards
The play "Rivets" with book and lyrics by Kathryn G. McCarty and a musical score by Mitchell Covington, directed by Clay David, is at the John and Jean Knox Center for Performing Arts at Contra Costa College Campus, 2600 Mission Bell Dr. in San Pablo, Feb. 28, 29 and March 1 at 8 p.m., Sunday, March 2, at 3 p.m. Tickets are $10 and are available at the box office. Call (510) 235-7800, ext. 4274.

The first song of the show is on the website along with pictures of the cast: http://cccdrama.homestead.com. This is so exciting! For so long I thought Rosie the Riveter was a white woman. I was so proud to learn she was African-American.

SFNoir Feb. 27-29

Wednesday, Feb. 27, Dr. Raye Richardson, founder of Marcus Books, Ave Montague, founder and executive director of the San Francisco Black Film Festival, and London Breed, executive director of the African American Art and Cultural Complex, receive the 2008 Kuumba Award for Excellence in the Arts at Yoshi's, 1330 Fillmore, in San Francisco. The event begins at 8 p.m. There will be spoken word performance preceding the presentation. Guests are invited to hear Arturo Sandoval's Mambo Big Band at 10 p.m. The cost is $50 for the evening.

Visit www.sfnoir.org for the complete schedule, which includes poetry Feb. 28 at Levende Lounge, 1710 Mission St., San Francisco, and a film screening at the Metreon, 101 Fourth St., San Francisco, Feb. 29. Nothing is free. E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for information about discounted tickets.

I saw the Honeydripper band at the Monterey Jazz Festival last year. Director John Sayles was there and he gave a wonderful talk about the film highlighted with clips. Later that afternoon, there was a concert on an outdoor stage I came to really enjoy for its intimacy and warmth, even though it was cold and wet that weekend - cast members and the Honeydripper band played to an appreciative crowd. So when I heard the opening lines of Metalmouth Sims' harmonica wailing, then saw Dr. Mable John singing at the Honeydripper club, I was tickled to see her again and wondered who in the audience had been there at the concert last year.

I'd been waiting for a long time to see the completed film and when I got the email I was so happy I could fit the screening into my schedule. When I asked to speak to Danny Glover, I hardly expected him to say yes. But he not only said yes, he remembered our conversation about "Bamako" last spring at the San Francisco International Film Festival, which is almost upon us again.

Glover took me on a journey into Black consciousness and a historical legacy all but consigned to nostalgia, a period so removed from contemporary politics, it's to our credit it isn't lost. Yet, if films like "Honeydripper," "The Great Debaters," "Talk to Me" and others that celebrate Black life disappear without a trace and don't even make the Oscar radar, then in the absence of an independent distribution system for independent media, our stories have the potential of getting lost.

"Honeydripper," which opens Friday at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Grand Lake Theatre and Smith Rafael Film Center, is the story of Tyrone Purvis. Glover's character, known as "Pinetop," is a pianist and former blues artist and club owner, whom we meet in Harmony, Alabama. It's set in the 1950s, a time when Black men are going off to war, cotton is still an occupation for some and, though the Great Migration north has already come and gone, the town needs some shaking up.

I made the mistake of seeing too easily into the way 1950s Alabama was faced with similar issues as 2008 Louisiana. Glover proceeded to school a sister on the period in a way which was both enlightening and funny, ‘cause he ended up agreeing with me.
He says: "We have to understand the moment we have here in ‘Honeydripper.' We are on the verge of the most incredible movement in the 20th century, not only in this country, but around the world. People who created these movements are searching for national identity. From the Civil Rights Movement to the movement for African Liberation and the end to colonialism, it's happening all over the world from India to China to Africa. It's only three years before the democratically elected government of Iran is overthrown because it's a nationalistic government. In 1954 the democratically elected government in Guatemala is overthrown. So we have this enormous movement that is happening among people and I think to draw references to what we see today is not the right way of interpreting what is happening, you know what I'm saying?"

I agree.

"Honeydripper" tells the story of the blues and what happens when an amp is added to the guitar and it becomes a solo voice in the band. The story of Black music reflects our sojourn in this country - from the gospel hymns and Negro spirituals which lamented slavery and promised freedom, to the blues which continued to document a story filled with joy and pain, to the more electrified blues or Rock and Roll which shifted the guitar from back-up to soloist.

"Honeydripper" speaks to a people's ability to shift and adapt when the weather demands it. Black people might not control the weather, but we certainly know how to dance to it or compose songs and sing about it. Life is a celebration, even life as crippling as the one Black people faced post-reconstruction. One character called the South "the stone age," and in many ways it was, but not for long.

Servitude is juxtaposed with union organizing. Harmony is a place where Black men are hired out as slave labor if caught without employment. A friend of mine called it the "72-hours law." He said the police would pick you up in New Orleans for 72 hours and while in jail men would lose their jobs, often coerced into signing false confessions which could include sentences of 10 years. It didn't matter, he said, if you had check stubs or other proof of employment. You were fair game. Continued at www.wandaspicks.com.

