Lila Downs will perform a free concert as part of Carnaval celebration at El Museu del Barrio
FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, February 18, free, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org
Fat Tuesday is next week, kicking off Mardi Gras celebrations all over the world. El Museo del Barrio will be holding a free Carnaval party on Saturday, featuring special events all day long. Mask-making workshops will take place 11:00 to 4:00 in Las Galerias and El Taller. From 12 noon to 3:00, you can dance to traditional music in the Black Box Theater, while from 1:00 to 4:00 you can don a jaguar mask made by artist Balam Soto and get your picture taken in the photo booth. Latin Grammy winner Lila Downs will perform a Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert at 4:00 in El Teatro, highlighting songs from her 2011 disc, Pecados y Milagros. Also at 4:00, Caridad de la Luz “La Bruja” will host a spoken-word workshop for teens in the Black Box. And at 7:00, a group of poets including Martín Espada, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Junot Díaz, Willie Perdomo, Mayda del Valle, and Emanuel Xavier will pay homage to writer, poet, and teacher Piri Thomas, who passed away in October at the age of eighty-three. In addition, there will be tours of the current exhibitions, “Testimonios: 100 Years of Popular Expression” and “Voces y Visiones: Gran Caribe.”
From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black and white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is screening on February 3 as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ free First Fridays program honoring Black History Month and will be followed by a Q&A with coproducer Joslyn Barnes. There will also be performances by GIF, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mahogany L. Browne, and M.C. K~Swift, and the galleries will remain open until 10:00, giving visitors plenty of time to check out the exhibition “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx” and the Acconci Studio long-term installation “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being.”
