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Visitors were able to tour a post-war Los Angeles through an African-American perspective during a celebration of jazz and the opening reception of a photography exhibit Sunday in the VPAC.

The Miles Davis Experience featured a jazz production by the Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet. The performance chronicled not only the work of Davis, but the historical context that surrounded the jazz music scene during that decade.

From the poem “Trumpet Player” by Langston Hughes, “The Negro, With the trumpet at his lips, Has dark moons of weariness Beneath his eyes, where the smoldering memory of slave ships Blazed to the crack of whips about thighs,” narrated Donald E. Lacy, Jr. as an image of Miles Davis projected onto three illuminated screens on the backdrop of the stage.

Ambrose Akinmusire, the up-and-coming 28-year old trumpet player from Oakland, took the stage for a solo performance.

Images of Davis and jazz colleagues including John Coltrane and Billie Holiday continued to flash across the screen as the quintet awakened the late jazz-artist’s spirit. Davis’s own voice resonated throughout the venue as interview clips were transitions between several of the jazz pieces. Quintet members Walter Smith III, Sam Harris, Harish Raghavan, and Justin Brown also crooned their solos as the evening wrapped up with photographs of the East St. Louis riots.

Although the Miles Davis Experience was only showcased for one evening, the Art Gallery’s photo exhibition will be on display until Dec. 10.

Music was not the only way visitors celebrated African American artistic history. Forty years of photography lined the gallery walls like a timeline, allowing viewers to travel from 1940 to 1980, through a world of civil rights protests and backlash, segregation and racism, and a world of mundane beauty often overlooked.

“Identity and Affirmation: Post War African-American Photography” opened the 125 piece exhibition to the back drop of a live student jazz band.

“It mostly just seems like a documentation, a celebration of the everyday,” said Danny Escalante, an art graduate student. “It’s nothing epic, but just being alive and living.”

Gallery attendee Maureen Fitzgerald said she thought civic leaders were an impressive display of early leadership, and the art was compelling.

“Having grown up in the times seeing these leaders, you never forget history, and it’s shocking at times,” Fitzgerald said. “Seeing the Mason-Dixon Line was appalling, but at the time it was acceptable.”

The exhibition’s curator Kent Kirkton said the exhibit was about community as much as photography.

“The post-war period was a very, very difficult period of time for African Americans in LA and we tend to forget that,” Kirkton said. “The city was quite racist. Everything had racial-restricted covenants.”

All the images, which were narrowed down from nearly one million archival photographs from the Institute for Arts and Media, were created by African American photographers, and were donated to CSUN over two decades by the artists and their families.

Provides overview, key facts and events, timelines and leader profiles along with current news about Zambia.

In the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for REDMAP, a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures. Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington. It was an ingenious plan, and Gillespie is a skilled tactician—he once ran the Republican National Committee—but REDMAP seemed like a long shot in North Carolina. Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and remained popular. The Republicans hadn’t controlled both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly for more than a century. (“Not since General Sherman,” a state politico joked to me.) That day in Raleigh, though, Gillespie had lunch with an ideal ally: James Arthur (Art) Pope, the chairman and C.E.O. of Variety Wholesalers, a discount-store conglomerate. The Raleigh News and Observer had called Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, the Knight of the Right. The REDMAP project offered Pope a new way to spend his money.

That fall, in the remote western corner of the state, John Snow, a retired Democratic judge who had represented the district in the State Senate for three terms, found himself subjected to one political attack after another. Snow, who often voted with the Republicans, was considered one of the most conservative Democrats in the General Assembly, and his record reflected the views of his constituents. His Republican opponent, Jim Davis—an orthodontist loosely allied with the Tea Party—had minimal political experience, and Snow, a former college football star, was expected to be reëlected easily. Yet somehow Davis seemed to have almost unlimited money with which to assail Snow.

Snow recalls, “I voted to help build a pier with an aquarium on the coast, as did every other member of the North Carolina House and Senate who voted.” But a television attack ad presented the “luxury pier” as Snow’s wasteful scheme. “We’ve lost jobs,” an actress said in the ad. “John Snow’s solution for our economy? ‘Go fish!’ ” A mass mailing, decorated with a cartoon pig, denounced the pier as one of Snow’s “pork projects.” It criticized Snow for “wasting our tax dollars,” citing his vote to “spend $218,000 on a Shakespeare festival,” but failing to note that this sum represented a budget cut for the program, which had been funded by the legislature since 1999.

