The Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club and a host of other groups will present a “Multi-Arts Festival of Remembrance and Renewal in honor of the late Amiri Baraka 6 p.m. Tuesday, February 18 at Sunshine Cultural Arts Center, 630 N. 59th St. in East St. Louis.
Poets, activists, administrators, clergy, drummers, dancers, musicians, spoken word artists, social workers, cultural organizers and ideologues will share the stage.
Participants will include Malik Ahmed, Babatu Bayete, Zaki Baruti, Michael Castro, Roscoe “Ros” Crenshaw, Kalimu Endesha, Shirley LeFlore, Susan “Spit-Fire” Lively, Charlois Lumpkin, Vincent Manuel, Akbar Muhammad, Chris Mullen, Reginald Petty, Eugene B. Redmond, Treasure Shields Redmond, Jamala Rogers, Darlene Roy, Sunshine Community Performance Ensemble and Jaye P. Willis.
Baraka (1934-2014), whose wake and funeral occurred in Newark, N.J., on Jan. 17-18, died Jan. 4 in his native city of Newark. Important acknowledgments of his passing have also taken place in Harlem (NY). Up until the time of his death, the world-acclaimed poet, playwright and activist was teaching literature and culture courses in places as far flung as Italy and Germany. He was widely known as a father of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, a twin of the Black Power Movement whose national proponents included Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and H. Rap Brown.
“With Baraka and others at the helm, the twin engines of Art and Power helped propel African-American and global human rights (and cultural) movements toward more aggressive and ‘militant’ stances,” Redmond said.
Over the course of his life, however, Baraka, like his model Malcolm X, took various ideological positions and directions – from that of an early 1960s bohemian (“Beat”) poet to Black Nationalism to Marxism.
An active trustee of the EBR Writers Club and a senior consulting editor of Drumvoices Revue, the literary-cultural journal co-published by the club and the English Department at SIUE, Baraka visited the metro area on numerous occasions beginning in the 1960s.
Co-sponsors of the “Kwansabas for Baraka” event include Better Family Life, Black River Writers Press, East St. Louis Cultural Revival Campaign, Nation of Islam, Organization for Black Struggle, SIUE, Universal African Peoples Organization and Drumvoices Revue (where Baraka’s work frequently appeared).
For more information, call 618-650-3991, email eredmon@siue.edu or write EBR Writers Club: P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, IL 62201.
