Friday, November 17 - Baba Ngoma Osayemi

PLEASE JOIN US FOR -

A vibrant evening of jazz and poetry, with

BABA NGOMA OSAYEMI

Friday, November 17, 2017 8:00 pmSouth Oxford Space

138 South Oxford Street Ft Greene, Brooklyn, NY $15 for all

Ngoma is a performance poet,multi-instrumentalist,singer/songwriter, Artivist and paradigm shifter, who, for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise socio-political and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought.

A former member of Amiri Baraka's "The Spirit House Movers and Players" and the contemporary freedom song duo, "Serious Bizness," Ngoma weaves poetry and song that raises contradictions and searches for a solution to a just and peaceful world.

Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, Connecticut and his been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush the Page/Def Poetry Jam Anthology, Poems on the Road to Peace (Volumes 1,2,and 3) Yale Press and Let Loose On the World - Amiri Baraka at 75, The Understanding Between Foxes and Light - Great Weather For Media and New Rain/Blind Beggar Press 35th Anniversary Issue. He was featured in the PBS spoken word documentary The Apro-poets with Allen Ginsberg.

Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Martin Luther King Family Festival of Social and Environmental Justice at the Yale/Peabody Museum since 1995.He was also selected to participate in the 2009 Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Capetown,South Africa. In December of 2011, he was initiated as a Priest of Obatala in Ibadan, Nigeria. In June of 2013 he was initiated as a Priest of If

His CD Reflections (1964-2006) pays tribute to some of the activist and cultural workers whose shining example served as a beacon for his work as an artist.  His other albums include State of Emergency (2008), Ngoma - Poetry from a Smart Phone (2011), and Lessons from the Book of Osayemi (Chapter 1) (2013).

“Ngoma is a living sage amongst those who do not have the courage see their greater selves.  His poetry is profound, poignant and necessary at a time like this or any other. It is not traditional but is our tradition. Once again in the midst of madness sanity creeps through to remind us all is not lost and if we choose to we have the power to make a better day.” ~ Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets