Dancing in and escaping from wartime Liberia

SHOW: BAVC Turns Fifty! And, National Immigration Heritage Month

The Bay Area Video Coalition has had a big impact on local media for half a century. Now it looks to the future. Then, the story of a Liberian immigrant’s first encounters with American life. From Liberia, to a pioneering Oakland dance company.

Sights + Sounds: Bay Area Video Coalition's 50th anniversary

If you’ve made media art in the Bay Area sometime in the last fifty years… you probably know the Bay Area Video Coalition [https://bavc.org/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23877237571&gbraid=0AAAAAD_kWH9tNupDoONWtvFuIAGOKvrpI&gclid=CjwKCAjwrNrQBhBjEiwAoR4VOzTWP7nTG3aIxXlsQ6ttg96F3Qvbk44mc4fWc1yKuzs8m_btPt8GIBoCqXEQAvD_BwE]: BAVC. Around 2,500 students and media makers of various ages take classes at BAVC every year. And BAVC artists have received Oscar nominations, and won Emmys! One of their students was KALW’s Jeneé Darden, who is now the host of the Sights and Sounds show. To mark their 50th anniversary, she recently spoke to BAVC executive director, Paula Smith Arrigoni [https://www.bavc.org/person/paula-smith-arrigoni/], and Caron Creighton [https://www.caroncreighton.com/], an instructor at BAVC. In this excerpt from their conversation they talk about how quickly the media landscape is changing, and what media training and education look like today, looking to the future.

Dancing in and escaping from wartime Liberia

June is National Immigrant Heritage Month. And that brings us to another legacy Bay Area arts institution was founded by immigrants from west Africa: Diamano Coura West African Dance Company in Oakland [https://www.diamanocoura.org/]. Founded by award winning artistic directors,  Zakarya and Naomi Diouf,   They've been performing and teaching dance from Western and Central Africa since 1975.  Over the decades, Diamano Coura dancers have hailed from countries like Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo… Next we’ll share one of our favorite stories, from my first years at KALW - about one of their dancers who immigrated from Liberia. Karsumo Massaquoi loved, and lived, to dance. But, he almost didn’t survive to do either.

Bay Poets: 'Another Time' by poet Daisy Zamora

Immigrant artists have a big impact on their adopted countries, but many also leave a legacy in their countries of origin. Daisy Zamora has been a foundational force of poetry here in San Francisco… but before she left her home of Nicaragua she was an active combatant in the movement to topple the Somoza dictatorship in the early 70’s. Today she is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State. Here, Bay Poets host Josiah Luis Alderete reads her poem ’Another Time,’ that was published in 1992.

SHOW: San Francisco's Legacy of Queer Community Care

Today, we explore a series that captures San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It's a conversation with the host of “When We All Get To Heaven.” Then, we visit the Bay Area’s first women’s sports bar- Rikki’s. Plus, a poem about found family.