ENTERTAINMENT
ENTERTAINMENT
THE DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA:
Our Voices Are Many Celebrates the Voices and Images
of Black Women
at a Special Mother’s Day Performance
Photos by Debra Russell
Haazim Abdullah
dramatic readers, poets, spoken-word artists, musicians,
dancers, singers – and Extras – celebrated the voices and
images of black women in America from African queens
to black women of prominence.
Carlton Charles, III; Jackie Parker, and Sydney Pew
UNDAY, MAY 10, 2015 – MOTHER’S DAY: It really
was a woman’s trip! – a trip about the black woman’s
ascent from headrag to headwrap and from the “big
house” to the White House with images and faces of black
women who climbed over the wall, broke down the wall,
and saw the wall as glass. Against a multi-media backdrop
of the sounds and images of famous African-American
women in the arts, education, entertainment, business,
and sports, and politics, African queens, Aunt Jemimas,
and Black Beauties paraded across the Amos Studio
performance stage on Mother’s Day, demonstrating their
cultural pride in and cultural response to being Black
women at all levels of beauty. Dr. Karyn Combs, Julia
Arnold, Joycelyn Fluellen, Ferne Guillebeaux, Yasmeen
Ali-Brown donned themselves in authentic African attire
to represent Queens Cleopatra, Tiye, Nandi, Makeda, and
Nzingha respectively.
JUNE 2015 OUT FRONT MAGAZINE
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Using the genres of poetry, spoken word, song, dance, and
music, an Our Voices Are Many cast of over 90 local
The first “voice” that any Our Voices Are Many guest hears
at any performances was that of Haazim Abdullah, a cast
member of Our V