Abdullah Sabir’s birthday is this week. Here he is (left) with siblings Amirah, TaSin and Bilaliyah Sabir and Seifullah R’id.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Oakland Museum has a fun day planned for families and mothers on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 11. Visit www.museumca.org/cal-public/calendar.cgi?month=05.

Update on Charles Platt, J-72525

Our brother Charles Platt was moved to the California Medical Facility, in Vacaville, from Solano State Prison, in March. One of the inmate attorneys filed a writ to keep him from being transferred to Avenal, after protest had stayed the hand of prison authorities. His mother, Mrs. Bobineaux, said he has a wheelchair now and the facility is much more able to accommodate his physical needs. Now we just need to get him released. If you’d like to write, the address is: P.O. Box 2000, Vacaville, CA 94696-2000.

Venezuela’s Los Vasallos del Sol dancers in first US tour

Direct from Venezuela, with a repertoire covering the diversity of its cultural heritage from the African-inspired rhythms of the Caribbean to the folk ballads of the inland plains to today’s popular rhythms and dance forms, Los Vasallos del Sol delivers a high-energy performance with contagious beats that will have you jump to your feet and dance! The nationwide tour, their first in the U.S., comes to San Francisco this weekend.

Meet and talk with the artists and with Patricia Abdelnour, cultural attaché of the Venezuelan Embassy, on Friday at a panel discussion and reception, “The Dynamics of Cultural Diversity: Inclusion in Venezuela,” 6:30-9 p.m., in the Art Gallery on the upper floor at the Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St., San Francisco, (415) 821-1155. The Bay Area’s own Jacqueline Rago with her fine ensemble, Venezuela Music Project, will be there too.

Los Vasallos Del Sol will present the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Concert on Saturday, May 10, 1-3 p.m., at the Esplanade, 760 Howard St., San Francisco. On Sunday, 11 a.m., they offer a Dance and Music Workshop at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., in Berkeley.

TaSin Sabir with Sonia Manjon, director of the Center for Art and Public Life and 100 Families Oakland, and Randolph, who will be the new director of 100 Families because Sonia is leaving for Wesleyan College. TaSin is the photographer for the project, now in its second phase in Oakland and Bayview Hunters Point. 100 Families is art for social change. The new exhibit opened Saturday at the African American Museum and Library, Oakland, on 14th Street at MLK Jr. Way.

Congrats to Kim Nalley on the Jazz at Pearl’s reprieve

Upcoming shows include Kim Nalley’s Nina Simone tribute, “She Put a Spell on Me,” Tuesdays, May 13, 20 and 27. Pete Escovedo is this Saturday, May 10. Rhonda Benin is Sunday, May 11, and Houston Pearson is back for three nights, May 23-25. Visit www.jazzatpearls.com/jazz/, call (415) 291-8255 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Jazz at Pearl’s is located at 256 Columbus Ave. at Pacific in San Francisco. Have dinner or one of the club’s famous desserts. It’s a great place to enjoy music.

Community Conversations: Women in Hip Hop Summit

Saturday, May 10, 2 p.m., in the Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, there will be a free panel discussion moderated by Anita Johnson, featuring Aya de Leon, Jessica Tully and Elissa Ficher. This is in conjunction with YBCA’s “What’s the Big Idea Free Day” and “The Way We Rhyme: Women, Art and Politics” exhibition. The YBCA Forum is located at 701 Mission St., San Francisco. Call (415) 978-2700 or visit www.ybca.org.

Javon Jackson with Les McCann

Yoshi’s Jack London Square, Oakland, has a hot two weeks ahead. Javon Jackson is there with special guest Les McCann, May 7-9. Visit www.yoshis.com or call (510) 238-9200.

Les Nubians

The dynamic sister duo, Helene and Celia Faussart, raised in France and Chad, are a hot team, singing stylistically like the Diaspora children they are. One can find a home in their work wherever you reside musically along the African continuum. They are hot and the intimate Yoshi’s Jack London Square venue should be a special treat this Saturday and Sunday, May 10-11. Call (510) 238-9200. Visit http://music.yahoo.com/ar-287219-bio--Les-Nubians.

