Cubana Jamdown

Black History Month Cubana Jamdown at Café Marzano11th April 2014

Well the fundraising for Black History Month continues to gather momentum with another fantastic night of great music and food down at Café Marzano, Norwich. By Julie Inns

We are really lucky in Norfolk to have such a diversity of talent ranging in ages, origins, abilities, styles andgenres and a lot of it came together on the 11th April to create one perfect storm of awesomeness!!

Before the music even kicked off people were getting in the spirit by tucking into Danny Keens amazing food. A true feast was laid out which can only be described as Caribbean with a twist, fusion food at its best with curry, chilli, chicken, pasta, salads and cake.

The evening kicked off with brilliant bossa nova star Zara who certainly got the audience in the mood with a couple of easy listening jazz/samba inspired songs. 

 

Accompanied by the amazing Cuban percussionist Jose Ferer and his Cubanda band, Simon Brown (recently back from Havana) on piano and all the way from SaoPaolo Brazil, Sambarista Duda and Caspar James on Caribbean calypso.

 

Sahra Gure was next up and with a voice that just stops you in your tracks and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention,  belting out a few of the jazz standards. 

When you hear this girl sing it’s hard to believe that she is still only 17 years old – once to watch in the future for sure.

After a quick pit stop the music started up again with very talented Danny Keen.   Danny is not only a fantastic cook, talented painter but also plays a mean piano. You would have to have a heart of stone and feet of cement not to get toe tapping along to his mambo shuffle.

Local talented songstress Ashley – Kate followed with two outstanding jazz performances, firstly with her version of Billy Holidays That Ole Devil which was a lovely romantic version which lulled everyone into a nice cosy love filled haze to be quickly shattered when she then blasted the roof off with Etta James’ I just wannamake love to you! http://youtu.be/woqjYhFrJ5s 

The evening ended with Jose Ferer and his Cubandaband, Simon Brown, Sambarista Duda and Caspar James jamming away and winding down the evening.

All good evening was had by all and over £700 was raised to support events and activities for this year’s Black History Month in October.

There will be many more night like this over the coming months so keep your eyes peeled for monthly events details. The next gig will be on 23rd May from 7.30pm at Cafe Marzano, The Forum, Norwich. 

 

The power of symbol - Sankofa

Often people ask me 'what's that symbol?' referring to the logo of the Norfolk Black History Month. I often say that's Sankofa expecting everyone to know. Of course they have no idea what i am talking about so we quickly move to the next question which usually is 'what did you say?'

So what's Sankofa? 

Sankofa is an Adinkra symbol used by the Akan People of Ghana (and by the Norfolk Black History Month logo). Adinkra symbols are graphic representations of popular maxims or philosophical concepts. Originally they were used to decorate textiles, but they can now also be found on pottery and woodcarvings and in contemporary architectural design.

The Sankofa symbol depicts a mythical bird which holds an egg symbolising the future in its beak. The bird moves forwards while looking backwards to the past. The symbol is expressed in the Akan language as Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki.

Literally translated, this phrase means It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot. However, modern translations usually render it as One must return to the past in order to move forward. In either case, the message of the symbol is that we must learn from the past in order to build a better future.

Celebrating traditions and visual art and image is part of the celebration of Black History and culture. African visual art is often characterised by by single forms that do not only refers to human or animal proportions of scale, but to its psychology both in language, expression, meaning and symbolism communicating complex messages in multiple dimensions responding to the faculty of sight, sound but also imagination, emotion and motivation and religious experience. The Sankofa symbol is a good example of this highly developed art expressed in emotional visual language containing multiple meaning and messages in a single symbol or Hierography.