Wanda's Picks Radio Show

Wanda's Picks

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! The poem, "Untitled," came in a dream this morning. When I heard, “Returning” by Jennifer Berezan recorded in the underground oracle temple in the Hypogeum in Hal Saflieni, Malta a 6000-year-old Goddess site for healing, I recited a poem I wrote to it. In the YouTube video, the song is sung against a visual landscape with works of art by Nicholas Roerich. It is stunning. I then went to Berezan's website and bought the song which is 52 minutes long. it is deeply meditative and calls on the dieties from different traditions. Linda Tillery, historian, musician and scholar in African folk, spirituals, sings to Yemanja. I'd just read an essay, "Jesus and Mary Dance with the Orishas: Theological Elements in Intereligious Dialogue" by Clara Luz Ajo Lazaro (Cuba), last night from the collection, "Hope Abundant: Third World and Indigenous Women's Theology," edited by Kwok Pui-lan. In the essay, the scholar explains syncretism or the blending of African and Christian theologies in slave states. Yemonja and Yeye Osun are explored along with other orisha in the essay. Osun is reinvented to reflect rape culture, linguistic co-mingling and survival strategies. My poem is untitled and came to me when I awoke this morning.