 photo: B+ aka Brian Cross
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Thursday, May 26, 7 PM
Kamau Daáood, performance poet and community arts activist, is a native of Los Angeles. He is the author of two chapbooks, Ascension and Liberator of the Spirit, and a widely acclaimed spoken word CD, Leimert Park, for which he received a PEN Oakland Award. He is also the subject of an award-winning documentary film, Life is a Saxophone. A former member of the Watts Writer's Workshop, Daáood honed his skill as a "word musician" for the Pan African People's Arkestra under the direction of pianist and composer Horace Tapscott. In 1989, he and master drummer Billy Higgins co-founded The World Stage in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, and under their leadership this storefront performance gallery became Los Angeles' black creative epicenter. In addition to numerous awards for his civic and artistic activities, Daáood has received a Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat Fellowship, a Durfee Artist Fellowship, as well as a California Arts Council Fellowship. He is the director of the performance group, An Army of Healers.
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 photo: Barbara McCullough
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David Ornette Cherry was born the same year Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry recorded their first album, Something Else. The ambient music streaming through his childhood was generated by the early collaborations of his dad, Don, with Coleman and the musicians who visited his parents’ Mariposa Avenue home in Los Angeles.
Cherry studied music composition at Bishop College in Dallas and concentrated on World Music” at California Institute of the Arts. He spent summers attending the Creative Music Studio at Woodstock, New York. These summer experiences gave him the space to compose and create music with Trilock Gurtu, Olatunji, Jai Deva, and Foday Musa Suso, and to explore the relationship of jazz and music from other cultures. While jazz remains both the root and sustenance of his sound, he often incorporates the sounds of the world in what he calls “multi-kulti” music. His background includes performances with Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Nana Vasconcelos, Olatunji, Carlos Ward, Jim Pepper, Collin Walcott, Wadada Leo Smith, and Justo Almario. Cherry’s instruments are keyboards, melodica, and wood flute. |
