It was a multi-genre music concert, spoken word fest, sartorial runway and visual arts exhibit all rolled into one phenom-fest when Oprah Winfrey hosted an 85th birthday celebration for Maya Angelou, the planet’s most popular poet.
Held April 6 in the Millennium Center of Winston-Salem, N.C., “Journey of Maya” attracted an all-star line-up of performers and several hundred invited guests including East St. Louis poet laureate Eugene B. Redmond and St. Louisan Alice Windom, former roommate of Angelou’s (in Ghana, West Africa, ca. early 1960s).
Among other guests and performers: former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, regal Oprah’s “BSF” and TV anchor Gayle King, CNN and NPR commentator Michael Eric Dyson (and wife Marcia), hip-hop artist-actor Common, gospel powerhouse Bebe Winans (and brother Marvin) and gospel icon Donnie McClurkin.
Not to mention: singer-actress Stephanie Mills, South African songbird Tsidii Le Loka (“The Lion King”), singer-songwriter Valerie Simpson, South African filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, gospel pioneer Shirley Caesar, former San Francisco poet laureate Janice Mirikitani (and husband Rev. Cecil Williams) and Katherine Dunham biographer and former Dunham Dance Company member Ruth Beckford Smith.
While Redmond, whose friendship with Angelou goes back more than four decades, captured it all with his cameras, scores of his previously snared images of Angelou were projected onto seven giant screens erected for the event.
