1/23 Fundraiser: In a Light This Beautiful

Hello, i'm writing to invite you to a show to support our
sister Uchechi Kalu, a brilliant young Nigerian-born poet, activist and teacher
who is battling some serious health problems. her work has been a long-time
inspiration and challenge to alot of youth, activists and artists over the
years. myself and some other performers, organizers and friends have come
together to put on what i promise will an *amazing* show for you, to raise
money to pay Uchechi's piling up hospital bills and related costs of living
long-term with health problems. the announcement is below, or you can go to
http://www.womensvoicesriseup.org and download the really striking flyer of the event.
throughout the planning of this event, it keeps occuring to me that all the
healing energy that will be given to her at the show will do even more good
that the money itself, but i guess the hospital doesn't accept good energy as
payment. so please come out and be a part of the family. we have a wish list if
there is anything you can provide in addition to your presence:
- silent auction items
- food donations
- flowers donated for volunteers and performers
we need some volunteers, too, if you are unable to contribute money, this is a
great way to support this.

IN A LIGHT THIS BEAUTIFUL
a community fundraiser for artist
UCHECHI KALU
Friday January 23rd
Doors at 7:00/Show at 7:30pm
The Women's Building
3543 18th St. San Francisco
10$-100$ sliding scale
wheelchair accessible

featuring:
MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH
Stanford professor/Youth Speaks Mentor
AYA DE LEON
Fierce and Hillarious Spoken Word Warrior
SHAILJA PATEL
Spoken Word Explosion
SIA AMMA
African comedian, "The Clitoris Celebration"
LADY WONDERS
Of 8th Wonder
LUCIANO CHESSA
Italian Born Composer
and UCHECHI KALU
Nigerian born outspoken poet, teacher and survivor of life
art auction with works by
GITHINJI WA MBIRE
get a preview at: http://www.amitmay.com

Please join us for a community fundraiser for the amazing artist, poet and
teacher Uchechi Kalu, and celebrate her contributions to our community.
Whether you are an activist, artist, teacher and/or simply just interested
in a more sustainable way of life, Uchechi’s work is an inspiration to us
all and challenges us to keep fighting for a better world. She needs our
support and "light" now as she battles health problems.

http://www.womensvoicesriseup.org
For more information/reservations or to volunteer: 415-642-9099
susan [at] riseup.net

Artists Bios:

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH Stanford Professor/Youth Speaks Mentor
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, originally from NYC, is an arts activist currently living
in Oakland, CA. he has entered the world of literary performance after crossing
the sands of traditional theater, most notably on Broadway in the Tony Award
winning “The Tap Dance Kid” and “Stand-Up Tragedy”. During that period he
choreographed a series of music videos and film segments working with the
esteemed Savion Glover, George Faison, and Harold Nicholas among others.
Bamuthi’s performance schedule has carried him from dance apprenticeships in
Senegal to teaching fellowships in Bosnia. He is recently returned from Tokyo
where he was presented during the 1st International Spoken Word Festival in
June. Since beginning a career in performance poetry in the Fall of 1998,
Bamuthi has been San Francisco’s Poetry Grand Slam winner three times, won the
1999 National Poetry Slam with Team San Francisco, and founded and continues to
host “Second Sundays”, the nations largest ongoing monthly spoken word
gathering.

AYA DE LEÓN A Fierce & Sometimes Hilarious Hip Hop Theater & Spoken Word
Warrior
Aya de León is an award-winning African-American/Puerto Rican writer,
performer, and teacher who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of
Harvard College, Aya has studied theatre with Whoopi Goldberg, as well as at
the Jean Shelton School of Acting, and with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. In
2004, she will be touring two one-woman shows, "Aya de Leon is Running for
President" and "Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop." This year
she is a recipient of the Sisters of Fire award from the Women of Color
Resource Center in Oakland. She has received national critical acclaim for her
one-woman show, "Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop," about
women's empowerment in hip hop. In 2000 she was a member of the Western
regional championship San Francisco Poetry Slam Team, and prior to that has won
slams at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, and throughout the Bay Area. She
is currently a Master Artist in Residence at the Experimental Performance
Institute at New College of California. She is working on a literary novel,
and is a co-author of the book HOW TO GET STUPID WHITE MEN OUT OF OFFICE, a
book about young adult activism, which is forthcoming from Soft Skull press.
She has also recently released her first CD, "Aya de Leon: Live at La Pena."
For more information, visit http://www.ayadeleon.com.

