THE FOURTH PEOPLE'S POETRY GATHERING
Source: www.peoplespoetry.org
Topic: Poetry
Sort Desciption: Jay College professor Kewulay Kamara to return to his village and recreate the ancient story in song for the People's Poetry Gathering. ...
Content Inside: 04/29/2006 11:46 AM 4th Peoples Poetry Gathering 2006 of 5 http://www.peoplespoetry.org/pg_event-sched_06.html Overview • 2006 Schedule of Events • Venues • Tickets THE FOURTH PEOPLES POETRY GATHERING Featuring The Wor(l)d of New York Poems from the Worlds Endangered and Contested Languages Read and performed in the Mother Tongue and English Including the Festival within a Festival Harpsong: Celtic Poetry and Music & The new New York City Epic Poem and Poems of our Fair (and sometimes unfair) City Read by Twenty Poets Laureate of New York Date Time Event Venue Tickets PRE-EVENT Thursday April 20 7:00- 9:30pm Voices of Kings: the Dankawali Village Epic — A Poetry Dinner Windows over Harlem Restaurant $45; Members, Seniors, Students $40. In 1998, during the recent civil war in Sierra Leone, a fire destroyed the only written copy of a villages epic poem. In 2002, City Lore commissioned finah poet and John Jay College professor Kewulay Kamara to return to his village and recreate the ancient story in song for the Peoples Poetry Gathering. Voices of Kings interweaves Kamaras own boyhood story of watching his father set down the epic with the epic itself, a creation myth that traces the origin of the Finah clan of Islamic warrior poets. Along the way, Kamara tells of a young boy who grew from the precolonial past to a post-colonial English-speaking and American future. This epic retelling brings in the history of slavery, colonialism, West Africa, and the savage Civil War in Sierra Leone, all appear in this sweeping poetry history, which also describes how reconstructing the ancient stories may hold a key to a better future for the continent. Performed at this pre-Gathering poetry dinner and at the Gathering for the first time, the performance features some of the finest African jali musicians in New York, and follows a delectable, traditional African dinner including nagui chicken, couscous, cassava leaves, sweet plantains, sorrel ...
