Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)

Wanda with granddaughter Brianna Amaya at Peralta Community Colleges tenure reception, Tuesday, April 22, Earth Day. Wanda is tenured faculty at College of Alameda, English, Basic Skills.

This is the space revolutionary poet and Black nationalist Aimé Césaire occupied. He is perhaps best known for the concept and movement of négritude, defined as “affirmation that one is Black and proud of it,” developed with Senegal’s first president, Léopold Senghor and Léon Gontian Damas. His most successful student was fellow Martinican, Franz Fanon, author of “Black Skin, White Mask.” What I admire most about Césaire is his consistency. He stayed ethically and morally consistent to the end and used his creative writing – poetry, fiction and dramatic literature – to tell the story of our people.

He was a proponent of the value of culture as primary tool for self-actualization, truth and revolution. I heard a great discussion on Democracy Now earlier this week. I hope a celebration of his life and work is planned over the course of the year; otherwise we’ll have something in his honor during Maafa Awareness Month.

If you kill the artist, you kill the soul of a people. There is no revolution without the artist as central. I was looking for a suitable quote and stumbled upon this website, www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cesaire.htm. Democracy Now also had a guest scholar, Robin Kelley of USC, on the show this week speaking about the significance of Césaire’s life and work, especially his work as an anti-colonialist. Visit

www.democracynow.org/2008/4/21/aime_cesaire_1913_2008_remembering_the. Aimé Césaire died on April 17, 2008, in Fort-de-France.

From ‘Cahier d’un retour au pays natal’ (‘Return to My Native Land’)

my negritude is not a stone

nor a deafness flung against the clamor of the day

my negritude is not a white speck of dead water

on the dead eye of the earth

my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral

it plunges into the red flesh of the soil

it plunges into the blazing flesh of the sky

my negritude riddles with holes

the dense affliction of its worthy patience (1939).

Reflections on the week past and the one to come

Glen Person, Yassir Chadley 0408 by Wanda.jpg

“Cross Currents” by Dimension Dance Theatre with Anthony Brown’s orchestra was awesome last weekend. It’s another masterpiece – a stunning history of Black America through the lens of a San Francisco couple and the Fillmore community. devorah major’s poetry and narration along with that of Steven Anthony Jones was inspired.

Afro-American Migration to Victoria, SFIFF, art exhibits closing etc.

What else, oh yes, the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the San Francisco Migration of African Americans to Victoria, British Columbia, on April 20, 1808. The commemoration continues this Friday, April 24, 4:15-6:15 p.m., at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., Second Floor, in San Francisco. The event is free. Then Saturday, April 25, 12-3 p.m., there will be a scholars’ forum in Browning Hall at Bethel AME Church, 916 Laguna St., in San Francisco.

Don’t forget the San Francisco International Film Festival begins this week, on April 24, and continues through early May. There are many films of African interest I’d recommend. Jazz at Pearl’s in San Francisco is entering its final week, so try to get over to see one of its closing shows.

What else? Yoshi’s on both sides of the Bay has some great line-ups. I recommend John Santos next week, Monday-Tuesday, April 28-29, at Yoshi’s San Francisco, www.yoshis.com, where he was to feature Israel “Cachao” López, Afro-Cuban bassist and composer, who made his transition this month.

SFIFF has a new film screening celebrating his life, which I also recommend. “Cachao: Uno Mas” screens Monday, April 28, 6:30 p.m. at Kabuki theatre in San Fransico on Post and Fillmore, and Friday, May 2, 1:15 p.m., at the same theatre. The film features interviews with the artist, Santos, Cachao’s driver, film producer Andy Garcia and other musicians and artists. What is wonderful about the film is the way it slips in and out of performances, incoporates rare archival footage, yet is so San Francisco the way Luis Medina’s voice opens the film with an interview with Cachao on the occasion of his performance at Bimbo’s in San Francisco.

