New 'zine! Raza for Gaza : Poets in solidarity with Palestine

To mark a two-night gathering of community with poets and musicians to express solidarity with the Palestinian people under siege in Gaza, the EastSide Arts Alliance with editorial Xingao published a lightning 'zine Raza for Gaza Poets in Solidarity with Palestine, featuring nine poets from across the world, as part of the "Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza" solidarity and justice movement culture celebration at the Eastside Arts Center in Oakland,  February 23-24, 2024.

Eastside invited people to make a generous as possible donation to either the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, the Middle East Children's Alliance for Peace or the Electronic Intifada and take a copy of the 'zine home. As City of Oakland Poet Laureate declared at the "Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza" gathering, 'This is a unique publication that you cannot buy tonight or anywhere else. Raza for Gaza is not for sale and you can get a copy when you support the organizations doing the work.'

The two-night gathering at the Eastside Arts Center featured three poets and three musical groups each evening. Poets Ayodele Nzinga, Mo Sati, Lubna Morrar and Leticia García and musicians Camellia Boutros, AntiFaSon, Diana Gameros, and the Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate, graced each evening with joyous sounds, passionate verses and heartfelt lyrics acknowledging the grim reality and resilient spirit of resistance of Palestinians under the Israeli genocidal siege of Gaza and occupied Palestine territory.

Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza Snapshots at the Eastside Arts Center

Here are some images of the two nights at Eastside Arts Center in Oakland (see bios of each performer at end of post).

AntiFaSon

Ayodele Nzinga performing two poems published in the'zine

Lubna Morrar, poet.

Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate 

Diana Gameros.

Camelia Boutros & band.

Mo Sati, poet.

Leticia García, poeta.

Diana Gameros & Camellia Boutros.

BIOS OF THE POETS & MUSICIANS

AntiFaSon is a Son Jarocho project, a musical guest on Ohlone territory (aka Oakland). They amplify anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist and anti-extractivist feminist themes in Son Jarocho songs that form part of the larger history of Afro-Indigenous land, water and campesinx struggles. 

For more info visit their Instagram page: @somosantifason

Camellia Boutros is a Palestinian-Lebanese American composer and multi-instrumentalist based in San Francisco. Having performed as a trumpet player with a diverse array of Bay Area world music projects, such as Mission Delirium, Alaturca Connection, Inspector Gadje, and Banda Sin Nombre, Camellia approaches the music she writes with a custom modified fretless 12-string electric guitar, enabling her to write and perform music using the quarter-tone Maqam system. Her music and lyrics defy genre definition, forming an experimental blend of rock, folk, Arab, jazz, and brass music, all of which can be found on her first solo album Refuge.

For more info: Camellia Boutros Music https://camelliaboutros.com/about/

Diana Gameros is a singer, guitarist, pianist, composer, songwriter, music instructor and social justice activist, based in San Francisco, California. She was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, México and immigrated to the United States as a teenager to study music in Michigan. Over the last decade in the Bay Area she has released two albums of original songs written in Spanish and English, and Mexican classic songs. In 2014 Diana received the Emerging Leader Award by the Chicana/Latina Foundation. In 2015 she was named one of YBCA’s 100: creative minds, makers, and pioneers that are asking the questions  and making the provocations that will shape the future of American culture. NPR Music gave Diana an honorable mention to Arrullo in best Latin albums of the year in 2017. Diana was named one of SF Magazine’s 100 Artists: Artists Putting The East Bay On The Map, in 2018.

For more info: https://www.dianagameros.com/epk

Leticia García is a poet and an immigrant woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, a single mother and a powerful leader in the community, with deep compassion for the suffering of other immigrant women.

To learn more about Leticia, visit Mujeres Unidas y Activas: https://mujeresunidas.net

Lubna Morrar Palestinian, born and raised in The Town aka Oakland,CA. Long time Community organizer, business owner, artist... and sometimes a poet.

