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Shailja Patel

Saturday, September 12, 3 to 5 p.m.

BWAGAMOYO: THE FATHER
PART II OF MIGRITUDE, AN EPIC JOURNEY IN FOUR MOVEMENTS

International award-winning Kenyan poet and spoken-word artist, who brings audiences to their feet from New York to Stockholm to Zanzibar:

SHAILJA PATEL brings her new work to oakopolis for one performance only!

The most telling - and compelling - line of a man's body is that where his neck joins his shoulder. From which the head extends, retracts, responds. It can be beautiful in its cleanness and purpose. Its strength and flexibility, its balance and alignment. It can disturb in its distortion and strain, its rigidity or collapse.

I like to think that if I could see that line in its entirety, if I could enter the living braid of muscles beneath - trapezius, levator scapulae, sterno-cleido-mastoid - it would tell me everything about a man. Where he intersects with his reality. How he meets, receives, and inserts himself into the world.

Migritude reclaims and celebrates the dignity of outsider status.

The four works that make up the Migritude Cycle draw on the artist's Hindu spiritual heritage. Conceived as an "Epic Journey In Four Movements", Migritude references the earliest religious teaching imparted to Hindu children: that of the First Four Gods. The Hindu child is taught that her first god is her Mother. The second god is her Father. The third god is her Teacher. The fourth god is The Guest.

Part I of the Migritude Cycle, When Saris Speak (The Mother), is a 90-minute spoken word theatre show, which has toured internationally, and was selected for the 2007 season premiere of KQED's Spark! Arts and Culture Programme. Watch it here.

Part II of the Migritude Cycle addresses the second archetype in the Four Gods theme: The Father.

This work explores constructions of masculinity and race under colonialism. It examines how the architecture of Empire is codified on the bodies of men: brown, black, and white. How muscles can dismantle masculinities. How patriots become patriarchs. How daughters confront fathers.

The title, Bwagamoyo – draws on two Swahili words: Bwaga – to dump, and Moyo – heart. Bwagamoyo was the original name given to two specific locations on the Swahili Coast: the town in Tanzania where slaves were brought from the inland and held for shipping, and a small island in the Zanzibar archipelago that was a holding prison for slaves. Both are now known as Bagamoyo. The original Bwagamoyo was a chilling admonition to the kidnapped human beings to literally dump their hearts, meaning their humanity, at these spots, since they would no longer use or need them once they left as slave cargo. Bwagamoyo is an equally apt metaphor for the socialization of boys into the kinds of manhood shaped by colonial power.

Audience Q and A and open discussion follows performance.

Don't miss this one-time event in the Bay Area!

Read more about Shailja Patel at www.shailja.com