SHAILJA PATEL Spoken word explosion!
A Kenyan Indian explosion on the national US spoken word scene, Shailja Patel
was 2001 Lambda Slam Champion and 2000 Santa Cruz Slam champion. She was a
featured panelist and guest poet at the National Youth Slam Championships 2001.
Her workshop, "How Big Is Your Voice?" packed a room to overflow capacity and
garnered the highest attendance of any workshop at the 2001 National Poetry
Slam in Seattle. The first featured artist on the South Asian Literature and
Art Archive, thesala.com, she has appeared at slams, festivals and conferences
across North America. Recent highly-acclaimed, standing ovation performances
include Women Against War in San Francisco, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz; the 2003
annual conference of the National Council for Research on Women at Mills
College, 2002 National Conference of Asian and Pacific Islander Law Students at
UC Berkeley, and the Radical Performance Fest (a Bay Area Critics Choice
Selection). Her poems were featured in the curriculum for June Jordan’s Poetry
For The People program at UC Berkeley in 2002, and have been used in colleges,
high schools and workshops across the country. Awards include an Outwrite 1999
Poetry Prize and a Voices Of Our Nations Arts Foundation Poetry Scholarship.
She was semifinalist for the 2000 Emily Dickinson Award and the 2000 Nicholas
Roerich Poetry Prize. Contact: Shailja Patel spp01 [at] hotmail.com Links to
Shailja’s work online: http://thesala.com/feature.html

SIA AMMA African Comedienne
Please see http://www.celebrate clitoris.com for the low down on Sia Amma's amazing
work.

LADY WONDERS of 8th Wonder
The 8th wonder collective flirts, dares, ignites, and conjures word | sound |
speech into more than a performance, but a creation, with each member
demonstrating a unique craft of discovery, exploration, and manifestation of
the wor(l)d. Irene "Shortyrocwell" Duller, Lillian "Dirty Dot" Prijoles,
Golda "Supanova" Sargento, and Jocelyn "HiFive" de Leon make up the Pinay half
of 8th wonder. Together, they meld experience, thought, and strength to empower
listening ears with the beautiful lessons of the world's womb. Check out:
http://www.8thwonder.cjb.net/

LUCIANO CHESSA Italian Born Composer
Performing his new piece S.I.R. which is about the economical, ecological and
social disaster created by the oil refinery with the same name, built
in Sardinia (Italy) in the Sixties. S.I.R. is a performance piece for
musical saw. Luciano Chessa is a musicologist, pianist and composer. He
graduated magna cum laude in History of Music at the University of Bologna, and
is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at University of
California at Davis, writing a dissertation on the influence of the
occult tradition in the music career of Luigi Russolo. As a composer,
he has created performances and has written music for different
instruments and ensembles. He has become more and more interested in
poetry reading, mostly of Futurist Sound Poetry. In March 2001 his
reading of sonnets to accompany a performance of Vivaldi's Four
Seasons by the Grammy Award Nominated "New Century Chamber Orchestra"
in San Francisco's Herbst Theatre received an excellent review in San
Francisco Classical Voice.
Since fall 1999 he has been a proud member of the UCDavis Gospel
Choir and he has been the choir's assistant conductor. With the
UCDavis Gospel Choir he has performed in several venues in
California, as well as the Carnegie Hall in New York City. Since
summer 1999 he is the Music Program Coordinator for the Italian
Cultural Institute in San Francisco, producing mostly concerts of
Italian avant-garde music.


UCHECHI KALU Nigerian-born poet, performer, teacher and survivor of life
Uchechi Kalu is a Nigerian-born poet, performer, teacher and survivor of life,
who grew up in Missouri, Texas and Massachusetts. She has conducted writing
workshops at universities, prisons, high schools, after school programs, and
with the San Francisco WritersCorps program. She spent five years with the late
June Jordan's Poetry for the People program, teaching at Berkeley High School,
the Federal Corrections Institute at Dublin, and at UC Berkeley, where she
studied African-American History and Creative Writing. She has performed at
many venues and events throughout the Bay Area and the West Coast, including
the Afro Solo Festival, the Radical Performance Fest, In the Street Theatre
Festival, Intersection for the Arts, with Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project and
KPFA Radio. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals and
anthologies and on National Public Radio, Revolutionary Voices (Alyson Books,
2000) and her book of poetry, Flowers Blooming Against A Bruised Grey Sky, will
be published by Whit Press in 2004. She is also the recipient of a Hedgebrook
residency for women writers.

GITHINJI WA MBIRE Spirituality in art
Visually Githinji’s portraits seem reminiscent of Picasso’s, but let us
remember that Picasso appropriated many of his cubist concepts from African
iconography. A closer reference would be Wifredo Lam, well known Afrocuban
modernist who worked alongside Picasso in the late 1930’s. Lam’s use of cubism
often incorporated idioms of African rituals. Githinji’s portraits also
possess spirituality, but his figures are more physiognomic, incorporating a
lexicon of symbols and motifs. Ultimately the portraits serve as metaphors for
the unification of man and his spiritual world.
”Art represents àshe, a Yoruba word with no English equivalent. In àshe there
is magic, the power to make things happen, and the embodiment of a life force.”