Ayodele Nzinga, the first Poet Laureate of Oakland, is a multi-hyphenated artist; a brilliant actress, a producing director, playwright, poet, dramaturg, performance consultant, educator, and community advocate. She is the director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland’s oldest North American African Theater Company and founder of Lower Bottom Playaz Summer Theater Day Camp. Ayodele is co-founder of Janga’s House a Black Women Arts collective and a founding member of BlacSpace Collective. She is the Executive Director of the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC); and founder and producer of BAMBDFEST International Biennial, a month-long arts and cultural festival animating the Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland CA. Nzinga holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness; a Ph.D. in Transformative Education & Change; is a Cal-Shakes Artist Investigator Alumni; a San Francisco Foundation Arts Leadership Fellow; a member of the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame; recognized by Theater Bay Area as one of the 40 faces in the Bay that changed the face of theater in the Bay Area; is recognized by the August Wilson House as the only director in the world to direct the complete August Wilson American Century Cycle in chronological order; a YBCA 10 Fellow, a BIPOC Circle Fellow and a VOICES Community Journalism Fellow. Nzinga is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland CA. Nzinga’s work for the stage has been reviewed internationally. Her blog is read in 81 countries. She is the author of Performing Literacy a Narrative Inquiry into Performance Pedagogy, The Horse Eaters, SorrowLand Oracle, and Incandescent and her work can be found in numerous journals and anthologies. Nzinga, a cultural anchor, is part theoretician and part partitioner. She describes herself as a cultural architect invested in creating structures for culture making.

For more info: Ayodele Nznga https://www.ayodelenzinga.com/about/

Mo Sati was born in Palestine, grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan, and now lives in Oakland. Mo is a poet, a writer, a playwright, and an artist. He participates in activist and cultural events nationally and internationally sharing insights about life as a refugee uprooted from his homeland. His poetry, writings, and artworks tell stories of the people of Palestine living under occupation. His work personifies emotions drawn from the day-to-day struggles of resistance to oppression as Palestinians fight to unshackle themselves from decades of military occupation. Listen to Mo Sati perform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpHLn0aL9Ks

Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate: Multi-instrumentalist composer and writer Fernando Torres and multi-faceted Puertorrican singer /interpreter and political activist Madeleine Zayas. Their eclectic repertoire is rooted in the Nueva Canción/Nueva Trova tradition of entertaining and educating about culture and pressing social issues.

Madeleine Zayas Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Madeleine Zayas is a Latin American singer/interpreter, dancer and choreographer and architect based in Oakland. She was co-founder of Buena Trova Social Club in 2012 and lead singer and co-artistic director of Madelina y Los Carpinteros since 2014. Madeleine has performed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, many U.S. Cities, and Santiago, Chile, and has shared stage with Wilkins, Cheo Feliciano, Inti Illimani, John Santos and Holly Near. She believes in art and cultural activism as a positive force of communication and a tool for social change.

Fernando Feña Torres is a Chilean exile, musician, composer and poet, journalist and founding ex member of Grupo Raiz. Fena is an expert in folkloric multi-instrumentalist. He began his musical career as a young boy inspired by the socialist government of Salvador Allende  A former political prisoner and exiled into the US, he has collaborated with Teatro Campesino and has performed in Bay Area and internationally along with artists such as David Byrne, Pete Seeger and Holly Near.

Daniel Oñate, is a highly qualified performer of piano, pianist, transverse flute and quena. He is also a composer, arranger and orchestra director from Southern Chile. He is a winner of the acclaimed Luis Advis contest, in the Chile Canta a Victor Jara version. He is currently completing a Masters in music at UC Berkeley.

Listen to Made y Feña's new song for Gaza in Would You

AND Madeleine Zayas in a live performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j5JOiLPVfM

Billie Holiday | day seven poetry month |

She sings:
My heart is in Baltimore
My voice is scattered
in the ruins of your bruises
Winter always
hangs 'round
the corner
of my eyes
Spring
is handcuffed
to my blues
Wherever she goes
I will follow on my knees

She sleeps:
There was a man
who buried his hands
in the gardenia of my suns
Inhaled the DNA of my suffering
to erase the darkness
And take me away
busting me out of my cocoon


She improvises:
I was black I was white I was a woman
Whose only weapon was a song and night.
I was red I was blue I was a woman
Whose body became a battlefield for their lust
I was yellow I was North Star I was a woman
Whose voice tamed the coyote and the wild forgetfulness
I was brown I was azure for the lost south
Craving a family, a sacred land, a house, a lover-man

She writes:
He only wanted
what nobody else wanted
To let me sing
Sending death away empty handed
To drown his skull in my ecstasy...

Billie Holiday sits in my living room
holding my hands
traces the notes of her next song
on my wings
She rises from the couch
Puts on her shoes and walks away
pushing away the shadows...

