Anna Maria Flechero Performance @ Oaktown Jazz Workshops-Nadine’s November 6, 2011

                                        

                Supporting this event: Supports Youth, Supports Housing, Supports Live Music

    

    On Sunday, November 6, 2011, Partnership For Affordable Housing presents an amazing performance by Bay Area Jazz Vocalist Anna Maria Flechero. The singer/songwriter will be performing at Oaktown Jazz Workshops-Nadine’s on 55 Washington Street, Jack London Square (formerly Tony Roma’s) Oakland, CA from 2:00-6:00 P.M. A silent auction will also be held at the event.    

    Anna Maria Flechero is a singer/songwriter who in 2004 released her first album, Journey Into The Fourteenth Hour. The album which contains a fusion of Jazz, Latin, and R& B was described by Jazz Review as an “articulate and serious expression of vocal jazz at its finest.” In 2007, Journey Into The Fourteenth Hour, received the “Jazz Group of the Year” award from the Bay Area Blues Society. Ms. Flechero’s music can not only be heard in the Bay Area but in other parts of the world including Japan, Poland, and Korea.

     All proceeds will be donated to Partnership For Affordable Housing (PFAH). PFAH is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide temporary and transitional housing assistance and life-essential services to low income seniors, displaced single parent families, and veterans. PFAH also provides services including job counseling, food distribution, and relapse prevention.

     Nadine’s (formerly Tony Roma’s in Jack London Square) has been reopened and renamed under the Oaktown Jazz Workshops. The workshop was formed in 1994 by Khalil Shaheed to celebrate Jazz music as an art form by providing a foundation that preserves the rich and unique flavor to Bay Area youth. There are workshops for young people to come and play/study music under the direction of Mr. Shaheed and other professional Jazz players. 

     So bring your friends and family to the event and help support a worthy cause. Entrance to the event is $25.00 at the door. Tickets can be purchased in advanced for $20.00 at www.pfah.net. For more information about Partnership For Affordable Housing go to www.pfah.net or call 510-430-0300. We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Anna Maria Flechero Performance @ Oaktown Jazz Workshops-Nadine’s August 7, 2011

                   Supporting this event: Supports Youth, Supports Housing, Supports Live Music 

     On Sunday, August 7, 2011, Partnership For Affordable Housing presents an amazing performance by Bay Area Jazz Vocalist Anna Maria Flechero. The singer/songwriter will be performing at Oaktown Jazz Workshops-Nadine’s on 55 Washington Street, Jack London Square (formerly Tony Roma’s) from 2:00-6:00 P.M. A silent auction will also be held as well as catering provided by Bay Area chefs.

    Anna Maria Flechero is a singer/songwriter who in 2004 released her first album, Journey Into The Fourteenth Hour. The album which contains a fusion of Jazz, Latin, and R& B was described by Jazz Review as an “articulate and serious expression of vocal jazz at its finest.” In 2007, Journey Into The Fourteenth Hour, received the “Jazz Group of the Year” award from the Bay Area Blues Society. Ms. Flechero’s music can not only be heard in the Bay Area but in other parts of the world including Japan, Poland, and Korea.

      All proceeds will be donated to Partnership For Affordable Housing (PFAH). PFAH is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide temporary and transitional housing assistance and life-essential services to low income seniors, displaced single parent families, and veterans. PFAH also provides services including job counseling, food distribution, and relapse prevention.

     Nadine’s (formerly Tony Roma’s in Jack London Square) has been reopened and renamed under the Oaktown Jazz Workshops. The workshop was formed in 1994 by Khalil Shaheed to celebrate Jazz music as an art form by providing a foundation that preserves the rich and unique flavor to Bay Area youth. There are workshops for young people to come and play/study music under the direction of Mr. Shaheed and other professional Jazz players.  

     So bring your friends and family to the event and help support a worthy cause. Entrance to the event is $20.00 at the door. For more information about Partnership For Affordable Housing go to www.pfah.net or call 510-430-0300. We look forward to seeing you there!

