Part of a series of three programs co-presented by Museum of the African Diaspora and the 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music.

Dos Alas: The Music of Cuba and Puerto Rico

Cuba and Puerto Rico have similar histories reflected in many cultural manifestations such as language, food, architecture and literature. But nowhere are the similarities demonstrated more dramatically as in the music and dance of the two Antillean countries. In this lecture, historian John Santos will lead us through the fascinating musical relationship between the two islands, both internationally renowned for their music.

Five-time Grammy-nominated percussionist and US Artists Fontanals Fellow, John Santos, is one of the foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music in the world today. Born in San Francisco, California, he was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. John is widely respected as one of the top writers, teachers and historians in the field and was a member of the Latin Jazz Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently part of the faculty at the Jazz School Institute (Berkeley, CA) and the College of San Mateo (CA). 

The 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music will present performances, workshops, lectures and a film screening by master and emerging Caribbean and Latino musicians and choreographers, each offering a unique look at the power of people and their use of music and dance to overcome daily trials. For more information www.cubacaribe.org

$12 General | $10 MoAD Members

Part of a series of three programs co-presented by Museum of the African Diaspora and the 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music.

Film Screening of La Salsa Cubana will include a discussion with the director, Eric Joseph Johnson. A true story about Cuban salsa dancing, the film follows a dance group from Havana striving to win the national dance competition. Enter a world of vibrant dancing, fascinating relationships, wonderful music, and colorful imagery. Filmed in Havana, Cuba.

Director Eric Joseph Johnson is a dancer, filmmaker, and technologist.  During 2003 and 2004 he lived in Cuba while studying dance in the streets and neighborhoods of Havana and as a matriculated student at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Cuba’s premier university of the performing arts. In 2004, Johnson danced on Para Bailar Casino, the Cuba-produced TV program featured in La Salsa Cubana. He learned the art of filmmaking by studying the works of other filmmakers, especially documentary and Cuban genres of film.

Director Sarita Streng is a dancer and dance teacher who presently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Streng brings an academic and community perspective to her dance projects. She has a M.A. in dance from the World Arts and Cultures Department at UCLA, has taught dance at community colleges in Southern California and at the University of New Mexico, and runs the Community Dance Program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Directors Streng and Johnson taught dance together in San Diego for a number of years before collaborating to produce La Salsa Cubana.

The 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music will present performances, workshops, lectures and a film screening by master and emerging Caribbean and Latino musicians and choreographers, each offering a unique look at the power of people and their use of music and dance to overcome daily trials. For more information www.cubacaribe.org

$12 General | $10 MoAD Members

This series is designed to bring different scholars to MoAD who will present on a variety of topics related to the African Diaspora. These events create a bridge of conversation between scholars and the community. All talks occur on Saturday mornings 10am-12pm in the Salon. Seating is limited. This series is now open to the public.

Coin Coin, Cammie and Clementine: Race and Gender in Southern Heritage Tourism, a presentation by Stephen Small, Ph.D. 

A massive tourist infrastructure on ‘Southern Heritage’ currently extends across the US South and includes a wide array of plantation museum sites that focus on representations of 18th and 19th century slavery. Many heritage tourist sites are housed in former slave plantations. How do these sites represent slavery, Black life and culture? What do they say about Black women’s roles under slavery and in the long period of Jim Crow segregation? Drawing on research conducted between 2007-2011, Prof. Small will discuss representations of race and gender at Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Stephen Small is an Associate Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley (where he has taught since 1994).

Free with MoAD Admission.

Linda Wright celebrates Earth Day with stories from Africa and the Carribean about the Sun and the Moon and the environment. Following the storytelling, make your own Sun and Moon to take home with you.

Linda Wright, a Bay Area educator, mesmerizes her listeners with stories from West Africa and the Caribbean Islands.  As she tells her stories, she encourages children to help the characters handle their anger with different relaxation techniques.  For the past twelve years, she has worked with elementary schools art days, assemblies and in the classroom.  Her joy reaches all who listen to her weaving a tapestry of hope and adventure as she threads her way into the listener’s heart and soul with her mellifluous voice.

Free with MoAD Admission.