She texts me her goodbyes:
I was blues
I was ebony
I was a woman
I was black
I was white
I was a woman
standing on the stage
gently ripping open
the graves of my bones
with the chrysalis
of my hands and caresses
on saxophones and pianos and an occasional guitar
I was power
I was explosion
I was a woman
who pinned gardenias
on the shock of dusk
who uplifted
the vibrato
of her fears
to carry you wherever I sang

The guitar prayer (far east Oakland)

Bryan asks me to bless him
Walks behind the table where I am sitting,
into a room and comes out with a new guitar in a case.
He pulls out the guitar
Places it in my hand
Then he stands at the head of the table
Puts a plastic glass filled with a bit of water
and leans a plastic-encased god against the glass 
Places his palms together
and bows his head
I begin strumming minor chords, diminished chords
double-diminished riffs and a Victor Jara or two melody.
Bryan then kneels
Eyes closed,
his arms and hands still palm to palm 
held tight to his chest
He bends down touching the tiled floor with his forehead
in the communion of my rattling guitar
The strings become disembodied paths,
the explosion of time strewn across your lap
I improvise I invent I hum I hit the harmonics
I vibrate in the ultimatums gushing out of the mouth of the guitar
I bend the strings, twisting the voice of the faithful to stand up
against the mercy of a merciless god
The guitar becomes a wall pushing me
to the edge of another spiritual disaster
There is tremolo in my fingertips
Making space flutter, implode, scratch, annul the human pact
I inject the music, the tones, the rusty strings into my skin
Invading the veins, subjugate the heart
My body becomes transformed into a well of noises, lungs and monsters
My bones become the broken strings that stitch together what remains
of my corpse, my soul, my bloodied tongue
Bryan kneeling is unmoved by the turbulence of the guitar upon him
I am breathing, choking, being sucked under through the mouth of the guitar
I am ingesting the suffering, the breach
where the enemy of noise storms my body
I keep strumming, plucking sounds out of god's breasts
Bryan has dissolved into himself
a mirage, a beggar, a street-corner guitarist
wailing, breathing, becoming a son without a mother
The guitar brings us both back to the cafe where cups clink on tabletops
Friends talk becomes a blurring of words cut into waves of human comfort
Bryan stand up slowly, his hands palm-to-palm still against his chest
He opens his eyes and declares:
The water is now holy water.
Should I drink it? he asks for my opinion.
You should go outside and pour on a plant, on the dirt
Offer to our ancestors mixed there.
One day our descendants will also pour water holy or not
at the new year's eve or on our anniversary
to let us once again drink together, live together, eat together
Praying or warring
Divided or hurt
Willing or not
Alive in any case.
Bryan lifts and places the plastic cup of water next to my laptop
Please share the holy water, pour it for me on the dirt and plants outside.
He walks away
the music swirling around him
Biting him, chunk by chunk, distracting his body
And he dissolves into the breath of a shadow....

Guitarra armada | Song vs war

 

Arnoldo García

 Guitarra armada | Song against war

The vatos always laughed at me in disbelief because I’d always show up with a guitar.

They would always show up, their backseats loaded with bats, knives, chains, steel knuckles, rocks, the car jack or the occasional gun for the brawl, the rumble, the showdown with the other gang, who you didn’t really want to kill; maim maybe, hurt yes, intimidate away if possible so that you too wouldn’t get hurt.

“Whose ass are you going to kick with the guitar, ese,” someone would mockingly ask.

They didn’t know my guitar was the main weapon. I could strike down anyone with it; but it’s too valuable for one smash.

My guitar was a womb, a movie camera, a grand canyon to record and sing out the next corrido of the street wars.

You can’t really impress the girls with a knife or a gun. Maybe with a bruised face or a blackened, swollen eye.

But pull out a guitar before her, during or after the chingazos, and the girls will come to listen.

You sing a short corrido of the blows and then switch to a bolero to tell them how you really felt, why you fought – to protect her or the barrio’s honor. And no one in their right mind would think that the guitar is a weapon, much less the most powerful weapon.

The bullies scoff at it – you can’t be a romantic when you’re always threatening someone. The vato locos appreciate it cuz someone with a guitar will always sing their great deeds of valor. The armed dudes, well they know who has power and that it don’t grow from the barrel of a gun but from the fists of the man with a gun for added protection.

And you can’t hide a guitar like a 9mm.

You carry the most dangerous weapon in full sight. You carry it through the crowds, you stand at the front and wail away, getting in hits and licks on where it hurts most – in their hearts and souls.

After the fight, the guitar would heal us, soothe the hurt away with a beer or two and the rucas waiting for their song, their turn at my heart.