Juneteenth

    On January 1^st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery. However it wasn’t until June 19, 1865 that news of the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t reached Galveston, Texas. Once news got out that slavery was abolished, people celebrated their freedom in song and dance. This celebration became Juneteenth.

     Oakland, CA and Berkeley, CA will celebrate the Juneteenth celebration. This Saturday, June 18^th, the Friends of Negro Spirituals will present a Juneteenth event called “There’s A Bright Side Some Where.” The event takes place in the West Oakland Senior Center at 1724 Adeline Street while the “Berkeley Juneteenth Festival” will take place on Sunday, June 26, 2011 on Adeline Street at Ashby and Alcatraz Avenues.

     Norman K. Brown will work at the Oakland Juneteenth celebration. I spoke to him via e-mail about his experience working at the event.

Please tell me about yourself. What’s your occupation? What role do you play in the Juneteenth Festival? How did you get involved in the festival/celebration?

I’m retired, [I]was Manager city-wide Youth Programs San Francisco’s Mayors Office, 1969-1982. Former press photographer, part time Actor, and Census Worker.

 Not everybody knows what Juneteenth is. Why is that? Can you please explain what Juneteenth is and why it’s an important event?

Juneteenth started in Texas. President Lincoln signed The Emancipation on January 1, 1863. The word did not reach Texas until June 19^th. The celebration spread to the rest of the country. It really took off in the 80s and 90s.

 Could you please describe your Juneteenth experiences? (Festival wise or outside the festival) What does Juneteenth mean to you?

I was introduced to Juneteenth in the mid sixties, Ed Anderson, Joseph, and I organized the First City Wide Celebration in 1965. It took place at The Hamilton Playground.

 You are working on the Oakland Juneteenth Celebration. How long ago have you worked with that group? What’s the experience like?

This is my first time working with Friends of Negro Spirituals.

 

For more information on the Juneteenth celebrations go to http://www.juneteenth.com and http://berkeleyjuneteenth.org

A Conflict of Interests: Beauty vs. Empowerment Essay

   In my remix, I created an argument on beauty and empowerment. Through the use of different videos I attempted to create a clash of ideas which deals with the issue of being beautiful from the outside or embracing the woman from within. My remix is a story that deals with a girl’s choice on the issue. Through the use of Super Bowl commercials and old movies from the Internet Achieve, this remix revolves around the conception of beauty.    

   The videos were edited together to create a story about the thoughts (montages) that are going on in the girl’s mind as she looks at the mirror. The girl looks at herself because she represents one of those girls who questions her appearance which acts as the starting point of the remix. We see the same girl in the mirror again and again because this remix deals with this girl and her thoughts. Whenever we see the girl another montage appears. In each montage, we see images of pretty women appear throughout parts of the remix. Each montage shows the women from a sexual point of view. For example we see the girl from GoDaddy.com lying down on a bed of roses looking seductively at the camera. Such a position is called the “to-be-looked-at-ness” in which women are looked at erotically for characters and audience. (See Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”). These montages end with a woman jumping out of the window. The woman who jumps out of the window signifies her liberation from the “need to look pretty” trap which leads to old movies of women who are in strong, active non sexual roles. One example shows a video of pilot Amelia Earhart taking off on her next flight. These montages signify a message of conflict in which the girl is deciding if she should change her appearance or to accept herself for who she is and doing something better than herself. We see this again and again throughout the remix to reinforce the conflict.

    No alterations in pictures and sounds have been made because I felt that it was not necessary to make them. The pictures alone would tell the story so that the audience can make their own interpretations as to what is going on. Although some text is seen in parts of the video it’s the pictures that tell the story. I want people to arrive at the destination that the video deals with the choice of changing your outer appearance or embracing yourself from the inside. Although some people may have different destinations I hope they understand the message behind the video.

    The overall message in this video is a discussion on true beauty as well as attacking stereotypes of beauty. In our society, females are pressured by what they see, read, or hear to have that perfect body. From plastic surgery to Botox, the pressure to look beautiful can distort a woman’s thinking by focusing on their outer appearance rather than thinking about how they feel from the inside. It’s an issue that some women deal with. Some women would go to great lengths just to look beautiful from the outside while others don’t care about their looks. They just accept themselves for who they are. I hope this video opens new ideas about what defines beauty.