In all, Snow says, he was the target of two dozen mass mailings, one of them reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad that became notorious during the 1988 Presidential campaign. It featured a photograph of Henry Lee McCollum, a menacing-looking African-American convict on death row, who, along with three other men, raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. After describing McCollum’s crimes in lurid detail, the mailing noted, “Thanks to arrogant State Senator John Snow, McCollum could soon be let off of death row.” Snow, in fact, supported the death penalty and had prosecuted murder cases. But, in 2009, he had helped pass a new state law, the Racial Justice Act, that enabled judges to reconsider a death sentence if a convict could prove that the jury’s verdict had been tainted by racism. The law was an attempt to address the overwhelming racial disparity in capital

“The attacks just went on and on,” Snow told me recently. “My opponents used fear tactics. I’m a moderate, but they tried to make me look liberal.” On Election Night, he lost by an agonizingly slim margin—fewer than two hundred votes.

After the election, the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, a nonpartisan, pro-business organization, revealed that two seemingly independent political groups had spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads against Snow—a huge amount in a poor, backwoods district. Art Pope was instrumental in funding and creating both groups, Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action. Real Jobs NC was responsible for the “Go fish!” ad and the mass mailing that attacked Snow’s “pork projects.” The racially charged ad was produced by the North Carolina Republican Party, and Pope says that he was not involved in its creation. But Pope and three members of his family gave the Davis campaign a four-thousand-dollar check each—the maximum individual donation allowed by state law.

Snow, whose defeat was first chronicled by the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive nonprofit organization, told me, “It’s getting to the point where, in politics, money is the most important thing. They spent nearly a million dollars to win that seat. A lot of it was from corporations and outside groups related to Art Pope. He was their sugar daddy.”

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My original intent was to write an article about the MOJA Festival and its impact on the African-American arts scene in Charleston. Makes sense. MOJA is atop us, I am an artist, and I like talking to other folks in the arts. Easy, right? Wrong. I’ve had more off-the-record conversations in the last week than I ever anticipated. There is disenchantment with the lack of local performing artists being featured. There is a sense, as one anonymous source put it, that “This ain’t my festival.” And according to a number of people — from musicians to thespians to technicians — the local buy-in from our community of African-American artists is about as flat as the economy.

But let me start with the easy, non-confrontational stuff. This is the 28th year that the festival is celebrating African-American and Caribbean arts. Those of you who have been in Charleston for any amount of time at least know that during MOJA, the culture and history of African-American and Caribbean people is celebrated through art, music, theater, dance, and literature. There are loads of free things to do, including the popular Caribbean Street Parade and the Reggae Block Party.

Brooklyn transplant and Mt. Pleasant resident Marlene Gaillard, an avid arts fan and longtime MOJA supporter, is torn about the festival this year. News of the 2011 schedule wasn’t announced until just a few weeks ago, and Gaillard is disappointed with the seeming lack of organization. “First and foremost, could you explain to me why I just received my program booklet yesterday?” she says. “September 20 for a large event that begins nine days later? How does one plan for that? And there are enough ‘TBAs’ in this booklet that I had to ask myself if it was the name of a group I’d never heard of but was increasingly popular from the amount of times it’s listed.” The major R&B concert that’s usually a highlight of MOJA was one of the TBA casualties.

The Office of Cultural Affair’s Ellen Dressler Moryl explained that a number of factors, including a diminished staff, promoters backing out, and other events like the 9/11 commemorations, got in the way of planning. Perhaps most significantly, the MOJA program coordinator position was vacant this year, and a programming committee was tasked with the planning. Elease Amos-Goodwin, who formerly held the position and recently retired, served on the committee. “This year it has just been an occupational hazard that things didn’t happen as one might want,” Moryl said.

Gaillard also bemoans the lack of local talent represented at MOJA. “Why aren’t there things in local venues with local musicians? Happens all the time during the big festival,” she says. Moryl responded that she’ll address that concern next year. “That’s an interesting perspective,” Moryl said. “I’ll address it with the committee. As you know, we don’t dictate from this office what should or shouldn’t be in MOJA. We offer advice, give input, and support.”