New Orleans All-Stars

The super group New Orleans All-Stars featuring George Porter, Cyril Neville, Henry Butler and Raymond Webber hits town Tuesday and Wednesday, May 13-14, in Oakland, (510) 238-9200.

Footloose presents ‘A Nappy Headed Love Story’ and ‘Sweet Deliverance’

On Friday-Saturday, May 9-10, Jovelyn Richards performs her current work-in-progress, Part 3 of “Nappy Headed Love Story” series. This solo performance portrays nine women and a drag queen in Mrs. Pat’s House, a brothel, a place called home. It is a story set in the late 1940s and early 1950s in a neighborhood of Southern immigrants about people outcast by the social and political system into which they were born. They are colored or, in the case of Ms. Lilly, passing as white.

Also featured Friday night, May 9 only, is Vixen Noir aka Veronica Combs performing excerpts from her new solo, “Sweet Deliverance.” The piece traces her personal sexual evolution from sensual toddler to erotic teenager to coming out as a lesbian to drug-induced 20-something. In this funny, edgy, sexy and raucous one-woman show, Vixen gets down and dirty with her grandmother, Sweet, as she sets out to prove that her smutty ways were passed down through her matriarchal bloodline.

Shotwell Studios are at 3252-A 19th St. in San Francisco. Call (415) 289-2000 for reservations or visit www.ftloose.org. All shows start at 8 p.m.; doors open 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12-$15, paid in cash or checks only at the door, or patrons can make advance purchases with credit card at TIX on Union Square or at www.tixbayarea.com, www.brownpapertickets.com or (800) 838-3006.

W. Kamau Bell Curve returns

Racism never ended, according to Kamau Bell. In fact, he says it’s having a comeback. Even if it never left, I’m feeling rather optimistic, as you will also when you see Katrina Browne’s film, “Traces of the Trade,” where she retraces her family’s slaving history back to Ghana and to Cuba and then home to Bristol, Rhode Island, where the DeWolfs were the largest slave handlers in the country. What makes me optimistic is the commitment that she and other family members make to addressing their entitlement based solely on race and wealth traced directly to the exploitation of Black people. Make sure you look for her film in June on POV (Channel 9).

In another film airing this August, shot in the Mississippi Delta, “Ballast,” Lance Hammer states emphatically that he cannot speak for Black people and doesn’t presume to do so with his film; rather he provides a vehicle so that they can speak for themselves, frame their own stories. So while much is left to do, such white people give me hope.

Kamau Bell Curve is a litmus test everyone should take. There is no blood, yet as one is shocked by the rising helium in the racial hot air balloon, the basket stays on the ground as Bell keeps it real and funny at the same time. He’s at the Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter St., near Powell, in San Francisco, Thursdays at 8 p.m., May 8, 15, 22, 29, June 5 and 12. For tickets, visit brownpapertickets.com. Tickets are $20 general and if you bring a friend of a different race, you qualify for the 2-for-1.

Amiri Baraka and David Murray collaborate in ‘The Sisyphus Syndrome’

“The Sisyphus Syndrome” is a newly commissioned jazz opera by poet and playwright Amiri Baraka and saxophonist and composer David Murray. This groundbreaking and timely project details the African-American struggle in the United States using poetry, live music, dance and mixed media.

David Murray will lead The Freedom Now! Band and Amiri Baraka is directing the piece in addition to being a featured performer. Dancers, actors and digital design round out the production to make it a compelling, insightful piece that offers both a historical perspective and a road map for the future. This collaborative effort to create a modern urban opera merges two of the most active, sometimes controversial and always cutting-edge artists in contemporary literature and music, promising to introduce challenging social commentary and innovative concepts.

The event is Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 8-10, 8 p.m., at 2277 International Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $20 general admission and $10 for students up to 19 years old with student ID. Discounted group rates for students are available. Tickets are available at the door. The box office opens at 7 p.m. Call (510) 5330-6629 for more information.

The 8th Annual Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival!

