Eastside Arts Alliance Presents
Amina and Amiri Baraka
November 12, 2010 7:00pm:
We Insist! feat. Amiri Baraka
-Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, and also featuring Amina Baraka and the Freedom Now Band
PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Greg Morozumi eastsidearts@yahoo.com or
Elena Serrano elenas@mindspring.com
WE INSIST! -
Amiri Baraka Pays Tribute to the Freedom Now Suite, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln
Joined by Amina Baraka and The Muziki Roberson Quartet
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12th 2010 • 8:00 PM
EASTSIDE CULTURAL CENTER
2277 International Blvd./ 23 Av. Oakland
On the 50th anniversary year of the historic recording, Freedom Now Suite, the great jazz singer Abbey Lincoln transitioned to join the Ancestors, as did her long-time collaborator, the Master drummer Max Roach, three years ago. The venerable writer/ activist Amiri Baraka, “The Last Poet Laureate of New Jersey”, comes to Oakland on Friday, November 12 to celebrate their contributions to African American classical music and the cause of Black liberation. Accompanying him will be his activist performer and wife, Amina Baraka, along with The Muziki Roberson Quartet.
We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite was a landmark collaboration in 1960 which conjoined the diasporic Black struggles against white supremacy and apartheid in South Africa and the U.S. at the very moment of the Greensboro, N.C. sit-ins and the bloody Sharpesville Massacre in South Africa. The Freedom Now Suite moves from slavery to Emancipation Day to the contemporary Civil Rights struggle and African independence.
It was also a momentous turning point in Abbey Lincoln’s singing career, as her haunting call and response to Roach’s drums signified a liberating moment, unleashing rage and anger as protest through music. The critical musical collaboration included the lyricist Oscar Brown Jr., tenor Coleman Hawkins, percussionist Michael Olatunji, the dynamic young trumpeter Booker Little, among others.
Amiri Baraka goes back many years with both Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, from his early (and later) jazz reviews and the beginnings of the Black Arts Movement. Baraka performed together with Roach on numerous occasions, and even wrote a biography of the master drummer (unpublished). Both he and Amina have remained close and devoted to Abbey Lincoln throughout her career, never missing an occasion to hear her sing live. This will be a deeply felt poetic tribute to masters of contemporary American culture who have most profoundly defined the power of love and struggle in our times. It is an event not to be missed.
Friday, November 12th, 2010 • 8:00 PM
EastSide Cultural Center: 2277 International Blvd. Oakland 510/533-6629
Elena Serrano
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