Che means the people | Che significa el pueblo

Liberation poems, theater, music, art, hip hop

Friday, October 8, 2010
Doors open at 7:30 pm
Program starts at 8:00 pm

This is a benefit to support Zapatista communities.

$10 donation requested at the door!

Show your support in many ways, just give, speak out, get together!

Sponsored by the East Side Arts Alliance Cultural Center with the Chiapas Support Committee

http://www.eastsideartsalliance.com/

At 2277 International Blvd * Oakland, CA 94606-5003
Call (510) 533-6629

Liberation poems, theater, music, art, hip hop with:

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Poemas, teatro, música, arte, hip hop liberación con

Avotcja
Francisco X. Alarcón
Gina Madrid
Muteado
MamaCoátl
headRush
Nina Serrano
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Howard Wiley
Andrew Kong Knight
Arnoldo García
Daniel Camacho
Pancho Pescador
"El tractorista" video poem by Rubén Rangel
Alejandro Murguía

Son Jarocho Music Group and Fandango Jam sessions to close!
& others!

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What does Che mean in 2010 and beyond?

Recently the semi-retired elder Cuban revolutionary and leader Fidel Castro said that the Cuban model does not even work for Cuba anymore. What does liberation mean in the era of neoliberal capitalism, the international "war on terror," global climatic change, Indigenous peoples' liberation movements and governments, and small islands and movements of difference?

In this time, what does Che mean, if anything at all?

Tonight we will try to imagine and re-imagine not only Che's significance, but the meaning of our lives dedicated to progressive social change for racial justice, immigrant rights, human rights, poetry, cultural, music, clean air, water, soil, and what we can do to ensure that the revolution is to be human, like Che.

The world economic crisis has meant a re-evaluation of everything sacred and mundane in the capitalist worlds and the remaining socialist utopias amidst the harsh conditions reigning in South countries and the Third World. How does the working class survive, how are Indigenous people organizing their communities and defending the natural world, what is happening to our countries with the migrant upheavals marking the developed world? What do our words mean to do?

In this contradictory time and threatening developments, Zapatista communities and Che still remaining shining figures and examples of human dignity and struggle for a better deal and a better world for all. Tonight we will celebrate with our own words and actions Che Guevara and collectively raise some solidarity for the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

Come celebrate Che & the Zapatistas!

CHE

Ernesto Che Guevara was born in Argentina, became a revolutionary on several motorcycle road-trips across Latin America, where he saw first hand the problems of impoverished and landless Indigenous peoples, exploited workers and the devastation resulting from hundreds of years of colonialism and empire. After being expelled from Guatemala, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, Che met up with leaders of the Cuban July 26 national liberation movement led by the Castro brothers in Mexico and joined their cause. He rode aboard the famed Granma (yacht) to Cuba as the nascent Rebel Army launched its war of liberation, which culminated in victory on New Years Day 1961.

In the revolutionary war to overthrow the U.S.-backed Bautista dictatorship, Che eventually reached the rank of Comandante in Cuba's Rebel Army. He led a column of guerrilla fighters across Cuba in the final march and assault that caused the final defeat and overthrow of the dictatorship.

Che became a leader and creator of revolutionary guerrilla theory and practice, Although he was a medical doctor by training, Che was also a talented writer by vocation and became a noted chronicler of his youthful escapades and of the Cuban revolution, becoming an internationalist practitioner of what he preached.

Ernesto Che Guevara was a multifaceted and selfless individual in the revolutionary world movements. In Cuba, Che became an economist, helping lead a socialist re-organization of the Cuban economy, participated and lead in the development of volunteer workers the sugarcane fields and other sectors to become and shape, as part of a shared vision, the "new man and woman." As a representative of the Cuban revolution, he traveled to Third World countries developing both economic and political relationships to ensure the success of the Cuban revolution and national liberation movements worldwide.

In these new travels, Che reinvigorated his commitment to international solidarity and revolutionary movement-building. he helped organize Cuban internationalist support and eventually spent almost one year leading a guerrilla war with an African liberation movement in the Congo.

In Africa, he continued developing the vision and the members of what would become Che's most well-known and final initiative of creating an internationalist liberation army and movement in Bolivia in 1966. Che lead a small column of guerrillas in the mountains of Bolivia, engaged in several skirmishes and battles but eventually would be surrounded and captured one October 8, 1967. He was executed shortly after capture and the rest is Che history.

Si Che viviera, con los Zapatistas estuviera

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If Che were alive, he'd be at the Zapatistas side.