WORD/JAZZ with Chinaka Hodge & Friends

Litquake & City Lights in conjunction with Doc's Lab Present
WORD/JAZZ
In the great tradition of jazz and spoken-word basement readings in North Beach first forged by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, and Bob Kaufman, witness this contemporary update at Doc's Lab. With poets Chinaka Hodge, devorah major, and RyanNicole. Music by Afro-futurist jazz trio Broun Fellinis.

Chinaka Hodge is a poet, playwright, screenwriter and founding member of The Getback. Originally from Oakland, California, Chinaka graduated from NYU in 2006, and completed her M.F.A. in Writing for Film and TV at USC's School of Cinematic Arts in May 2012. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, Teen People and The Believer, and on PBS, NPR and two seasons of HBO's Def Poetry. Chinaka is the oldest of eight children, split between seven parents and six households. In short, she’s a true product of blended-family, Northern California and the '90s. She aspires, above all else, to be an outstanding great-grandmother. Her newest book is Dated Emcees (published by City Lights).

devorah major, San Francisco’s third former Poet Laureate, is an award-winning poet and fiction writer, an creative nonfiction writer, performer, editor, and part-time senior adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. She is also poet-in-residence of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has toured internationally in places such as Italy, Bosnia, Jamaica, Venezuela, Belgium, England and Wales, as well as throughout the United States both performing her poetry and serving on panels speaking on African-American poetry, Beat Poetry, and poetry of resistance. She has two novels and four books of poetry published.

RyanNicole is a "4A" quadruple threat: artist, actress, athlete, and activist. As an MC and poet, she has appeared across the globe, including a performance for President Barack Obama. She has led several theater productions in the Bay Area, including those with SF Playhouse, African American Shakespeare Theater, and California Shakespeare Theater/Intersection for the Arts. For 2017, Ryan has been short-listed for the San Francisco production of the Tony Award winning Broadway play Hamilton, and will star in Marin Theater Company’s production of Native Son. She has served her community as an organizer and activist for nearly two decades, most recently as a consultant in capacity building, fundraising, marketing/branding and program development.


About the Broun Fellinis: The most important thing about music is the way it makes you feel. Musicians are lucky enough to live a life of pure feeling if they can play their personal visionary music with as much integrity and energy as the spirit grants them. For the last 25 years, Broun Fellinis—percussionist Kevin Carnes, bassist Kirk Peterson, and woodwind player David Boyce—have been doing exactly this.

The Fellinis innovate and disseminate their "Brounsoun," a sonic expression inspired by the ancient to future traditions of Jazz, Rock, Funk, Hardcore, Afrocentric Hip hop, Dub, film music and African/Indian trance sounds. The trio has performed at the San Sebastian International Jazz Festival in Spain, the opening of the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts and the Stern Grove Festival, The Independent, Yoshi's, and the House Of Blues.

Other notable performances include a tour with Ben Harper and co-bills with Gil Scott-Heron, Meshell Ndegeocello, the Roots, Erykah Badu, Bad Brains, George Clinton, Rafael Saadiq, Mos Def, The Last Poets, Living Colour, Zakir Hussain, Bernie Worrell, Jimmy Smith, Galactic, Medeski, Martin, Wood, Ravi Coltrane and many more. Downbeat and Spinmagazines as well as NPR, KCRW, and Radio Nova in France have profiled the group.

The Fellinis play this NOW music with passion, precision and soul in energetic performances that embrace freedom and structure equally. Out of nowhere, improvised themes and motifs morph into well-crafted songs with evocative melodies, exotic harmonies and infectious rhythms. It is music of the moment, reflecting the lives of three exceptional musicians living and creating in the Bay Area, California.