Wanda took this photo of Jovelyn Richards on the “Come Home” set last week after the performance. Photo: Wanda Sabir

I saw Jovelyn Richard's play the evening before the film "Honeydripper," and the two stories resonated. "Come Home" is set in Arkansas, where 26 Black men went to war and 13 came home. The actress squeezes the life from Ms. Dee's husband, so affected by the loss of his friends they haunt the couple's bed - their eyes Ms. Dee's husband's eyes when he looks down at her when they have sex.

The veteran can't tell her about the horror, a horror that exists still in the town they live in, and the people of that town. Nothing has changed since they went away and sacrificed their lives for a country which respected its enemy more than its citizens.
The narrator describes Ms. Dee's earlier relationship with her husband, first boyfriend. She counts his eyelashes. I don't quite get the analogy but I like it the way one knows the "He loves me, he loves me not." The actress sings with her body and voice - the chorus, three women: pianist, percussionist and violinist - are ground that catches the beautiful actress.

Richards channels the spirit world, ancestors and the energy of the trees, which encircle Ms. Dee at some point as she prays for her son's safety. Lighting designer Stephanie Anne Johnson is inspired as she fills the stage with town folk and just as quickly empties it as the narrator speaks. "Come Home" opens with a lynching of a young boy. Perhaps this was foreshadowing ... I didn't catch.

"Come Home" at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., in San Francisco, runs Thursday-Saturday through March 8, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15-$35. The show runs an uninterrupted 70 minutes and really needs an audience. The actress plays for who's there but I'd like to see what it feel like to have other energy present in the house. I am bringing my college classes next Thursday, March 6. See www.wandaspicks.com.

W. Kamau Bell

I had so much fun at W. Kamau Bell Curve last month at the Sheldon Theatre in San Francisco. It was funny and educational at the same time. I didn't know what to expect except that it would be about race and that if I brought someone of a different race to the event, my guest would get in free or half off or something like that. When I walked into the theatre, it was full. People were scooting over so some of the hopefuls out in the lobby might get in. Kamau has become a Bay Area phenomenon in just four runs, this weekend his first foray into the East Bay. Guess where? The Jewish Community Center of the East Bay on 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley.

They don't bite. No, seriously, I worked there as a preschool teacher over 20 years ago before the name change.

I spoke to Kamau Monday evening up to the time he was heading out to the Punchline for a gig. He was the headliner, he told me as the clock approached 8, so he didn't need to rush off. Raised in Chicago, Kamau, which means "quiet and gentle warrior" in Kiswahili, the tall brother comes across as anything but and his route to comedy, though circuitous, has certainly been one that the artist has maintained.

There is an integrity in his show, which includes multimedia, that is honest and unapologetic. From the racism litmus test, where one gets to check one's temperature, to a survey of recent media insults, to images of why the W. Kamau Bell Curve is still relevant, perhaps even more so as Black people are disappeared behind walls or walls are erected to keep them distant and out of view, the show is relevant and irreverent and funny.

The show opens with "words you won't hear in this show," which are all the racial epithets, especially the N-word. Nooses and the racial rubric are inspired moments in the show, which is one that changes, Kamau said, in the moment. He has his set list, but if the spirit moves him, he's gone.

"W. Kamau Bell Curve" could be this nation's first Truth and Reconciliation Hearing on Race. It's something his mother, a former Stanford professor in African Diaspora Studies and author-entrepreneur, Dr. Janet Cheatham Bell, wants to happen. Leave it to her son, a child weaned on "The Fire Next Time" and the "Souls of Black Folks," to attempt this feat in the San Francisco Bay.

Kamau, who has opened for Dave Chapelle on a number of occasions and counts as one of his heroes Richard Pryor, his book, "Pryor Conviction," one he used to perfect his writing and craft, said, as he has gotten older, certain ideas are hard to ignore - one of the them race. As he continues to develop material, he said the other isms - sexism, homophobia etc. - edge towards the chopping board. "It's not good form to pick and choose," he said. Even though he doesn't get up and leave the venue when someone makes a joke about these subjects, as he does when a comedian thinks it's funny to insult Black people, he has looked more closely at his work to see if he is adding to the minutia masquerading as fun. "It's all linked," he said.

"There were things I'd accept at 21 when I first started doing stand-up comedy - not just stand-up but to get along with the group - that I won't put up with anymore. It's not OK. My challenge is to find out why it isn't okay and communicate that to people." He's reached his toxicity level.

"On the racial rubric," Kamau explains, "I have levels one through five. As much as people believe a four or five is violence, if you're experiencing ones and twos all day, that stuff is cumulative. It starts to feel like a four or a five.