The anticipated free music festival celebrating the legacy of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz is next Saturday, May 17, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., at San Antonio Park, 18th Avenue and Foothill Boulevard in Oakland. This year features the John Santos Quintet, the Freedom Now Band led by Howard Wiley, the Ambrose Akinmusrie Project with Goapele and Muziki Robeson Quintet with Dwight Tribble.

‘The Little Prince’

This weekend concludes the West Coast premiere of “The Little Prince,” a collaboration between San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. Academy Award-winning composer Rachel Portman’s “The Little Prince” is a special family presentation based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic children’s fable. The Francesca Zambello production, originally staged at Houston Grand Opera, will be presented at Zellerbach Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, for three more performances on Friday, May 9, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 10, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, May 11, 3 p.m.

Tickets are $40-$60 for adults, $20-$30 for children and students 16 and under, and may be purchased at www.sfopera.com, the San Francisco Opera Box Office, 301 Van Ness Ave., or (415) 864-3330. Tickets can also be purchased through Cal Performances’ Box Office, at (510) 642-9988 or online at www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. “The Little Prince” is recommended for children aged 6 and above.

‘Medicine for Melancholy’

The West Coast premiere for “Medicine for Melancholy” was last week and it screens again this Wednesday. The director, Barry Jenkins, is in town and will be at the screening. The film is like a San Francisco Bay Area travelogue for Black love. The protagonists meet at a party, get drunk, have sex and for some reason Micah wants to extend what normally ends at daybreak into the next moment and the moment afterwards. He’s looking for his dream woman and thinks he might have found her.

The only problem is she’s already in a relationship. He introduces himself to his companion and invites her to breakfast, which she agrees to. After the meal, they share a taxi to her stop whereupon she hops out without a backward glance. Problem is, she forgot her wallet.

OK, perhaps a little corny, but the story needs a hook to continue and the wallet is an excuse for Micah to have more lines, for the director to spend more time on a storyline which includes such themes as infidelity, interracial relationships, wealth and poverty and, more importantly, art. I like Jo’s line, “What do Black people do on a Sunday in San Francisco?” “They don’t go to SFMOMA,” Micah responds as he takes his new girl to MoAD, to Yerba Buena Gardens to see the MLK Memorial and then shopping for dinner, cooking together and out to dance, but not before stopping off at a fair housing rights meeting. Yes, it doesn’t fit, but the director, Barry Jenkins, told me it was his first feature and he wanted to put this in, so he did, even if it interrupts the rhythm of the piece. It’s still such a San Francisco moment – radically aesthetic.

It’s a moody film, a love story, tragic as it is. We always seem to want what we can’t have. The racial clichés apply here – all of them from angry Black man to kept Black woman not far removed from her antebellum maternal ancestors who didn’t have a choice – unequal all the way around. “Medicine” is a story that hasn’t been told. At least I didn’t know it prior to Barry’s film and breakup with his girlfriend. Heartache is such an inspiration. “Medicine” is another facet on the multiple faceted face that is Black America. It screens Wednesday, May 7, 3:30 p.m., at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post St., San Francisco. Visit www.sffs.org and http://fest08.sffs.org.

Oakland Opera Theatre presents ‘Queenie Pie’

“Queenie Pie” is Duke Ellington’s only opera. Left unfinished at the time of his death in 1974, the opera is the story of a Harlem beauty queen and was written as a tribute to Madame CJ Walker, the first African-American woman millionaire. The piece has remained unperformed for over 20 years and was almost lost when Ellington’s son, Mercer, died. Tom Shepherd, a member of the hip hop band Felonius and of Campo Santo at Intersection for the Arts, completed the libretto. Michael Mohammed directs. Noah Griffin is “Little Daddy” and actually shared the stage with Ellington, Paul Robeson and Leontyne Price.

A preview performance is Friday, May 9; the show opens May 10. “Queenie Pie” closes May 25. It will be on stage at Oakland Metro Opera House, 630 Third St., three blocks from Jack London Square. For tickets, $24-$35, call (510) 763-1146 or visit www.oaklandopera.org.