Join us for a demonstration of Afrocuban/Yoruba music and dance by Carlos Aldama and Umi Vaughan with the group Emese, Messengers of the African Diaspora and musicians from Oshogbo, Nigeria. Dr. Vaughan will speak on his recent book, Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum. Through one man’s journey, the book traces the history of the batá from Africa to Cuba and the U.S., and documents the inventions and tensions inherent to the movement of the batá tradition between shores and generations. This book gives an intimate perspective on an African apprenticeship system in the Americas: how the batá drums are played, how they are integrated into a religious liturgy, but also how their practice affects the individuals who swear themselves to the drum. In doing so, the book simultaneously reveals the interactions and relationships among the vying and positional diaspora communities that provide batá specialists their life work. The program will be followed by a booksigning.

Umi Vaughan is an artist and anthropologist who explores dance, creates photographs and performances, and publishes about African Diaspora culture. He has conducted extensive anthropological research in Cuba about Afrocuban music and dance, and created numerous scholarly presentations, art exhibits, and cultural events in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Vaughan is currently Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay.  

Carlos Aldama is a master batá drummer from Havana, Cuba. He is a founding member of Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba (1962). His life has been dedicated to the teaching and the performance of Afrocuban music. This passion and commitment to the rich life of Cuban people have seen him teach and perform music throughout Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Free with MoAD Admission.

Celebrate National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month at MoAD!

Poet Michael Warr is accompanied by guitarist Todd Brown, saxophonist Prasant Radhakrishnan, bassist Michael Shiono, and Howard Wiley on drums,  as he recites and performs poems tracking his trek from childhood in San Francisco’s Hunters Point to cities as diverse as Timbuktu, Baton Rouge, Addis Ababa, and Chicago. Via “poetic memoir” his new book of poems The Armageddon of Funk unites a world of opposites encompassing the “apolitical,” rigid, morality of the Jehovah Witnesses; the revolutionary theories and free-love of Black Panthers and Marxists; the promise of a bourgeois future from bank executives; a screaming soldier brandishing an AK-47 in his face, an interrogation under Haile Selassie’s Jubilee Palace; hallucinating “of cornbread islands” at Chicago’s “Velvet Lounge,” and many “Street Signs, Convolutions, and other California Coincidences” as one of his poems is titled.

Michael Warr’s mentor, Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, called him a poet with “a sharp eye and a sanity that refuses to make compromises…” His books of poetry include The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex. His literary awards include a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and most recently the Black Caucus of the America Library Association honored his new book, calling it “a poetic soundtrack to black life.” A frequent collaborator with musicians, visual and performing artists, Michael’s poems have been dramatized on stage, depicted on canvas, and set to original music compositions. To learn more see armageddonoffunk.com.

Free with MoAD Admission |  $10 General, $5 Students/Seniors, Free MoAD Members

Special $5 Admission Price for Jazz Heritage Center Members

Part of a series of three programs co-presented by Museum of the African Diaspora and the 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music.

Female Orishas

This lecture focuses on the fundamental concepts in the tradition of female Orishas (goddesses of the Yoruba Pantheon); also on the history and the attitudes that create and support their traditions. These will be talks from the afro-Cuban –Lucumi perspective and will touch on the role of Lucumi women in general and the music, song, art, and legends of this rich tradition.

Gladys "Bobi" Cespedes is an acclaimed folkloric singer, dancer and percussionist; she is a recording artist, theatrical director, storyteller, accomplished historian, lecturer, and cultural arts teacher. She sings in three languages: English, Spanish, and Lucumi, the mother tongue of the descendants of the Yorubas of West Africa in Cuba. For over thirty years, Bobi has been directly involved in the preservation and teaching of Afro-Cuban culture and traditions. In 1989, Bobi Cespedes founded the Afro-Cuban folkloric ensemble, "Siguaralla," which performs Afro-Cuban religious music to educate audiences about the essence of Cuban rhythm.

The 8th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music will present performances, workshops, lectures and a film screening by master and emerging Caribbean and Latino musicians and choreographers, each offering a unique look at the power of people and their use of music and dance to overcome daily trials. For more information www.cubacaribe.org

$12 General | $10 MoAD Members