"I don't want to be the living example, but I also don't want to put poison in the world either," he said. "I certainly don't mind being honest and if people find that offensive, I thought about it before I said it. I'm not just cavalierly throwing it out. I respect people's right to be offended.

"Laughter is the soul saying yes," Kamau quotes Quincy Jones. "This can go either way - good and evil, socially acceptable and otherwise." So be careful what you say yes to, folks; it might come back to bite you. After his show, which opened with Paul E. Hunt's fabulous band, I found myself quoting Kamau: "Black people are only 30 percent of Oakland's population. San Francisco doesn't have any Black people."

Check him out March 1 and 2, 8 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. Bring a friend of a different race and your guest gets in for free! General admission is $20. Visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/27298 and his blog, thewkbellcurve.blogspot.com. For a clip, watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeaXzQYs2-M. See www.wandaspicks.com for the complete story.

‘Satellites' by Diana Son at Aurora Theatre through March 2
The concept of what happens to people who are dislocated emotionally and genetically from their cultural source is interesting, especially when these people have children and the parents want to give their child an opportunity they themselves lack. What drew me to the play in the first place was what I thought was a revisiting of themes Lorraine Hansberry addressed in "A Raisin in the Sun."

I hope folks watched the great revival of the classic work Monday evening, Feb. 25, on NBC, with the all-star Broadway cast and newcomer, executive producer Sean Combs, as in Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and other incarnations. In the telemovie, Combs is Walter Lee, a chauffeur who has dreams he can't afford, that is until his dad's insurance money arrives - seed money he needs to go into business with his friends.

Combs' Walter plays alongside Phylicia Rashad, the matriarch of the family. During the course of the film, the mother has to let her son grow up and be a man, even if he stumbles and falls. In a household where the only other male is his son, Walter is outnumbered and one can see how hard it could be for him to assert himself.
Rashad received the Tony for this role, the first African-American to win best lead in a play.

Walter is a strong protagonist and Combs said he spoke to actor Sidney Poitier about the role. Poitier was Walter alongside Ruby Dee's Beneatha, his sister, in 1961. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" opened on Broadway, the first play ever by an African-American woman to do so. Tony-nominated Saana Lathan now stars in that role. Combs had to stretch and I think he does OK. I like the story, and the new interpretation is strong.

Back to "Satellites," so when I got an email from Michael Gene Sullivan that he was in it, I wanted to see it even more, because Michael is one of my favorite actors. So I'm sitting in the theatre, the set looks like it's moving day, the only problem is, the boxes never disappear - it looks like my living room, two years after I buy the house, but they have four stories - I only have one. The problem is not space here. When is the house going to be home? When are the planets going to adopt an orbit, share a universe?

The name "Satellites" should have been a clue. If it wasn't, then the fact that Diana Son, a playwright known for work that examines identity and confronts a society unable to handle the shifting expressions of such - chooses her titles intentionally. She term this her first play written for specific ethnicities - Michael Gene Sullivan's "Miles" is Black, Julie Oda's "Nina" is Korean, and Darren Bridgett's "Eric," Miles' brother, is white. Obviously Miles is adopted, yet the circumstances of his early life are revealed only towards the end of the play.

One wonders about the ambivalent relationship between the two - Eric is a loser. When we meet him, he enters the house breathless. He says he was chased by hoodlums from the train station, who snatch his backpack and steal his ipod. Miles is married to an architect, wearing a Google.com T-shirt, and, though recently fired, he has had a successful career in technology, plus the couple has just bought a house to raise a family - their 6-week baby girl.

The child is inconsolable. Perhaps the motif - this child - reflects a household or perhaps a world where doubt and unexpressed suspicion prevent authentic relationships from developing? If it's not the crying, then the abrasive music which indicates scene changes is enough to drive one mad.

Satellites orbit the earth, yet are not a part of the solar system - outside, they desire inclusion but don't know how to break the barriers of exclusion. In Nina's case, not knowing her language, and in Miles' case, not knowing his ancestry - where he came from and, more importantly, why he was abandoned - increases the despair.

The couple buys this house which depletes Miles' retirement; he loses his job and Nina is the sole breadwinner. Miles' manhood is fragile at this point and Nina almost blows his house down.

The new couple on the block are interlopers in the Brooklyn neighborhood where Black people are being driven out by marauding yuppies looking for a place to land. When the rock, an all too familiar symbol of welcome, breaks an expensive glass pane near their door one night, one doesn't necessarily think it's about race; rather, it could be a response to the subtle ethnic cleansing masked as revitalization of a neighborhood. I think about the rock that sailed through Lorraine Hansberry's childhood home in Chicago when her father bought a house in a neighborhood hostile to Black people.

"Satellites" continues Thursday-Sunday, March 2, at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Visit auroratheatre.org or call (510) 843-4822. See www.wandaspicks.com for the rest of the story.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Visit her website, www.wandaspicks.com, for an expanded version of Wanda's Picks and for exciting "web exclusives."

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