Colin Quashie is one local artist that has had some negative experiences with the festival. He’s been a screenwriter, sketch comedy writer for television (MAD TV), a filmmaker, novelist, and contemporary artist. He’s a bit of a provocateur, both in his work and his thought process. From the moment I met him in 1996 at my first MOJA, in which I performed with a San Francisco theater company, he has intrigued me. There he was at the end of the table, angry and loud and ready to spar with anybody crazy enough to challenge him.

“It was after that MOJA experience that I decided to leave the art world in Charleston altogether, although I’d just purchased a home here and just gotten engaged,” he says. “Yeah. 1996. I told myself, ‘I’m not painting the stuff they want me to do, and I’ll quit before I do it.’ And I did. For 10 years.”

Having been commissioned to design that year’s poster, Quashie’s work was a featured exhibit. That exhibit, essentially, lasted two days because the content, to the powers-that-be, was too incendiary. The exhibit was called The Black American Dream; there were 26 black ceramic tiles with gloss-black ink on a matte black surface. You could only see the black writing on the tiles from certain angles, as it was meant to be a subliminal reflection of the worst things that African Americans think about themselves. Atop that black writing, however, was white ink saying things like, “I want to be like the white man. I want to live like the white man. I want to be the only black person at a white party.”

“I was trying to make a point, but I wasn’t being critical,” Quashie explains. “I recognized that I fell victim to some of the same stuff that I’d written. I wasn’t above it. I suffered from it, too, and it needed to be talked about. I hung it on a clothesline and each tile was connected by a clothespin. Kind of like, you know, airing our dirty laundry as a community. It was an installment based on the politics of identity, racial and otherwise.”

The exhibit was moved upstairs at the Dock Street, where they posted a security guard who was instructed to keep the door locked and not allow anyone under 17 inside. Quashie pulled the whole thing down and spent the next 10 years moving back and forth between Charleston and wherever he was working. Eventually, he came to a crossroads: continue working full-time on TV and film projects and let his art go, or return to Charleston and get his fingers dirty again. He chose the latter. With his studio on Upper King Street marked only by the letter Q, Quashie is quietly working to change the cultural fabric here in Charleston.

Fifteen years later, Quashie can laugh about the events of 1996. When he was invited to sit on the jury for the art submissions in 2007, he agreed, but it wasn’t a great experience. He was disappointed by both the number of submissions and the quality of those submissions. “It was just too sad,” he says. So, what does he want out of MOJA? His sense is that the festival jurists have a responsibility to educate the audience, to not limit what people see and define as “black art.”

“Think about the posters created for Spoleto,” he says. “These artists aren’t limited in what they are able to produce. They’re commissioned, and, well, like the work or not, it’s art. It’s meant to be discussed. That’s the point of art. It creates dialogue, gets you engaged. If you look at the artwork on the posters for the last 10 years, MOJA isn’t really doing that. There is a theme in these posters, and they begin to look alike. Believe it or not, I’m a huge supporter of MOJA, and I want it to be the best.”

To be fair, there are a number of artist lectures on the slate again this year, and the Jonathan Green image gracing the poster is gorgeous. There are some artists being juried whose work runs the gamut, including that of Karole Turner Campbell, a mixed-media artist who has been involved in one way or another with MOJA since 2005, a year before she and her husband moved here. Her work is evocative, from title to texture, and according to Campbell, “Like it or not, as long as you’re willing to dialogue about it, be engaged by it, whether you reject it or celebrate it, that conversation about the work is important and the point of the art.”

Campbell is leading this year’s writing workshop. Instead of poetry, the gathered students, pre-selected by Charleston County Schools, will write monologues. “They’ll write their stories, explore their voices, and share them,” Turner says. A former playwright, Campbell recognizes the importance and empowerment in finding a way to articulate and share your voice.

