Voices Rising presents the
Best of LGBTQ Arts & Culture!
VOICES RISING presents a Pride Celebration
June 6th 2009 @ Richard Hugo House
1..634 11th Ave
Seattle
doors @7Pm Show @8
Tickets $10-25 sliding scale
advance tix available from Brown Paper Tickets or voicesrising@gmail.com
info tables & merchandise/refreshments available
VERY SPECIAL GUESTS Mami Watu & Emiko Sugiyama
YAMAMami Watu
www.myspace.com/mamiwatu
Mami Watu, Spoken Word Emcee, haijin and community activist has been writing and speaking her truth since 1989. Mentored by Black Arts Movement writers Robert Earl Price, Malkia M’buzi & Askia M. Toure, Mami first found her poet’s voice with the WordSong collective of Atlanta, Georgia. During her eleven year sojourn in Germany, Mami Watu benefited from the presence of other Black womyn writers in Berlin, such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Joseph, May Ayim, Guy St. Louis, Storme Webber and other artists with whom she shared stages and stories.
Through her writing, above all else, Mami Watu seeks to increase awareness regarding the kaleidoscopic collage that is the Black experience in America. Her hope is that the more we, as a Black community, are able to see and appreciate, ~the you in me and the me in you~, the better our chances are for embracing ourselves unconditionally, and for stemming the tide of self-destruction .
Emiko Sugiyama
www.myspace.com/bgirlemiko
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Emiko Sugiyama has been dancing since the age of seven. In 1999, Emiko came to the U.S. to study at the University of California, Davis & Sacramento College. In 2004, she moved to NYC and became a member of Illstyle & Peace Production, a Philadelphia based Hiphop dance company. Emiko has competed in Breakin competitions and performed nationally and internationally. She is featured on the cover, and in the book, “We Be Girlz”, a seminal work on the presence of womyn in the Hiphop element of Breakdancing. Emiko aspires to share not only her skills and abilities, but her individuality and personality through dance.
br>
In 2008, Mami Watu and Emiko Sugiyama collaborated in Philadelphia, to coordinate an all-element Hiphop youth summer program called, Hiphop Island. Both womyn, subsequently, re-located to Los Angeles, where they look forward to future creative collaborations, exploring the elements of Hiphop while sharing the empowering message of Hiphop, especially for womyn and youth.
Featuring:
THEESatisfaction-Hosts & Performers
THEESatisfaction's (THEE Stasia and Catherine Satisfaction) spaceship landed in the heart of Seattle , Washington with the hope of saving it from musical oppression. They became refugees on the planet Mars but escaped the green and purple martians in search of something new. They seek justice, peace and love. Through their music they hope to inspire revolutionary thoughts. Fusing nebula-jazz, intergalactic-soul, and astronomical- a capella they will funk you up. YEE
Dakota Camacho
Crystal Ybarra
www.myspace.com/carrionflea
Bisexual mother of one beautiful 2-year-old son, Crystal sometimes writes some controversial poetry that pricks the minds of those who listen. She writes from the heart drawing from things she has experienced throughout her very colorful life.
Storme Webber
Lesbian Langston-a poetic meditation/praise song of Langston Hughes and the fabulous artists of the Harlem Renaissance such as Gladys Bentley, Zora Neale Hurston, Ethel Waters and Richard Bruce Nugent. These ancestors were unashamedly Black, sexually free and proud before any movement. They were a world shifting movement unto themselves.
Mikeya Harper
Landon Longhill
Landon Longhill is a Mixed-race, transgendered Seattle poet, spoken word artist, and musician who is committed to social justice, his community, and to the people he loves. Lingering on themes of home, disappointment, and rebirth, he strives to organize haphazard experience into comprehensive pieces, reenvision despair and humiliation into meaningful human purpose, and set a good example of how to be grossly and unapologetically emotional. Landon Longhill is best described by his work.
for more info:
voicesrising@gmail.com
