News & Events

Timely events from Northeast Indiana’s leading Afrikan institute

Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble at the Cafe

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Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble at the Cafe

TRJE comes home to Acoustic Cafe The three Rivers Jenbe Ensem­ble will per­form live at the Acoustic Spo­ken­Word Cafe on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2012. The evening will begin at 7PM and close out at 10PM. TRJE, as the ensem­ble is pop­u­larly known, per­forms an inter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional dunun and jenbe drum ensem­ble of the Mande-speaking peo­ple of Guinea, West Afrika. This group of stu­dents has been play­ing together the last three years, tak­ing over from the grad­u­at­ing ensem­ble mem­bers who pre­ceded and trained them. It has long been an...

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Fabulous Jenbe kids on new drums

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Fabulous Jenbe kids on new drums

TRJE blend Ibo Ekwe with Guinean Krin drums Three Rivers Jenbe Ensem­ble bring new flavors The Three Rivers Jenbe Ensem­ble Sat­ur­day night reprised its ini­tial per­for­mance at the Friendly Fox Cof­fee­house on Fort Wayne’s South Side with a rous­ing per­for­mance that warmed patrons despite the intem­per­ate weather that blan­keted the region with a few inches of heavy snow. Bring­ing their reg­u­lar tra­di­tional Guinean dunun and jenbe drums inter­pre­ta­tions of the music of the Mande-speaking peo­ple of West Afrika, the ensem­ble for­ti­fied their...

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Nellems Trio and Linda Bess on tap at the SpokenWord Cafe

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Nellems Trio and Linda Bess on tap at the SpokenWord Cafe

Good music meets thought­ful words Jazz, Soul & Spo­ken­Word at the Acoustic Cafe The Bryan Nellems Trio will open the show at the Acoustic Spo­ken­Word Cafe on Jan­u­ary 28, 2012. The recently formed ensem­ble fea­tures Bryan Nellems on drums, Phil Shurger on lead gui­tar and Marco Franco on bass. The trio will be doing jazz and soul cov­ers as well as debut­ing some orig­i­nal work by Nellems and Franco.  This up and com­ing trio is mak­ing its mark in the world of music and doesn’t appear to be slow­ing down any time soon; so keep your eyes and ears open for...

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SpokenWord Cafe featuring AfroDisiacs

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SpokenWord Cafe featuring AfroDisiacs

2012 Cafe opens with AfroD sound Hot con­gas and vocal gui­tar are thrilling If you lis­ten to WBOI’s music roundup you’re bound to hear that the Afro­Disi­acs is play­ing some­where in the region. One of the Fort Wayne’s most sought after duos, the Afro­Disi­acs fea­tures William Brown on con­gas, and Mike Rogers on gui­tar; the part­ners bring seduc­tive vocals to their orig­i­nal mte­r­ial and covers. The Fort Wayne, Indi­ana based group has an inter­est­ing story… What started out as a two-piece acoustic show, evolved into a group per­form­ing...

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Opening 2012 at the SpokenWord Cafe

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Opening 2012 at the SpokenWord Cafe

2012 Pow­er­house Duo opens Cafe Fatima Wash­ing­ton at the Acoustic Spo­ken­Word Cafe Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 14 the Acoustic Spo­ken­Word Cafe opens the sea­son with two incred­i­ble Fort Wayne tal­ents: the allur­ing Fatima Wash­ing­ton, and the dynamic Afrodisiacs. “Before fame, pho­tographs, and tabloids, there is tal­ent.  And Wash­ing­ton has it — the kid of voice the ear fol­lows through wind­ing scales…It’s both soft and pow­er­ful filled with the echoes of R&B and soul pio­neers such as Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle.” –Emma...

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TRIAAC New Year Schedule

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<span class="caps">TRIAAC</span> New Year Schedule

Open­ing the way New sched­ule opens more learn­ing opportunities “A peo­ple los­ing sight of ori­gins are dead. A peo­ple deaf to pur­poses are lost.”–Ayi Kweh Armah..   “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi”–Akan Proverb Trans­la­tion: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” In his intro­duc­tion to two thou­sand sea­sons Armah tells us that hav­ing lost our way it would be most appro­pri­ate for us to go back to our ori­gins to redis­cover what went awry along our path to the present so that we might use our...

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