Kenyetta Festival of Women in

Thursday, April 4
7 p.m.
Opening Ceremony
Giwayen Mata Drum Ensemble
7:45 p.m.
Concert: Jennifer Bliss, C’94
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
Friday, April 5
Festival Symposium
9 a.m.
The Spelman College
Department of Music
presents
the 4th
Kenyetta Festival
of Women in
Symposium Keynote Address:
Farah Griffin
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Symposium Presentation 1:
“Women in Jazz,” Lauren Eldridge, C’10
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Symposium Research Presentation 2:
Alexandra Simmons, C ’13
April 4-6, 2013
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
Guest Artist Concert
featuring
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Cassandra Wilson
8 p.m.
Symposium Presentation 3:
Percussion Discussion:
“The Woman Is A Drummer,” with
Gayelynn McKinney (Straight Ahead)
Omelika Kuumba, C’81 (Giwayen Mata)
Cookie Dean
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
5:30 p.m.
Symposium Reception
Cosby Lobby
8:00 p.m.
Concert: Cassandra Wilson
Sisters chapel
Saturday, April 6
7:30 p.m.
Concert:
The Spelman College
Jazz Ensemble Reunion
Cosby Academic Center Auditorium
Sponsored by:
Spelman College Department of Music,
Office of the Provost,
Office of College Relations, and the
Comparative Women’s Research & Resource Center
Special Thanks To:
Dr. Johnnella Butler, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall,
Dr. Opal Moore and Ms. Dawn Garvin
All events are FREE and open to the public.
For more information, contact Spelman College
Department of Music at 404-270-5476.
About the
Performers
and Speakes
Cassandra Wilson, Guest Artist
A musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Miss.,
Cassandra Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes
Jr., a guitarist, bassist and music teacher, and Mary McDaniel, an
elementary school teacher who eventually earned her doctorate in
education. Her mother’s love for Motown and her father’s dedication
to jazz helped spark her early interest in music. Wilson studied piano
as a child and played clarinet in middle-school bands. Later she
explored guitar on her own. During this time she began writing songs
in folk style.
Wilson attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University,
graduating with a degree in mass communications but spending her
nights working with R&B, funk, and pop cover bands and singing in
coffeehouses. After a brief interlude in New Orleans, she moved to
New York City to pursue jazz music seriously.
There her focus turned toward improvisation. Already heavily
influenced by Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, in Brooklyn she
met alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, who encouraged her to look
beyond the standard jazz repertoire. She became one of the founding
members of M-Base Collective, an outgrowth of the Association for
the Advancement of Creative Musicians and Black Artists Group that
re-imagined funk and soul grooves within the context of jazz.
Wilson’s first recording as a leader was the M-Base-dominated “Point
of View” in 1986. A series of records for German label JMT followed,
establishing her as a serious creative musician. But after signing with
Blue Note records in 1993, she moved toward a more popular style,
blending blues, pop, jazz, world, and country sounds in her songs
and arrangements. Her 1996 album “New Moon Daughter” won
the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance.
The late Miles Davis was one of Wilson’s greatest influences. In 1999,
she produced “Traveling Miles” as a tribute to Davis. The album
includes three selections based on Davis’ own compositions.
Jennifer Bliss, C’94
Guitarist, songwriter and sweetly soulful vocalist Jennifer Bliss is a
modern-day musical renaissance woman. Inspired by diverse talents
such as Jimi Hendrix, Joe Pass, Esperanza Spalding, Prince, Sting,
Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crowe, Bliss’ music can be best described
as soulful jazz rock.
Following graduation from Spelman College, Bliss became a founding
member of pioneering all-Black-female rock band Edith’s Wish and has
been a fixture in the Atlanta music scene ever since. She has played
with Atlanta’s own India.Arie, Anthony David, and Donnie as well
as fellow Spelman alumna Avery Sunshine. She toured as guitarist/
background singer for neo-soul artist Musiq Soulchild and was a
member of all-Black female funk/jazz group Femme De La Funk.
As a songwriter, Bliss has won several awards, including honors from the
Georgia Music Industry Association, and has placed her original songs
with several artists. In 2013, she will release her own solo album.
Laurnea, Wunmi, Doria Roberts, Donnie and Rahbi. Her commercial
and television credits include being a featured guest on several
cable television programs and being a percussionist for an American
Cancer Society anti- smoking campaign with Mike E.
Lauren Eldridge, C’2010
A doctoral student in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago,
Lauren Eldridge’s dissertation research focuses on classical music
education in Haiti; her broader interests include theories of race and
music, jazz, gospel, and neo-soul. She is also a proud piano teacher at the
Musical Arts Institute, a school on the city’s storied South Side.
She was a first round winner with Giwayen Mata in the third season
of NBC Television’s “America’s Got Talent.” She also performed as
the percussionist in the play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered
Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” under the direction of Jasmine
Guy. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors.
Farah Jasmine Griffin
Gayelynn McKinney
The William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature
and African American Studies at Columbia University, Farah Jasmine
Griffin also serves as program director for the Scholars-in-Residence
Program at the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library.
Born and raised in Detroit, Mich., Gayelynn McKinney’s father, the
legendary Harold McKinney, was a formidable jazz pianist, composer
and teacher. Her mother Gwendolyn was a fashion model and
renowned singer, appearing in productions of “Carmen and Porgy
and Bess.”
Professor Griffin received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard and her
doctorate in American Studies from Yale. Professor Griffin’s major fields
of interest are American and African-American literature, music, history,
and politics. The recipient of numerous honors and awards for her
teaching and scholarship, in 2006-2007 professor Griffin was a Fellow at
the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
She is the author, most recently, of If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery:
In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and Clawing At the Limits
of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration
Ever (Thomas Dunne, 2008). Her essays and articles have appeared in
The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere.
She is also a frequent radio commentator. Professor Griffin’s forthcoming
Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World
War II will be published by Basic Books in September 2013.
Omelika Kuumba, C’81
Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Omelika Kuumba is the proud mother
of Zanaida and Akumba Bynum-Roberson. Kuumba is a founding
member and director of Giwayen Mata where she is a writer, drummer,
musical arranger, vocalist, choreographer and dancer. She is a cultural
arts educator, instructor of African Dance Forms in the Department of
Drama and Dance at Spelman College, and instructor of African Dance
Forms in the Department of Dance at Emory University.
She has studied under the direction of masters of African dance and
percussion in this country including Marie Basse Wiles, Assane Konte,
Youssouf Koumbassa, Mahiri Keita and Dr. Zak Diouf. During her first
journey to Africa, Kuumba studied drumming under master drummer
Taffa N’Daiye Rose and African dancing under master dancers, including
members of Ibrahima Cisse’s African Dance Company in Senegal.
As a percussionist, dancer, choreographer, musical arranger and an
educator, Kuumba has traveled to Stuttgart, Germany, Hastings, England
and Bermuda. She was assistant director of Barefoot Ballet Children’s
Dance Ensemble and is founder and director of the Kuumba Krew, a
children’s performing ensemble. She directs Ashietu, the Sisters Chapel
African Drum and Dance Ministry at Spelman College. Kuumba is an
instructor and workshop leader and lecturer of music and dance at
various schools and programs to expand awareness and appreciation
of African dance and music. She has been a consultant for the Atlanta
Public Schools Gifted and Talented Program and the National Black Arts
Festival. She has played with vocalists including Dionne Farris, Goapele,
Gayelynn began playing the drums at the age of 2. She received
much of her musical training on the Detroit jazz scene but also
obtained her bachelor’s degree in music from Oakland University,
where she learned music theory and composition. She is active in
the Detroit jazz scene, performing workshops for novices, serious
musicians, and students of all ages. She has appeared at many local
nightspots including the renowned Bakers Keyboard Lounge. Among
her many awards, she received an award for outstanding musical
performance during Music Fest USA, where she beat out more than
9,000 other participants to win Best Drummer. McKinney was recently
awarded the Motor City Music Award with the Grammy-nominated
group Straight Ahead, which she co-founded. Gayelynn McKinney’s diverse drumming style has given her the
opportunity to play at many famous jazz festivals including MontreuxSwitzerland, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage, Jamaica Jazz and
Heritage, and the Woma Jazz Festival in Italy. She recently recorded a
solo project as a bandleader, “It’s About Time.” She has also rekindled
her father’s music with a sextet called McKinfolk. As a side musician
she has performed with Aretha Franklin, Geri Allen, Marcus Belgrave,
Chaka Khan, Mary Stallings, Eric Reed, Roy Hargrove and many others.
Alexandra Simmons, C’2013
Alexandra Simmons plays reeds in the Spelman Jazz Ensemble
and holds a UNCF-Mellon Fellowship. Her major research interests
are in jazz and world music, and she plans to do graduate study in
ethnomusicology after graduation
Spelman College Jazz Ensemble
Twenty-two years after its inception, the Spelman College Jazz
Ensemble continues to gather new fans and teach old ones that jazz
isn’t a man’s world after all. The ensemble has released several
compact discs and has completed its 18th year of tours, which
have included performances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival and major cities, colleges and performing arts centers across
the nation. In recent years this talented all-female group, under the
leadership of its founder/director Joe Jennings, has shared the stage
with jazz greats such as Wynton Marsalis, Consuela Lee, Nancy
Wilson, Leroy Jenkins, Valerie Capers, Straight Ahead Jazz Quartet,
The Uptown String Quartet, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Regina Carter.