Some snippets from the African World Festival...

As usual, it was wonderful. Friday I caught Amp Fiddler and Ras Kente performing together--I'd never seen either individually, but they were great together. It started with Ras Kente playing Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing on electric guitar (think Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner).

On Saturday there was a parade down Woodward from Mack to Hart Plaza. I'm sure it was wonderful, but I missed it, waiting for someone who was in traffic for two hours. At the end of the route, we did find two belly dancers collapsed and recovering from their three miles (!) of shimmying. Apparently we missed wings.



Around Hart Plaza, some of the floats from the parade were on display:

I must say, I am loving Little Man's hair here.

Looks like they did it up properly!

I was drawn to the Great Lakes African American Quilters Network's booth. I spoke with the president for a while and one of the things she talked about was trying to reclaim the heritage of our grandmothers and their grandmothers who quilted.


Here's one of the quilts they had on display:


And of course there was the Omowale Cultural Society. Here are some shots of them from Saturday. The drummers were getting it:




And the dancers...


The young woman below was all energy (notice how fast her beads are moving!):
They called this woman out of the crowd to come dance with them. I think her initial reluctance was just for show, because she was quickly barefoot and her skirt was flying: