Wanda's Picks Radio Show: Berkeley World Music Festival

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Gianna Ranuzzi, Director, Berkeley World Music Festival, www.berkeleyworldmusic.org with BWMF featured artist, Nigerian guitar master and singer Adesoji “Soji” Odukogbe attracted acclaim originally as the lead guitarist for the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s groundbreaking Afrobeat band. Odukogbe draws on an extensive background in Nigerian Afrobeat, highlife, and spiritual music, bringing a unique sensibility to his highlife guitar interpretations.He is a founding member of The Afrobeat ConneXion and The Nigerian Brothers, as well as being a side man for various acts, such as “The West African Highlife Band and Kotoja. He has recorded and played with Femi Kuti, Babatunde Olatunji and Orlando Julius Ekemode, among others. Soji is now stepping into the spotlight to lead his own Afrobeat Band, featuring guitars, drums, smoking horn section and intricate vocal harmonies evident in his successful solo project, In the Flow.

2. The BWMF ends at Ashkenaz Friday evening, June 12, with a fabulous afterparty with Thomas Mapfumo, Lion of Zimbabwe, truly a man of the people. Mapfumo is bringing a new CD, Danger Zone and a new book about his revolutionary life by Banning Eyre, Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe. http://www.thomas-mapfumo.com/