 | | | ONE LOVE: Cindi Okoye's acrylic on canvas is part of 2000 Beyond: From Music To Visual. |
``The only attributes African Americans seem to possess, at least as far as their public image is concerned, are in the areas of sport and entertainment,'' says Lady Sala Shabazz, curator and founder of the Los Angeles-based Black Invention Museum. ``Very few are celebrated for their intellect, for their success in the arts and sciences.'' Shabazz is is heading to Toronto with her travelling museum, a 175-piece exhibit featuring replicas, patents and pictures of inventions by African Americans from the Civil War till now. It will be on display Feb. 10 and 11 as one of the centrepieces of Harbourfront's seventh annual Kuumba celebration of Canada's African heritage. Kuumba is Toronto's largest public manifestation of African-American culture during the annual continental Black History Month celebrations. The theme this year, says Harbourfront programmer Aretha Phillips, ``is empowerment and intellectual achievement in art and literature.'' And in science and labour, Shabazz is quick to remind us. ``The squeegee was a black American invention, so was the traffic light, the five-string guitar, and the golf tee, patented in 1899 by a black graduate of Harvard Dental School,'' she says. African American inventors also gave us the ironing board, the street sweeper, the sofa bed, the vacuum cleaner, the dry-cleaning process, the egg beater, the roller coaster, the lawn sprinkler, the electric cut-off switch, the coin changer, the cotton planter, guided missile components, ice cream and the programmable remote control device. Thousands of black inventions are listed on linked Web sites, Shabazz says. ``But so few of them profited because they couldn't afford patents, which were subsequently stolen or altered, or because they were working for hire and couldn't claim ownership. The most recent black inventor to profit from his work is Lonnie Johnson, who came up with the Super Soaker water gun in 1991, which grossed $52 million in sales in its first year.'' The museum, a non-profit organization founded in 1988, wasn't set up to ``invalidate the contributions of non-African Americans,'' Shabazz adds, ``but to promote positive images and self-esteem among African Americans and to present their achievements in a context that will make people of all races think more broadly.'' The Black Inventions Museum display at Harbourfront's Brigantine Room, free to Kuumba audiences, will be accompanied by two lectures - Science and Technology in the Black Experience by historian Akwatu Khenti, on Feb. 10 at 3 p.m., and A Profile of African-Canadian Scientists by Frances Jeffers, Feb. 11 at 3 p.m. The museum exhibit is just one among dozens of free and ticketed events in the month-long Kuumba schedule, which includes 2000 Beyond: From Music To Visual, an exhibition Feb. 17 and 18 of interpretations of the spritual lyrics of reggae star, the late Bob Marley, by 16 artists from across Canada. There will also be several musical performances by the likes of Toronto jazz pianist Joe Sealy (Feb. 11 at 1 p.m., $8) and on consecutive Sunday afternoons from 2 p.m., free performances by the Lawrence Heights Middle School Choir (Feb. 4), Bandwidth (Feb. 11) and Ugandan-born thumb piano master Achilla Orru (Feb. 18). Hoping to repeat the sold-out success of a similar Harbourfront event on Labour Day, spoken word artist/promoter Dwayne Morgan is presenting four local poets (himself, Heron Jones, Jemeni and True), New Yorker Ainsley Burroughs and Philadelphia's Aishah Bradley - along with three other U.S. poets - at the Brigantine Room Saturday at 9 p.m. ($12 in advance, $15 at the door). ``This isn't storytelling in the traditional sense, it's performance poetry that embraces most contemporary African American forms of the spoken word, including hip hop and rap - without the music,'' says Morgan, Toronto's most consistent presenter at neighbourhood restaurants and community halls of the increasingly popular urban art form. ``Our cultural roots come out in what we think and write and talk about. So do our concerns about the community, social issues, what's going on in the lives of young black people. The big emphasis is on witty wordplay and presentation. Our performers don't read their work, they've memorized the lines and they just act out. It's extremely lively compared to your average poetry reading.'' Award-winning Toronto playwright Djanet Sears is also acting out during Kuumba, co-directing, with Fleurette Fernando, her dramatic work-in-progress, The Adventures Of A Black Girl In Search Of God. The play, under the auspice of the fledgling Obsidian Theatre, will be given a staged reading Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 18 at 2:30 p.m. at the du Maurier Arts Centre. ``I've rewritten it a couple of times since its first reading at the World Stage Festival last year,'' says Sears. ``This time I'm exploring the use of a large chorus, 16 people in addition to nine cast members, who act as non-verbal story tellers. It has the function of a Greek chorus, but it's done in a very African way, through dance, movement, music and song.'' The story, whose title was suggested by George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures Of A Black Girl In Her Search Of God, focuses on a woman in Negro Creek (near Owen Sound, Ont.) coming to terms with life and death, says Sears. ``The death of her daughter and the imminent death of her father force her to wonder about what makes a particular place home, and about where we belong.'' The play, featuring actors Rachel Crawford, Walter Borden and David Collins in the lead roles, remains a work-in-progress, though its debut reading last year was a sellout and Sears expects another large turnout at Kuumba. ``We're trying to see which direction and shape the play should take from this point, and we need to put it up, at least to the reading stage, to learn what works and what doesn't. But even a reading is a huge undertaking with so many on stage, and with such a complex story.'' The festival's theme of cultural empowerment is also emphasized in Sunday's Youth Day program, organized by the Each One Teach One mentoring group, which promotes African Canadian cultural awareness and literature among young people. Admission is free, and the program runs from noon till 6 p.m. ``This year we want to illustrate that everything in our culture has a history,'' says organizer AndrŽ Fullerton. ``We're tracing the evolution of popular music from African drumming and dance (Kobena Aqua-Harrison's Jungle Bouti Orchestra) through hip hop (Toronto's Kardinal Offishall). ``We're also doing our Black Book Giveaway, which encourages reading and exchanging literature, and running a youth rap room, career opportunity service booths, storytelling and other spoken word performances. The theme of the day is Millennium Youth, possibility, the power of learning.''
Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.
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