Black History Month at the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) is a great place to start your Black History Month Celebration. TIPL's month-long "Voices" Programming will kick on February 3rd with a talk by Karolyn Smardz Frost about Ontario historian Fred Landon. Born in London, Ontario in 1880, Landon graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1906, and went on to become the chief librarian at London Public Library in 1916. Among the other "voices" to be heard at a variety of TPL locations are Austin Clarke, Dalton Higgins, Sandra Whiting, trey anthony, Njacko Backo, and Muhtadi, just to name a few participants. Click here for TPL's Black History Month line up. 

On January 30th I had the pleasure of speaking with TPL staffer, Rachelle Gooden on TmTm. Gooden is in charge of purchasing material for the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection. The extensive collection of 16, 000 items is housed at four main locations: Malvern, Parkdale, York Woods, and Gooden's home base, Maria A. Shchuka. The best way to be introduced to the collections is to see them in person. Bits and pieces of Black History are so scattered that it's nice to have tangible evidence of Black contributions. 

Calling TPL's Answerline (416-393-7131) as well as chatting on line is also a way to begin your explorations before heading out to the branches or ordering your material on-line. Click here for the various ways you can contact the TPL.

Below are the books that Rachelle and I discussed during the show. I hope you check them out and suggest them to family and friends of all cultures.

CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS


Lola at the Library
By: Anna McQuinn & Rosalind Beardshaw

Mathieu Da Costa: First to Arrive
By: Itah Sadu

A Safe place
By: Lucy Markovitch



ADULT BOOKS


Ontario's African-Canadian Heritage: Collected writings by Fred Landon, 1918-1967
Edited by: Karolyn Smardz Frost, Bryan Walls, Hilary Bates Neary & Frederick H. Armstrong
**TRIVIA: Landon Library in London, Ontario is named after Fred Landon.

"Go to school, you're a little black boy" : the honourable Lincoln M. Alexander : a memoir
By: Lincoln M. Alexander

The Hanging of Angelique
By Afua Cooper

In her footsteps: 101 Remarkable Black Women from the Queen of Sheba to Queen Latifah
By: Annette Madden




My Jamaica: The paintings of Judy Ann MacMillan
By Judy Ann MacMillan

Early Art and Architecture of Africa
By: Peter Garlake

Wounded Bird No More
By: Joszann St. John

Caught in Action: 20 Years of West Indies Cricket Photography
By: Gordon Brooks

The Personal as History: Sistah Lois aka Afrikan Princess Talks About Life on the Prairies

I wanted to end my Black History Month programming by having someone tell their personal story of growing up in Canada. The oral tradition is a strong cultural device in African culture, and was especially important for those of us whose history in this hemisphere began with slave ships. I wanted to continue this tradition of oral history by having my guest, Sistah Lois Jacob aka Afrikan Princess, speak her life experience. I also wanted to direct our attention away from the east and to the Prairies. How many books have you read about Black life in Winnipeg during the '60s?

Thank you Sistah for sharing your childhood travels from Port of Spain, Trinidad to North Hampton, England and Winnipeg, Canada. You painted a great picture of all of those places, and your reactions to the people you encountered. What an adventure it must have been to travel by commercial boat as a girl, and how shocking a revelation it must have been to see poor white people in Canada, and even poorer first nations people living in conditions that were harsher than those in the Caribbean. You also reminded us of the deep Canadian roots of the Black Loyalist families on the prairies and their continued links with families in the East, and the shameful fact that some white people would objectify you by rubbing your head for good luck on their way to bingo. The personal piece you read was both powerful and evocative. High school is never easy for many people, and I think that is why a few people called in after the show to comment on your prose.

Thank you, Sistah, for filling in a missing piece of Candadian history.

SHOW PLAYLIST for FEB. 28TH
Amani, "I'm a Caribbean Living in Canada" from Amani: the words, the rhythm, the music (Cdn)
Four the Moment, "Africville" from In My Soul (Cdn)
The Nathaniel Dett Chorale, "Hew Round the Tree" from Listen to the Lambs (Cdn)
Daude, "Veu Vava" from self-titled CD, Daude

SHOUT OUT!
Thanks to Theatre Francasis De Toronto for the giveway to the English surtitled performance of "A North Facing House/Une maison face au nord".

In the Mood for Love

In a continued celebration of Black History Month and Valentine's Day, I invited Kirk Cooper to the show for a quick chat about Black Love in film. Our conversation mostly centred on romantic comedy/romance DVDs. Turns out most of our selections were from "back in the day". There haven't really been any significant Black romances released in the past few years (Tyler Perry films dominate the Black film scene, but you wouldn't exactly call them romantic). As for films featuring Black Lesbians and Gays, we came up with a couple of suggestions, but that market is sadly lacking in product. Other peoples of colour (Korean, South Asian, Chinese) have seen some development in LGBT romantic films, but when it comes to Black LGBT films--forget it! The phrase "down low" or "DL" came out of our culture, and our closet is large, deep and conspicuously silent.

Here are some of the films we talked about and some we recommend, but didn't have a chance to mention on air:

One Love

Cherine Anderson plays the devout church girl and Ky-Mani Marley is the Rasta in the Jamaican film, One Love. This Romeo and Juliet film is an entertaining fantasy with great chemistry between the two stars. Who cares that in real life Jamaica this fairy tale would never come true? The music is great too--gospel and reggae.

Brown Sugar

An interesting twist on the romance as it uses a hip hop metaphor to mirror the relationship between the Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs characters. The Queen Latifah and Mos Def subplot is cute, too.