And speaking of literary endeavors, Nigerian-born writer, attorney, and educator (at the Charleston School of Law) Jacqueline Maduneme is about to experience her first MOJA Festival, and she couldn’t be more excited. Her book, Ada’s Daughter, is being promoted at the Avery Research Center in the Literary Corner with a signing and reading by the author. When asked what she was looking forward to about the festival, she spoke to the opportunity of meeting people in the community. “I’ve been here almost a year, and this will be one of my first opportunities to meet people of African-American descent. I’m hoping this event will connect me to the community here in Charleston. And I love the idea that MOJA is meant to be enjoyed and celebrated by everyone — all cultures — but its focus is the cultural and artistic depth within the African diaspora.”

I also spoke to an emerging artist, actress Liza Dye, who was seen in PURE Theatre’s production of David Mamet’s Race last season. Dye, who heard about the MOJA Festival years before moving here from Spartanburg, was just as confused about how to become a part of it as a local actor. “I checked the website, asked people I thought would know, and finally just let it go. I wanted to audition for something, work on something,” Dye says. “I mean, if this is the premier festival for African-American artists in this region, I wanted to be a part of it. But nothing. I couldn’t find any information.” Will that keep her away? “Probably. I mean, I’ll catch something if I can, but I heard there is only one theater piece.”

Indeed, the only theatrical offering this year, housed at the Circular Congregational Church on Meeting Street, is a Carlie Town Production, Diary Frum De Neck: Part 3: Dis Ya Da Gullah/Geechee Famblee Reunion. Other than that, there’s no “traditional” theater. How does that happen at an arts festival? Well, it happens this way: Art Forms and Theatre Concepts, the local African-American production company generally seen during MOJA and Piccolo, says they did not have the financing to produce a show this season.

I spoke to a musician about the music scene during the festival and, upon agreeing to keep him anonymous, the disappointment and disconnect from MOJA was clear. “I’ve done MOJA. We all have,” he says. “We’ve opened for the national artists they bring in or if you are an instrumentalist, you might fill out a chair, but I’ve never been approached to be the feature and wouldn’t know the first thing about making that happen. It’s interesting because a number of us work with the city on other ventures, but with MOJA … Hell, they even bring sound techs in from out of town. Does that make sense? We’ve got local soundmen here that could use the work and deserve the work. It’s not just the lack of local musicians, vocal or instrumental, it is the lack of local talent period. When was the last time you did MOJA?”

Good question. It’s been a lot of years for a number of reasons, but as soon as they open up applications for next year, I’m downloading one. No point in kvetching about what is and what ain’t if I’m not willing to get my feet wet again.

Joy Vandervort-Cobb is an associate professor of African-American theatre and performance at the College of Charleston.

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This weekend, art museums, galleries and venues around Los Angeles are celebrating Los Angeles’ romance with the art world, aided by the opening of Art Platform—Los Angeles, a contemporary art fair. What’s the occasion? LA’s rich tradition of artists and its promise to inspire more with the citywide Pacific Standard Time (PST) collaboration; and if any city knows how to celebrate itself, it’s LA.

Art Platform—Los Angeles, which sponsors the historic PST initiative, will ring in the new era in Los Angeles Art on September 30, with a citywide celebration that features 75 galleries in the L.A. Mart, honoring the LA art scene’s progress and international influence.

The widespread initiative will spotlight both emerging Angeleno artists and internationally recognized locals. The project is ten years in the making and was funded by $10 million in grants by the Getty Institute. Los Angeles native and UCLA grad Adam Gross will serve as Executive Director of the Art Platform, which intends to “assist in explaining Los Angeles’ rich history of art making while celebrating the vibrancy of the city’s current art world.”

PST will present a month-long, rich retrospective of the Los Angeles artistic landscape, helping to increase the city’s recognition as a key artistic site historically and in the future. According to a press release: “Never before has an entire region come together so collaboratively to explore the richness and dazzling variety of its own recent artistic history.” The deluge of tributes will range from pop art to minimalism, feminist activities to Japanese design, African American film to collective performances. The collaboration will feature LACMA, MOCA, the Getty, the Norton Simon and such an integrated art experience doesn’t often visit the West Coast.

Art Platform—Los Angeles’ fair lasts from September 30 to October 3, and Pacific Standard Time will continue from the opening through through January 2012.

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The 6th annual Aaron Douglas Art Fair kicked off at 10 o’clock September 24th, giving an opportunity for local artists to showcase their work. Additionally, celebrating the success of one of Topeka’s own.