It is certainly a treat and one of the highlights is John Santos’ discourse on the African influence on Cachao’s work, which the music echoes in an interview where he speaks of his first time seeing African dance and music and how that sharpened his musical focus. I also found enlightening the musician’s comments on Beethhovan’s compositional structure and its similarity to certain Afro-Cuban forms, especially when the camera then shifted to a congero playing those rhythms. Beethhoven will never sound the same to me again, but this is the way art is. It influences and is influenced by what is in the air at the time it is born.

devorah major and Richard Howell following “Cross Currents,” a collaboration between Dimensions Dance Theatre and composer Anthony Brown and Fifth Stream Music featuring Richard Howell and others. devorah major wrote the poem and narrated part of the program

LaTonya Tigner (center) following DDT’s “Cross Currents.” LaTonya also directs the Dimensions Extensions, which is having a program May 4 entitled “Growing Pains,” 3 p.m. at the Malonga Theatre.

“Caroline or Change” closes this weekend also down in Mountain View. The TheatreWorks production stars one of my favorite actresses, C. Kelly Wright. Visit www.theatreworks.org/onstage2.htm. She’s worth the ticket and the drive down. One more thing, the Afro-Groove Connexion is performing at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center on San Pablo at Gilman in Berkeley this Saturday, April 25, 9 p.m. Visit www.ashkenaz.com/html/calendar.php. Did I mention I have tenure now? Well I do. Visit Peralta College Television, PC-TV, Tuesday, April 22, to see what happened at the board meeting.

Free Congolese Dance Class

Bay Area National Dance Week is Friday, April 25, through Sunday May 4, and in honor of that there will be a FREE Congolese Dance Class with Vivien Bassouamina and Makaya Kayos sponsored by Dimensions Dance Theater at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Studio C, Oakland, 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For information, contact DDT (510) 465-3363

The Queens of New Orleans

Jazz Appreciation Month continues with a lecture performance this Saturday, April 26, at 2 p.m., featuring Chelle! & Friends singing the music of some of the noted Queens of New Orleans. Tickets are $15 general, $10 seniors and students. Children 12 and under are free. You can get tickets at the door. Bring cash. The box office opens at 1 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Call (510) 228-3218 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

School’s Out Children & Family Resource and Safety Fair

Friday, April 25, 12 noon to 4 p.m., at Eastmont Town Center, 73rd and Bancroft in Oakland, on the ground floor.

Film Screening

“Ghostride the Whip,” available in stores nationwide July 27, is having a free screening Thursday, April 24, at 6 p.m., at UC Berkeley campus, 10 Evans Hall. The event is free. This should be an interesting film. It is ghost riders who destroyed the building Ausar Auset Society occupied last year when a car tore out the front wall. One of the passengers was injured, perhaps fatally. We don’t know, as all that was left, besides the car, was a baseball cap and a tennis shoe.

Every night 2-4 a.m. residents on Foothill and Bancroft in Oakland are terrorized by “ghost riders.” Online rap staple BallerStatus.com had this to say about “Ghostride the Whip”: www.ballerstatus.com/article/news/2008/03/4316/, www.myspace.com/ghostridethewhipfilm, http://youtube.com/ghostridethewhipfilm, www.facebook.com/pages/Ghostride-The-Whip/14263036211.

Patterns: Music and Related Arts in the African American Tradition

This lecture and performance next week, Wednesday, April 30, 8 p.m., hosted by Mills College, 500 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, is entitled “Celebrating Creative Music II: An Afrocentic Perspective” and features on its panel India Cooke, Mills College Music Department; Dr. Karlton Hester, UC Santa Cruz Jazz Studies; Greg Bridges, KCSM-FM and KPFA-FM; Art Sato, KPFA host of “In Your Ear”; and Angela Wellman, dean and co-founder, Oakland Public Conservatory of Music; among others. The event is in Lisser Hall. For more information, call (510) 430-2171.

