An annual multi-arts festival in honor of three world-class creative geniuses whose expressions influenced – and were profoundly influenced by – East St. Louis will be held 6 p.m. Friday, May 25 in Room 2083-84 of Building B on the SIUE-ESL Higher Education Campus, 601 J.R. Thompson Dr., East St. Louis.
Included in the celebration will be a book release party for Drumvoices Revue, a 700-page volume co-published by the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club and SIUE. The 200-plus writers in Drumvoices include Maya Angelou, Derek Walcott. Amiri Baraka, Andrea Wren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Quincy Troupe and Redmond.
The trio of geniuses to be celebrated are composer and bandleader Miles Dewey Davis III (1926-1991), writer and poet Henry Lee Dumas (1934-1968) and anthropologist and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006).
They will be celebrated in music by the Bosman Twins, saxophone virtuosos.
Drumvoices readers will include Pacia Anderson, Michael Castro, Roscoe “Ros” Crenshaw, Angela Cureton, Byron Lee, Shirley LeFlore, Susan “Spit-Fire” Lively, Charlois Lumpkin, Patricia Merritt, Treasure Shields Redmond, Mary Z. Rose, Darlene Roy, Cheryl D. S. Walker, Dr. Lena Weathers, and Jaye P. Willis.
They will be honored with dance and percussion by Sunshine’s Community Performance Ensemble as well as a multimodal exhibit (DavisDumasDunham) from the EBR/SIUE Collection.
Born in Alton (Illinois), Miles Davis was raised in East St. Louis, graduating from Lincoln Senior High School in 1944. That same year he joined Lincoln classmate/pianist Eugene Haynes at New York’s Julliard School of Music.As a trumpeter, composer and true original, he was revered across the globe as a leader and re-shaper of musical directions, tastes and styles. Drumvoices Revue, a multicultural journal co-published by SIUE and the Writers Club, often honors Davis.
Henry Dumas, born in Sweet Home (Arkansas) and raised in New York’s Harlem from the age of 10, taught at SIUE-ESL’s Experiment in Higher Education in 1967-68. There, he mentored local poet Sherman L. Fowler and was a colleague of Redmond, who has been Dumas’ literary executor for 44 years. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison called Dumas “a genius, an absolute genius.” Patron saint of the Writers Club, Dumas’ writings and photographs appear in multiple issues of Drumvoices Revue.
A Chicago-area native, Katherine Dunham returned home after several decades of studying, performing and teaching in more than 60 countries. Becoming an East St. Louis resident in 1967, she taught in Experiment in Higher Education and founded the Performing Arts Training Center and namesake Dynamic Museum and Children’s Workshop. This adopted matriarch of ESL has also been the subject of several volumes of Drumvoices Revue.
Founded in 1986 and chartered by Fowler, Roy and Redmond, the 25-year-old Club meets twice monthly in ESL. Trustees are Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Haki R. Madhubuti, Walter Mosley, Quincy Troupe, Jerry Ward Jr., and Lena J. Weathers. Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), Raymond Patterson (1929-2001) and Barbara Ann Teer (1937-2008) were also trustees.
Book sales and autographing will open and follow the May 25 event. For information or to order Drumvoices Revue, call 618-650-3991, email eredmon@siue.edu or write the Club at P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, Illinois 62201.
