PRESORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID MINNEAPOLIS MN PERMIT NO. 32468
Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Project Ensemble See story below Photo: Jennifer Taylor
April 6 - April 12, 2009 • MN Metro Vol. 35 No. 14 • The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • www.insightnews.com
Wiz reprise launches Washburn theatre initiative By Alaina L. Lewis After a 17-year absence, a twister of musical proportion blew onto the stage of Washburn High School’s annual spring production. With support from Life Touch and Hennepin Theatre Trust’s Spotlight Program, Washburn High School unveiled a new beginning in their Fine Arts department by showcasing students’ undeniable talent and creativity through a production of The Wiz. Washburn High School, having seen decades of both positive and challenging circumstances, has always stood a tradition of offering its culturally diverse student body a higher standard of academics, athletics, and the arts. Known as one of the leaders in the Minneapolis Public School system, this “school of choice,” made a decision to take the necessary measures to continually resonate the strength of their mission amidst the impact of statewide budget cuts and changes in demographics. After being granted a Fresh Start by Minneapolis Public Schools last spring, Washburn High School was able to take a steady turn in a positive direction to ensure its students are granted the same window of
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New green jobs could move many from poverty to prosperity
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Suluki Fardan
Cast of The Wiz (l-r): Bri Salhus (Ms. Tin), LuLu Champion (Scarecrow), Jaslyne Sharif (Evillene), Martina Guerra (Dorothy), Thomas Young (Lion) and Tatum Smith (Addaperle).
Yo-Yo Ma the road to human kindness
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Weekly previews for movies opening April 10
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through the art of music By Irma McClaurin After you’ve been greeted by Yo-Yo Ma with a hug instead of a handshake, you gain some appreciation for how he has, as the Artistic Director, managed to convince an ever-changing group of almost 60 artists (performers and composers) from different cultures and countries, who speak multiple languages, to become collaborators in the visionary Silk Road Project, Inc., founded in 1998. Yo-Yo Ma exudes gentleness and warmth. He looks at you directly and smiles, and on stage he is not the center piece, but part of the ensemble—just one of the crew, though his genius and vision are evident everywhere. On March 16, 2009, an audience at the Minneapolis Orchestra Hall experienced what YoYo Ma calls “passion driven education” when 16 of this eclectic large Silk Road Project Ensemble of
musicians took to the stage. There were more instruments than musicians because they changed and swapped depending upon what the repertoire required. And what an amazing repertoire it was: an opening improvisation (“Wandering Winds”) on “…the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and the bawu ( a Chinese free-reed wood instrument);” a funky percussion-centered piece (“Saidi Swing”) that included the tabla, twin drums (similar to bongos) that has origins in India, Pakinstan, and Afghanistan; the frame drum, which is “…the oldest and most widely used drum in the world;” “the riq, an Egyptian tambourine;” the “darbuka, a goblet-shaped drum used throughout the Middle East,” and the cajón, thought to have been developed by African slaves along the coast of Peru, but used by African-descended people in Cuba
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Putting family first during tough times
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Julian Bond gets NAACP top honor The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Board of Directors announces that its Chairman, the Hon. Julian Bond, will be the 94th recipient of the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest honor. Bond will receive the award during the NAACP National Convention in New York City July 16 at the annual Spingarn Dinner as the Association continues celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. The Spingarn Medal, instituted in 1914 by the late Joel E. Spingarn, then NAACP Chairman, is awarded for the highest or noblest achievement by an American of African descent during the preceding year or years.
Student essays All about Congressman Keith Ellison Sudan
StudioTobechi
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Casting doubt about "Save Darfur" By William Reed
www.wellesley.edu
Julian Bond
“Chairman Bond’s record of service and leadership is legendary and inspiring,” said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “He has suffered and survived many
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“Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what He does....”- Malcom X In Harlem in the 1960s Malcolm meant “bamboozle” as “to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like.” In today’s world it is the regular manufacture and maintenance of false realities in the service of the American empire. The deception El Haji Malik El-Shabazz talked about is a core function among America’s establishment and
its corporate news media. In the case of being tricked into a war in Africa, Malcolm might say “take a close look behind the façade.” Among the latest false realities being pushed are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust, U.S.-backed or U.S.-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Before Black Americans buy into any concept of European troops invading Africa to “save Africans,” they should give more scrutiny to what the “Save Darfur” lobby and Save Darfur Coalition are all about. Malcolm might say it is a PR scam to justify U.S. intervention in Africa.
Save Darfur aims to “save Darfur” by raising awareness, not by providing on-the-ground humanitarian assistance. The campaign is a political mechanism that has misled the public into the belief that it is a humanitarian relief operation. The con has morphed false allegations of “slavery in Sudan” in the 1990s into the antigenocide advocacy model for the 21st century: a hybrid of promotional branding, simplified foreign political coverage and interventionist missionary ideology. Founded in 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition began at the Graduate
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Gophers track teams are the best in the midwest
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