African Music

Baba Ken and Kotoja DJ Said will be at Slim’s on Saturday, May 10. Doors open at 8 p.m.; the show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $14 in advance and $15 at the door. Slim’s is located at 333 11th St. in San Francisco. Visit www.slims-sf.com or call (415) 255-0333.

Voices for Real Change

Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney and Oakland District 1 School Board candidate Tennessee Reed bring their platforms for change to Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley, Sunday, May 11, 2 -5 p.m. Speakers include McKinney, Reed, author Ishmael Reed, Daughters of Yam Opal Palmer Adisa and devorah major, writer Wanda Sabir, poet Karla Brundage and poet Reginald Lockett. For information, call (510) 681-5662.

The Richard Wright Centennial Project at the Oakland Public Library

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Richard Wright’s birth, the Oakland Public Theatre brings its monthly reading series to the Main Library, featuring “Black Boys,” Wednesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.; “Native Son,” Wednesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.; and “Unfinished Quest,” Wednesday, July 9, 6:30 p.m. All readings take place at 125 14th St., Oakland. Call (510) 238-3136 or visit www.oaklandlibrary.org.

Free Jazz Workshop, Friday, May 9

Oaktown Jazz Workshops in conjunction with Yoshi’s Jazz House is happy to present a clinic and workshop for youth 11-18 years old with Javon Jackson and special guest Les McCann, Friday, May 9, 4-5:30 p.m., at Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West in Oakland. Youth should bring their instruments and questions. For more information, contact Khalil Shaheed at (510) 206-4509.

‘Visions Toward Tomorrow: The African American Community in Oakland 1890 to 1990’

This free exhibit opens Saturday, May 10, 6:30 p.m., at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St., Oakland. Call (510) 637-0200 for information.

Palestinian Hip Hop icons join Bay Area artists in San Francisco debut

May 10 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes when the state of Israel was established. Families had to leave everything they couldn’t carry as soldiers forced women and children, the elderly and sick from their land with brutality if orders were not obeyed swiftly enough. Footage showing the massive trail of tears in what the monotheistic religions call “the Holy Land” is sacrilege if the Golden Rule applicable to all mankind is reserved for the powerful few.

I wonder as the walls go up and Palestinians are further restrained and oppressed how long will this go on and why the international community continues to allow it to happen. The economic strikes applied against the South African government are a model we should use for all repressive oligarchies. The battle will continue as long as we allow it to continue unopposed. Allah says in the Qu’ran, first you stop wrongdoing with your hands, and if you can’t stop it with your hands then with your words, and if not with your words then you refuse to participate. When is enough going to be enough? If enough of us say it’s enough and refuse to participate, then change will happen.

Mario Savio of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement said, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” It’s time.

The Peace and Solidarity Festival this Saturday, May 10, 12 noon to 6 p.m., is at Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco. The free event is sponsored by the local Nakba Committee and the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

Several Palestinian groups and over 50 organizations standing in solidarity with Palestine have joined forces to host the largest Palestinian hip hop festival ever to hit San Francisco’s Civic Center. While on a five-city tour in the United States and Canada, internationally renowned pioneers of Palestinian hip hop, DAM, will be making a momentous debut. The festival will also feature artwork, photos, artifacts, music, and information about the 1948 expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 villages during the Nakba.

Survivors of the catastrophe, alongside Native American elders, will share their personal narratives and experiences as displaced persons with media and community members. Bridging the Native American struggle to the Palestinian experience, DAM member Suhell Nafar notes the state of Israel “clean[ed] the Middle East of its ‘Indians,’ hitting us then blaming us.”

However, Nafar maintains hope, with the new generation of youth declaring that “all the biggest armies in the world are weak against the hope of the children.” In the spirit of this optimism there will be a youth program that includes a spoken word workshop and an educational tent about the parallel struggles and occupation of Iraq.

The festival is free and open to all ages and backgrounds to enjoy the spirit of justice and learn about the Palestinian narrative through music, art and culture. For more information, visit www.araborganizing.org/concert.html.

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.” Read her review of the Richard Howell Quintet there this week.

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