The Remix Experience

   I have never done a remix before nor have I ever worked with my Windows Movie Maker. When we were assigned to work on our remixes, I was nervous because I have never done anything like this before. However it gave me the chance to work with something that I have never done before: putting different videos together to create a message. This project like the others that we have done in the past would not be easy.

   Working on this project was a challenge. It takes time and energy to find the videos that you want to use for your project. My project focused on the choice of being beautiful from the outside versus empowerment/doing something bigger than yourself. While looking through the Internet Achieve, I had a hard time finding old videos that showed women in a positive light. I was able to find one movie called The Price of Liberty. In it, the movie showed women joining the Army and contributing their parts to help win wars. That along with other videos from the achieve were helpful because I wanted show clips of women in strong active roles as opposed to them being seen as sex objects.

   Working with video is like working with text except that it’s not alphabetical. With text you can think of the words that you want to convey so that the audience can see it. However when it comes to remix the audience can’t see the words. When you work with video you have to look for certain pictures to tell a story. The pictures provide the visual text which allows the person to think about what is going on therefore coming up with their own interpretations. However when it comes to making a statement with different videos they must be done in a creative way so that the message that you want to create goes through. If the videos are used improperly then it would be hard for the audience to understand the message. Therefore the meaning would be lost.

    This remix project gave me the chance to work with something that was completely different. I still have a lot to learn about creating a remix but if I were asked to do it again I would say yes.

Class Blog 10: I Live Here

   In class, we were talking about a collection of books under the name “I Live Here.” Each of the four books are told through journals, stories, images, and graphics. They revolve around displaced people who wrote these stories as a means to voice the atrocities that are happening in their countries. The books are a dialogue of human suffering which are told through pictures and text. Through the use of pictures and text we are asked to pay attention to these people by making a connection with them through their stories. 

   Throughout the books personal stories are being told by pictures and text as a form communication. I thought that the use of text and pictures was a good idea because it’s through this form of storytelling that gives us a glimpse into their world from their point of view.  The Chechen War in Ingushetia, the brothels and ethnic cleansing in Burma, the murders in Cuidad Juarez, and the AIDS crisis in Malawi could not have been told by words or pictures alone. When we look at the pictures we see people getting murdered, raped, beaten, etc. The message is quite clear that we are to feel the pain that these people are going through. Most of these pictures are graphic because these stories are real in which we are being subjected into how one person views one’s country from his/her point of view. The text acts as the anchor to the photos because if the text were not available then we would have to decipher the photos by ourselves. If a person reads the text and sees the pictures it may arrive at different destinations. Some may turn away from the books due to their graphic nature while others would keep reading them to learn more about what is going on.

    The pictures and text create a bridge which allows us to get a deep meaning by unraveling a world that most of us were unaware of. The pictures and text are also a conduit to help express the pain of the writers. The books give us a deeper perspective into the lives of these displaced people. They also create a message that wants us to learn about what is going on in parts of the world. By becoming a part of that world we expand our horizons and learn that there are some people who don’t have the same luxuries that we have. Therefore by placing the pictures and text together the books create a story that is graphic yet informative.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8X9W1_beJQ

Home Blog 9: That’s So…

     The word gay has a lot of meanings. It can mean happy or being homosexual. According to urbandictionary.com gay is “often used to describe something stupid or unfortunate.” Although the word gay has different meanings we have to watch how we use that word because some people may interpret it differently.

     Let’s say that I’m out with my friends. We’re talking about something that happened a while ago. One of us says “That’s so gay.” Now all of a sudden a person is walking past us. He or she may be offended by that comment. The person regardless if he or she is homosexual or not may lecture us about the comment while we’re defending it. From one point of view the intention of the word “gay” was used to describe something that was dumb. But from another point of view the person who heard us received it as an insult to homosexuals. Something like this can lead to a different destination in which some people can interpret things differently leading to different massages no matter the intention. It all depends on how you see or hear things. But with respect to homosexuals what if people want to use it without offending anybody?  