Regina Belle sings Gospel Music

The lovely singer-songwriter Regina Belle is in town this weekend, Sunday, April 27, for two church services: Allen Temple, 8501 International Blvd., Oakland, (510) 544-8910, for the 8 a.m. service and the Center of Hope, 8411 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, (510) 568-5261, for the 10 a.m. service. For Allen Temple, you can also visit www.allen-temple.org/

Lil Bobby Hutton Remembered

Saturday, April 26, at the West Oakland Branch Library there will be a commemoration of the life of comrade Bobby Hutton on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his murder by Oakland police, at deFermary Park, 18th and Adeline streets. The event is between 3 and 5 p.m. at 1801 Adeline St., Oakland. The artist who designed the memorial bust of Hutton will show slides of the statue. For information about the library, call (510) 238-4352.

Casper Banjo Update

I didn’t know what to expect at the Police Commission Board meeting, but what I encountered wasn’t what I’d expected. As a friend, Hubert Collins, stated, “I want to see the policeman who pulled the trigger!” I thought we’d have a hearing and evidence would be presented, like the disputed toy gun, the assault rifle, witnesses. Nothing like that happened, but the commission did allow Casper’s friends, family and supporters to testify. The commissioners expressed condolences to the family and friends and observed a moment of silence. I thought them genuinely compassionate. And if they didn’t know Casper Banjo before, they certainly know him now and feel the tremendous loss his murder is to the Oakland community.

The testimony about Casper to the commission just emphasized what a great light was extinguished when our brother was killed. A star fell from the sky and today I feel the heaviness of darkness – I’ve been stumbling all day trying to stay on my feet. A friend told me to be strong. Sometimes strength is not what one needs to make it to the other side of the day.

Casper’s absence ... Here is another space in the universe no one will ever fill. I left feeling emptiness ... I’m tired of spaces opening up which we were unprepared for. Death is natural, but murder is not. Death is a transition and happens over time; each day we all die a little. Organically, after birth – the one high point in our lives – the rest is downhill. Perhaps this is the lesson of gravity (what a word) – it’s heavy and then it’s light. Gravity is groundedness in truth.

Violent death for a calm, softly spoken man, a gentle presence, is wrong and unfair, just as Martin King’s murder was. I’m feeling sad, very sad. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, my nose needs blowing. ... I felt this way yesterday. I’m feeling the weight of the collective loss, the weight of our people.

I didn’t speak. I listened and watched the panel and Casper’s friends among them: Akili and her little boy, Ache; Leroy Moore, founder of DAMO; Safi wa Nairobi, who is also a member of the Disabilities Commission for the City of Oakland and member of DAMO; Tomye, artist; Mesha, founder of the Idriss Stelley Foundation; members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners; as well as Casper’s adult nephew; KPFA; Freedom Socialist Party; World Can’t Wait; Cop Watch; Justice4GaryKingJr. About 30 people were present and not all spoke.

The commission has 96 open cases, not that all of them were murders. I wonder if this is a slow year or if so many open cases is normal?

I think the Police Review Commission should automatically investigate all police murders. Police are public servants, so when a servant kills its master then something must be wrong, really wrong and citizens need to know why it happened, whether the immediate family or circle of friends demands it or not.

Casper should have been telling stories about his life. He certainly would have had a captive audience. We need a space to share ideas and histories before yet another light is extinguished forever. I found it ironic that it was a day after Paul Robeson’s 110th birthday and a day past the opening reception for the exhibition in the City Hall rotunda. Robeson, a man who used his art for fight for justice would be saddened by our loss. This exhibit is up through the end of the month and is an abbreviated version of the AAMLO’s multimedia exhibition curated by Rick Moss a few years ago.

Poetry

The Second Annual Bay Area JazzPoetry Festival is Saturday, April 26, 7-10 p.m., at the Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., (510) 848-3227, www.hillsideclub.org. Tickets are $20.

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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