Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Tag: Stevie Wonder

Jazz fusion band TBA is taking the Bay by storm

JR Valrey’s interview confirms no humdrumming happening here as badass TBA band lights it up in the Bay!

Wanda’s Picks: June 2021

Wanda Sabir has us feeling the moves of a reopening BA, remembering, revitalizing and honoring the fabric of our humanity and saving dates on calendars for the amazing events during June(teenth).

How Stevie Wonder helped create Martin Luther King Day

At Dr. King’s funeral, Stevie Wonder learned of John Conyers’ bill to make his birthday a national holiday. To overcome the resistance of conservative politicians, Wonder put his career on hold, led rallies from coast to coast and galvanized millions of Americans with his passion and integrity. But it took 15 years.

Aretha Franklin, the radical Queen of Soul

After gracing the planet for 76 years, Aretha Franklin joined the ancestors Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018. President Obama: “Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade – our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.”

World music hip hop musician Sia Love drops a masterpiece, ‘For...

Sia Love’s debut hip hop album, “For the Record,” was released last month. The production on the album goes from ‘80s pop to the ‘90s sound of Hip Hop to the traditional stringed instruments and drums of Africans from Latin America. Her vocals are rhythmic, strong, soothing, confident and filled with wisdom. Check out this flame on the rise in her own words.

Oji and the Ascension Team rise to the occasion

Right out of the musical lineage of Parliament Funkadellic, Georgia Ann Muldrow, Dudley Perkins and the Dungeon Family steps Bay Area bred producer Oji and his crew, the Ascension Team. Oji’s music is on some futuristic other level type of space vibe. He is like an Andre 3000, on a production level conjuring sound chemistries not ever heard before in widely known rap music. Check out Oji as he talks about his craft.

Wanda’s Picks for February 2016

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (“Isis Papers”) made her transition Jan. 2, 2016. She was 80. The psychiatrist who challenged white supremacists on what she called “The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)” to look at their own melanin deficiency for what it is, “envy,” stirred and continues to stir the waters. She always stated theoretically that “Black lives matter,” way before the #blm movement.

Paradise’s Theory of Relativity (to End Racism)

So this poem is for everybody on planet earth, even though I start it out by saying: When I was younger ... I used to wonder ... why my elders would be talking holes in my clothes about Blackness? I just thought it was to make me feel better about my situation: being a Black man in America. But a funny thing happened to me while I was searching for my blackness: I found God!

Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ twist of fate

The pain and suffering of the nine months since unarmed Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer has given birth to a new era of intolerance for police brutality. On the heels of Mother’s Day, more than a thousand community members turned out for a luncheon to honor those whose children lost their lives to violence and to join forces with the Black Women’s Forum (BWF), of which Congresswoman Maxine Waters is co-founder.

‘Motown the Musical’

“Motown the Musical” is a wonderful story of a man’s ability to take a dream and, with the support of first his family and secondly his community – in this case, artists in Detroit, Michigan – see the vision through to its fruition. Berry Gordy Jr. decided to open his own music company, Motown, a company that put Black music on the map and provided the bridge between mainstream white America and the parallel nation Black people occupied, but not for long.

‘Sweet & Lovely’: an interview wit’ vocalist Meres-Sia Gabriel

Meres Sia Gabriel has been rhyming for decades around Oakland, but she just now released an EP titled “Sweet & Lovely” that will lead up to her much anticipated album. She invites you to an EP release performance on Friday, Aug. 22, 6:30-9:30, at The Golden Stair, 608 55th St., near Shattuck, in Oakland.

8th annual Leimert Park Village Book Fair Aug. 9 in Los...

The Leimert Park Village Book Fair, based in South Central Los Angeles, is the main annual literary event for the Black community on the West Coast. A number of authors and screenwriters attend every year to expose the community to their latest work, and thousands of book lovers come to see what all of these writers have cooked up. Check out Leimert Park Village Book Fair founder Cynthia Exum in her own words.

Nov. 8: The control and power of your vote

Though we have witnessed our leaders and family members being killed, tortured and brutalized as they fought for their civil liberties, we cannot give up the fight by not voting. People have died so you could do so. Of the 16 running mates for mayor, only Public Defender Jeff Adachi has placed his money where his mouth is.

The future of music: an interview wit’ musician Rico Pabón

Rico Pabón is one of the most talented, versatile, dedicated and well-informed artists that I know on the West Coast. At home in the studio or on the stage, the Afro-Puerto Rican bilingual musician known as Rico Pabón is a man of many genres. Although hip hop is the music of his generation, he is just as comfortable singing traditional Afro-Carribbean tunes with a live band.

Republican candidates ignore the Black vote while the Democrats continue to...

Very little if any advertising has been done in Black newspapers or with Black radio stations in an attempt to reach Black voters via the Black media. The Black press connects Blacks around the world. Their power and influence is unmatched, unchallenged and unquestioned.

Jada’s on the Radio: an interview wit’ Berkeley Liberation Radio dj...

by Minister of Information JR In 2010, it is important for us to realize how vital it is for us to make our own media....

Tickling the keys: an interview wit’ pianist and rapper Kev Choice

Kev Choice is one of the the dopest young musicians I know in Oakland. And I would have to say that L-Boogie aka Lauryn Hill agrees with me, since she hired this dude to be her band leader. Kev Choice tickles the keys like Herbie, emcees like Posdonous and is a band leader like Duke Ellington. The Kev Choice Ensemble out at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Monday, Oct. 26, at 8 p.m.

The POCC’s ‘You Can Kill a Revolutionary … But You Can’t...

On July 23 the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) kicked off the “You Can Kill a Revolutionary ... But You Can’t Kill the Revolution Tour” in Oakland, California, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party.

Michael Jackson: The evolution of a musical genius

On Thursday, June 25, 2009, the world received the shocking news that King of Pop Michael Jackson was on his death bed. By 2:26 that afternoon the much repeated international rumor had become a heartbreaking fact. Musical genius and King of Popular music Michael Joseph Jackson had died at the age of 50 in his Los Angeles home of cardiac arrest, or heart failure, on the eve of his first major tour in 16 years.

The world is watching India: an inner-view of singer India.Arie

One of the definite queens of soul music, folk guitarists and amazing song writers of our time is India.Arie. She has been nominated numerous times for Grammys, but more importantly she has been one of the symbols, within this decade, of dark skinned talented Black women musicians rising to prominence. Mainstream media in America, since its inception, has been about destroying the image of African people.