    I think a subject like this is debatable because the word gay has different meanings. Depending on how the word is used it can arrive at different destinations. Let’s just make sure that we use the word gay properly. What do you think?

Class Blog 9: A Graphic Nature

   In class we were talking about comic books. During our discussion one person mentioned that some people have this assumption that comic books are just for kids. Although comic books were originally made for kids, they also attracted an older audience which led creators to make complex stories along with complex characters. In fact some comics are so violent that only adults can read them. If some adults think that reading comic books are for children then they have fallen victim to this stereotype.

    A while ago I read a graphic novel series called “Lone Wolf and Cub.” It follows a former executioner and his young son as they travel the land seeking vengeance against those who have wronged them. The books contain blood, sex, and plenty of violence. You would not see this stuff in a comic book that’s written for kids. If a child read this book he or she would probably turn away from its graphic nature. If an adult read this book he or she would probably enjoy it for its action and story. While I was at a comic book store, I saw a man buying a couple of “Lone Wolf and Cub” books. I didn’t know how old he was but he was old enough to read the books. Therefore adults who read “Lone Wolf and Cub” along with any other comics are making a statement that it’s ok to read comics and that there’s no shame in reading them.

     For those adults who think that comics are just for kids they don’t know what they’re missing. Comics, like movies and Cable TV, can deal with stories that are for a mature audience. When a stereotype like this comes to mind it blocks the truth that comics are for everyone-kids, teens, and adults. If adults take the time to read books like “Lone Wolf and Cub,” “Watchmen,” or other books then they’ll learn to appreciate the medium without any negative feelings towards comic books.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XKubjo_IY

Home Blog 8: Just Words

   A while ago while watching the season finale of “Celebrity Fit Club Boot Camp,” one of the people told the celebrities to “Stay in the Fight” in regards to staying healthy and fit. Those words made me write a few sentences for inspiration. They include “Don’t Hold Back!,” “Unleash Your Power!,” and of course “Stay In The Fight!” I wrote those sentences because I needed something which will not only help me get through the day but to give myself positive messages as well.

   Words have the power to hurt or empower someone. If we use words to hurt someone then we are sending the message that lowers his/her self-esteem. However if we see or hear words that encourage people, it sends the message that it’s never to late or to never give up on yourself or others. Inspiration is important in society because it helps one overcome many obstacles so that he or she can accomplish a goal. It also sends a message that we can always make improvements in our lives so that we can learn from our mistakes and move to a brighter future. We would not be able to make any progress if we didn’t have any inspiration. I’m just glad that our world hasn’t run out of inspiration.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvwXAdx48QQ&feature=related

Class Blog 8: The Thing About Stereotypes

   In class we talked about the issue of how stereotypes affect our views of people and cultures. For example when some people see a black man they may think of him as an ignorant man or a criminal. Or if some people see a Middle Eastern person they may think that he or she is a terrorist. Why is it that we allow ourselves to classify people by what we see or hear? Why can’t we see these people as people? They are human beings are they not?

    I think the problem is that most people don’t go beyond the stereotypes. They allow themselves to see people of other colors as this or that without getting to know the person and what he or she does for a living. If a white man meets a black man they may think of each other as anything that’s in the book of stereotypes. The white man may think that the black man is going to steal something while the black man may think that the white person is rich. However both men may like to get to know each other such as what they like/dislike, their hobbies, and other stuff that matters.

   From my point of view anybody can be a terrorist, a scientist, a sports player, etc. These stereotypes allow us to be distracted from the fact that everybody is human. We have a responsibility to attack these stereotypes to prove that certain peoples are not terrorists, or geniuses, or whatever. If we go beyond the stereotypes and see people for who they are then we can get to know the real person. By getting to know that person we can see to it that we don’t allow stereotypes to dictate our way of thinking.         

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZd11Mcej4