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Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Caribbean Book Festival at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn NY
Adam Turner Collage of Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra at Malcolm X Jazz/Arts Festival
Adam Turner photography and collage, special to the Oakland Post News Group
The Black Arts Movement honors Amiri Baraka
By Aqueila M. Lewis
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) Poets Choir and Arkestra honored the life and legacy of Amiri Baraka with poetry, music, song and dance on Saturday, May 17, 2014 during the 14th Annual Malcolm X Jazz Festival at San Antonio Park. It closed out the festival with a BAM!
The Black Arts Movement and Arkestra led by Marvin X, BAM founding member and close friend of Baraka, included participants choreographer Linda Johnson who opened the show with a beautiful audience participatory dance with her former students; harpist and vocalist Destiny Muhammad; violinist Tarika Lewis and student musicians; vocalist Mechelle LaChaux, actress/poet Ayodele Nzinga; poets Genny Lim, ToReadah Mikell, Paradise Jah Love, Kalamu Chache', Aries Jordan, actor Geoffery Grier, percussionist Tacuma King, drummer Val Serrant, Zena Allen on the Kora, vocalist/guitarist Rasheedah Sabreen Shakir and Special Guests saxophonist David Murray and poet Umar Bin Hasan~member of The Last Poets.
The late Amiri Baraka was the chief founder of the National Black Arts Movement (Black Arts/Black Aesthetics) the Artistic branch of the Black Power movement of the 60’s and 70’s. He was a noted dramatist, novelist, and poet and was one of the most respected and widely published African- American writers who spent most of his life fighting and advocating for African-Americans and the oppressed.
BAM has been seen as one of the most important movement in American literature. It inspired Black people and other ethic groups to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African-American Studies programs within universities. Marvin X and The Black Arts Movement Poet Choir and Arkestra are creating a nationwide 27- City Tour to continue his legacy and that of all the cultural workers nationwide who made BAM a reality.
If you would like to invite Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra to your city, please contact Marvin X at 510-200-4164 jmarvinx@yahoo.com www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
Marvin X reads and discusses his controversial Mythology of Pussy and Dick, Joyce Gordon Gallery, June 28, 3pm.
Young couple with their copy of X's controversial pamphlet Mythology of Pussy and Dick
Young lady from the ATL met her boyfriend at X's Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, Oakland
Marvin X reads and discusses his controversial book (expanded from the 18 page pamphlet to 400 pages, to be published soon) The Mythology of Pussy and Dick, a biblo-therapeutic rites of passage for males and females--also for same gender loving persons. If you read it, you will never be the same!
This afternoon with the ever provocative Marvin X takes place at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin Streets, downtown Oakland, 3pm. Admission $20.00, includes copy of original pamphlet and DVD of performance.
Seating is limited. Call 510-200-4164 for information and reservation. Adult language but recommended for all ages and genders. A sixteen year old female said she wished she had read the pamphlet when she was eight!
It could have helped O.J. Simpson, General Petreas, Secret Service agents, President Clinton, Mike Tyson, the sexually assaulters in the US military, Boko Haram, the Taliban, the young man who killed seven people because he couldn't find a girlfriend, et al. Those religious puritans and politically correct so called radicals who object to my objectification of males and females have surely heard not to judge a book by the cover! According to Paradise Jah Love, "The young people fight over this little pamphlet as if it were black gold."
Marvin X addressing a class at the University of Houston on his controversial pamphlet. In Oakland, adults told Marvin they observed young people sitting on the street reading his pamphlet intently.
In 2009, Marvin X lectured for a week at Howard University on MOPD. What do you think is the chief topic of concern where the women outnumber the men 14 to 1?
Marvin X and San Francisco's Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has had his share of problems with MOPD
Marvin X's students at his Academy of da Corner, Aries and Toya, performed in the DVD version of MOPD.
Emory Douglas reception at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin, downtown Oakland
Marvin X will be at the Joyce Gordon Gallery for the Emory Douglas exhibit reception, Friday, June 6. Emory is the Black Panther Party Minister of Culture. Emory came into the BPP via Marvin X's Black House, co-founded by Eldridge Cleaver, BPP Minister of Information. He too was introduced to the BPP by Marvin X.
