Culture Currents

Minister of Information JR interviews Jessica Holter, Bay Area erotic poet, AIDS awareness worker and founder of the Punany Poets. Jessica talks with JR about sexuality, hip hop, HIV and erotica.

Queen Nyoka is an up and coming reggae artist out of the Bay who makes her words count when it comes to chanting down Babylon.

The Frisco native and conscious rapper Sellassie has to be one of the hardest working men in independent Bay Area rap music. He has been a big promoter of unifying the Bay Area’s rappers and he has started a campaign against “house nigga” rap. He also hosts a regional up and coming artists’ showcase called “We All We Got.”

The minute the Jacoby Ford caught that 49-yard bomb in overtime against the KC Chiefs, “playoffs” could be quietly uttered in the Raiders locker room.

Lazarus House, a grassroots organization that takes urban youth on first time outdoors ventures, is currently in a fundraising drive to buy a 12-passenger van. Donate now!

In my opinion, passionate writers are the best writers because of their ability to convey emotion from their mind to yours. They’re memorable because of the feelings that they stir up inside of you simply with their wordplay. Talaam Acey is a master spokenword artist and a national artistic treasure in Black communities around the nation.

The resurrection of an artist such as Fela Anikulapo Kuti, whose art and legacy define the words “larger than life,” is a pretty lofty goal for an art show. When it came time to show and prove, though, the opening of “Zombie: The Resurrection of Fela Kuti” on Oct. 7 at the African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC) went far beyond expectations.

We often hear about the Harlem Renaissance, but we rarely hear about Harlem’s ghetto heroes and sheroes and the lives they lived. Maybe after such Black biographical books as this one and Lil’ D’s “Weight,” our young people will stop trying to emulate white thugs and come to see that no matter where we as Black people come from or what we strive for, we always have to fight this corrupt system as our main adversary.

Candlestick Park was home to the “Battle of the Bay” football game this past weekend, which featured the 0-5 San Francisco 49ers against the 2-3 Oakland Raiders. Impassioned fans from all over Northern California descended on the Bayview neighborhood to see who could win a game of futility.

James "Hawk" Hawkins, fighter for justice and community activist, celebrated his 64th birthday on Aug. 3, 2010, and was called home by the Most High soon thereafter.

How does one choreograph loss? One doesn’t. Instead, Ralph Lemon philosophically juxtaposes the lives of three relationships, including that of Walter Carter, 102, and his wife Edna, 80. Four walls certainly don’t contain Walter.

The Oakland Raiders are 1-3 at the quarter part of the season, after just losing to the Houston Texans 31-24. They are much improved from last year, playing harder on both ends of the field. But they still have some of the same weaknesses they have had the last few seasons.

August Wilson is one of the most if not the most important playwright of the 20th century. His “Pittsburgh Cycle” pens the 20th century North American African experience through gentrification and trauma of the recurrent loss of geographical space.

October is Maafa Awareness Month, a time to reflect on recovery from the residual impact slavery had on the Black community and how the centuries of free labor benefited everyone else. The ritual this year is Sunday, Oct. 10, 5:30 a.m., at Ocean Beach, Fulton at the Great Highway, in San Francisco. Maafa is Kiswahili for “great calamity, reoccurring disaster,” a term used to describe the Black Holocaust of the European Slave Trade and how the post traumatic stress syndrome shows up in our thoughts and behavior unwittingly.

I was recently politickin’ in Atlanta with the radio broadcast legend Tenisio aka Dj 4th Wurld of WRFG, who specializes in playing rap music from the continent of Africa. African rappers from the continent are waiting in the shadows for their shot, and Dj 4th Wurld is working the door, giving only the dopest a seat on his radio show.

What is so striking about this film is its living history lessons, the love and admiration for each other that Yuri Kochiyama and Angela Y. Davis share, women with big hearts who have endured personal suffering and survived. Yuri is gracious and fiery and so is Angela.

In a game that was not a thing of beauty, the Oakland Raiders found a way to defeat the St. Louis Rams 16-14 on Sunday in the 2010 home opener at the Coliseum in Oakland. This was the teams’ first win in a home opener since 2004. With the win, the Silver and Black evened their record at 1-1 on the season while St. Louis falls to 0-2.

Pacifica radio station KPFA’s (94.1 FM) jazz programmer – or jazz activist, as he sometimes referred to himself – The Doug of Edwards has died, passing over on the early morning of Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010. On Saturday night 11 p.m.-1 p.m. for the past 30 years, he was heard live hosting his jazz show, Ear Tyme.

I recently watched the Zachary Stauffer documentary “A Day Late in Oakland,” which is about the murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey in August of 2007. It is truly a look into the mind of white power media spin-doctors.

From the first time I ever heard of Abbey Lincoln she was associated with the struggle for the freedom and dignity of Black folks. She could have found commercial success, but Abbey was committed to the liberation and elevation of her oppressed people; once you experience that freedom high, nothing can compare with it.