Blood at the Root: Activism in Art

May 30, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

Nooses were hanging like vines. Roots penetrated deeply into blood soaked soil. And then there was a fight.   Blood at the Root is a small-scale production. The cast numbers six. It was performed at the National Black Theatre, which has a seating capacity of less than two hundred. The set is comprised of a flat backdrop and six chairs in constant rotation. But there is nothing small-scale about the impact of this play. Blood at the Root forces the […]

Categories: Performance, Uncategorized • Tags: Allison Jaye, awareness, Black Lives Matter, Blood at the Root, Brandon Carter, change, Christian Thompson, Civil rights, division, Dominique Morisseau, empathy, Eric Garner, Hi-Arts, hip hop dance, installation, Jena 6, Kenzie Ross, labels, Louisiana, lynching, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, National Black Theatre, New York, Nooses, Penn State Centre Stage, photography, play, prejudice, production, protest, racism, resistance, rules, Sade Lythcott, stage set, Steven Broadnax, Stori Ayers, strange fruit, tolerance, Trayvon Martin, Tyler Reilly

Ashes and Embers, a film by Haile Gerima

March 11, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

For my uncle who was sent to Vietnam a whole man but returned to his family incomplete  “It is for life. PTSD is for life,” she told me. “That person will never, ever get better.” The faces around the dimly lit table grew serious momentarily as this reality sank in. It was only a warning about a date with a man from the navy who might have been to a recent war. The pause was fleeting before the faces all […]

Categories: Film, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, American Fruit African Roots, Angela Davis, Ashes and Embers, Black Power, David Rudder, Elizabeth Catlett, Film, Films at the Schomburg, Haile Gerima, Harlem, lynching, Madman's Rant, Malcolm X, Mariamma Kambon, movie, New York, Patrice Lumumba, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, soldier, The Schomburg Center, The Sharecropper, Veteran, Vietnam, Vietnam vet, war

Strange Fruit 21st Century – a Multimedia Installation

August 20, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
 Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,   1939, a “progressive” New York City nightclub – the Café Society. Billie Holiday beneath a single spotlight. 
 Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
 Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.   The reality of American racism revealed naked and undeniable beneath that light, thrust into plain view by the force of unflinching words, profoundly interpreted by the legendary songstress with […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: enslavement, freedom, Harriet Tubman, Jim Crow, Liberation, lynching, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, photography, prison industrial complex, race-based oppression, resistance, segregation, slavery, strange fruit, The New Jim Crow