"Marvin X was my teacher. Many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre: Emory Douglas, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Sam Napier...."
--Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder The Black Panther Party
Cover art by Emory
Yuri Kochiyama, friend of Malcolm X and Marvin X, joins ancestors, 93
I am shaken to hear that my dear revolutionary friend, Queen Mother Yuri Kochiyama, has joined the ancestors at 93 years old. When Malcolm X was assassinated, Yuri cradled his head in her arms. Whenever she and I met, she gave me a big hug that was overwhelming with respect and revolutionary love. We met often at radical events here in the Bay Area, especially at Eastside Arts Center. We know Yuri has gone to revolutionary heaven. We are honored to have known her and to have her as a revolutionary comrade! We love you, Yuri!
--Marvin X
6/4/14
by Hansi Lo Wang
June 02, 2014
Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama has died of natural causes in Berkeley, Calif., at age 93. The lifelong champion of civil rights causes in the black, Latino, Native American and Asian-American communities died peacefully in her sleep Sunday morning, according to her family.
Born in 1921 as Mary Yuriko Nakahara, Kochiyama spent the early years of her life in San Pedro, Calif., a small town south of Los Angeles. Months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she and her family were forced to relocate to internment camps along with tens of thousands of other Japanese-Americans. She met her late husband, Bill Kochiyama, who served with other Japanese-American soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas, where she spent two years.
The couple married after World War II and moved to start their family in New York City. Living in housing projects among black and Puerto Rican neighbors inspired her interest in the civil rights movement. Kochiyama held weekly open houses for activists in the family's apartment, where she taped newspaper clippings to the walls and kept piles of leaflets on the kitchen table.
"Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7," said her eldest daughter, Audee Kochiyama-Holman.
Kochiyama began focusing her work on black nationalism and was with Malcolm X during his final moments. Minutes after gunmen fired at Malcolm X in 1965 during his last speech in New York City, she rushed toward him and cradled his head on her lap. A shows Kochiyama peering worriedly through horn-rimmed glasses at Malcolm X's bullet-riddled body.
In the 1980s, she and her husband pushed for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese-American internees through the Civil Liberties Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1988. Her continued dedication to social causes inspired younger generations of activists, especially within the Asian-American community.
"She was not your typical Japanese-American person, especially a nisei," or a second-generation Japanese-American, said Tim Toyama, Kochiyama's second cousin, who wrote a one-act play about her relationship with Malcolm X.
"She was definitely ahead of her time, and we caught up with her."
--Marvin X
6/4/14
Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama has died of natural causes in Berkeley, Calif., at age 93. The lifelong champion of civil rights causes in the black, Latino, Native American and Asian-American communities died peacefully in her sleep Sunday morning, according to her family.
The couple married after World War II and moved to start their family in New York City. Living in housing projects among black and Puerto Rican neighbors inspired her interest in the civil rights movement. Kochiyama held weekly open houses for activists in the family's apartment, where she taped newspaper clippings to the walls and kept piles of leaflets on the kitchen table.
"Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7," said her eldest daughter, Audee Kochiyama-Holman.
Yuri Kochiyama speaks at an anti-war demonstration in New
York City's Central Park around 1968.
Courtesy of the Kochiyama family/UCLA Asian American Studies Center
York City's Central Park around 1968.
Courtesy of the Kochiyama family/UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Kochiyama began focusing her work on black nationalism and was with Malcolm X during his final moments. Minutes after gunmen fired at Malcolm X in 1965 during his last speech in New York City, she rushed toward him and cradled his head on her lap. A shows Kochiyama peering worriedly through horn-rimmed glasses at Malcolm X's bullet-riddled body.
In the 1980s, she and her husband pushed for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese-American internees through the Civil Liberties Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1988. Her continued dedication to social causes inspired younger generations of activists, especially within the Asian-American community.
"She was not your typical Japanese-American person, especially a nisei," or a second-generation Japanese-American, said Tim Toyama, Kochiyama's second cousin, who wrote a one-act play about her relationship with Malcolm X.
"She was definitely ahead of her time, and we caught up with her."
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