Something New

Queen of the Black romance, Sanaa Lathan again with the newly popular, Simon Baker (The Mentalist). The black/white romance also includes a class difference that adds interest. Academy Award nominee, Taraji P. Henson plays one of Sanaa's girlfriends in the film.






Jason's Lyric

Allen Payne is Jason and Jada Pinkett (pre-Smith) is Lyric. This was one of the few films at the time that showed Black lovers on screen in a truly beautiful outdoor lovemaking scene. At that time in the early 90's many Black films came with guns and lots of blood--this one has it's share, but majority of the films is focussed on the lovers.




Love Jones

Nia Long and Larenz Tate stars as a photographer and a spoken word artist who make a connection and have to figure out if they are in love or just playing at love. The spoken word scenes make you want to jump into them as do the shots of Chicago and the jazz score (the soundtrack also includes lots of R & B). Like most good romances you want to yell at the screen for them to smarten up and get together, but alls well that ends well...


The Indredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (lesbian).
Nicole Ari Parker stars as Evie, an upper middle class high school student who falls in love with Laurel Holloman's working class character, Randy. This is a very sweet romance, and groundbreaking at the time as it was a film aimed at the youth market.



Rag Tag
It may surprise many to know that Rag Tag's writer, director, producer is a woman, Adaora Nwandu.
An interesting take on the gay love story as this film also deals with differing cultural perspectives: Caribbean and Nigerian (set in Birmingham, England and Nigeria), and family drama.





My ultimate "back-in-the-day" favourite is Claudine with Diahann Carroll as a welfare mother with 6 kids daring to dream of romance with garbage man, Roop played by a pre-Darth Vader, James Earl Jones. Pick up the DVD and the CD featuring Gladys Knight and the Pips singing music by Curtis Mayfield.





Here are some other titles for your consideration:
A Warm December
Beauty Salon
Black Orfeus
Orfeu
Carmen Jones
Karmen Gei
U-Carmen
Claudine
Mississippi Masala
Nurse.Fighter.Boy
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Family (lesbian)

I'm sure we missed a few, so please email me or post your comments for others to enjoy.

ARTIST PLAYLIST for FEB. 14TH SHOW
Jamesking, "Show Me" from self-titled CD
Brown Sugar Soundtrack, "Brown Sugar" by Mos Def
Gladys Knight & the Pips, "Mr. Welfare Man" and "On and On" from Claudine/Pipe Dreams CD
Mosa Neshama, tracks 1-6 from Back in Town CD

SHOUT OUT!
Thanks for Theatre Direct for the ticket giveaway to the family play,Binti's Journey.

d'bi young.anitafrika: "rivers...and other blackness...between us"

We've never met, but her welcoming laughter greets me over the telephone as if we are friends reconnecting. I am kicking off my Black History Month celebrations with an interview with d'bi young.anitafrika, the extraordinarily gifted dub poet, actor, playwright. d'bi (rhymes with "to be") has won many awards for her work, including a Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding New Play (2006) award for her play, blood.claat--one womban story.

We discuss her book of poems, "rivers...and other blacness...between us". The book is divided into those 3 segments as broken up by the title. The number 3 is a magical number for young, and she tries to encorporate its mysticism into her writing.

She's Black, young and political, so I ask her about her audience, wondering if they were a predominently young crowd. It turns out that her audience is more varied than one would expect. She supposes that her diverse fan base is an off-shoot of being surrounded her whole life by the spoken word community. Her mother is dub poet pioneer Anita Stewart, and a few of in d'bi's circle include Dr. Afua Cooper, Ahdri Zhina mandiela (her mentor), Chet Singh, and Blakka Ellis (another mentor) and peers Motion and Jemini. Her popularity also grew out of the success of trey anthony's play, "Da Kink in My Hair", in which she plays an incest survivor--something d'bi experience herself. She credits director Weyni Mengesha for creating a healilng space for the entire cast over the plays run. Two of the poems in rivers is dedicated to Mengesha.

Today d'bi has chosen to read, Politricks. Like all of her work, the title came to her before the poem. Politricks is dedicated to Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and was inspired by the anger she felt about daycare funding (she had just given birth to moon)and other social services being cut..."mi have a dream last night"/dat some man did a play a game wid mi life"...

Because she is know for her commentary on racial and social issues, I ask her to read the poem, "blood orange". The poem is one of my favourites in the book, and is from the 3rd section of the book (...between us). She has never performed the piece in public, so I was very honoured that she agreed to read it over the phone. It's a pleasure to hear her read words such as these:

"a harvest moon
bleeds like a blood orange
you peel patiently
wrapping your mouth
around its fleshy surface
allowing your teeth and tongue and lips
to press and pull into it
until you separate parts of the whole
not violent
not forceful
and those separated parts become
what makes you a complete human being"

in rivers, young constantly reminds us all of the power of the storyteller, and their importance in telling the truth, whether we as a society want to hear it or not.

d'bi young on storytelling

SHOW PLAYLIST
African Reggae Compilation--"Bo Ten Qu'Luta" by One Love Family--Putumayo World
Sangoma --"Ngihawukele" by Sibongile--Indie release
Freedom & Dance--"Woman of Many Hands" by Lillian Allen--Verse to Vinyl
In My Soul --"Africville" by Four the Moment--Atlantica/Jam
Honey Drops Compilation--"Feelin' It" by Motion--Phem Phat/Universal
Honey Drops Compilation--"Break the Rulez" by The Day After feat.Michie Mee--Phem Phat/Universal

Shout Out!
Thanks to Hot Docs for their giveaway of 1 pair of tickets to MILKING THE RHINO, screening at their Doc Soup monthly documentary series.