News & Events

Timely events from Northeast Indiana’s leading Afrikan institute

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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For Love of The Arts

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For Love of The Arts

Cel­e­braing Women in Word & Song                 TRIAAC pro­gram ops fundraiser set for March 3 Artist Judy Chicago said it well: “I believe that it is cru­cial for women artists to sit­u­ate our­selves in the con­text of our own gen­der, class and eth­nic his­to­ries and strug­gles rather than in rela­tion­ship to male histories.” No doubt! Art is soul expres­sion iden­ti­fy­ing the life force of the human being through whom it is trans­mit­ted. That’s why in bring­ing the city city of Fort Wayne a Women’s His­tory Month...

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Taking drumming to the bank

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Taking drumming to the bank

Drum­ming in the New Year Re-membering what strength­ens our souls You can­not relive a moment that has passed but you can recall its vital­ity and bank its emo­tive strength as both inspi­ra­tion and reference. Drum­ming is an act of re-creation that is both inspired and ref­er­en­tial. We came into the world as liv­ing souls with the drum­ming heart­beat of our moth­ers resound­ing in our preter­nat­ural ears and res­onat­ing in our cells as our bod­ies formed in the womb. When we began drum­ming with Three Rivers Jenbe Ensem­ble in 1999, it was a way of...

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Drum Line, Circle Up

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Drum Line, Circle Up

Iden­tity Counts drum­ming connection There is a ses­sion right just for you To para­phrase Kool Moe Dee, self knowl­edge is king. Clearly, no infor­ma­tion is as impor­tant as know­ing who you are . Cul­tural under­stand­ing teaches that the drum (heart­beat) is at the core of any cul­ture. So we’re work­ing to learn more about our­selves through the prac­tice of Mande drum­ming in com­mu­nity circle. Fam­ily is the matrix of Afrikan social struc­ture, and fam­ily isn’t nuclear but extended. From this exten­sion comes a strength of iden­tity that informs us...

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