Marcel diallo

Marcel Diallo (born October 9, 1972) is an American poet, writer, philosopher, artist, musician, curator and humanitarian known for his genre bending performances, his founding of the Black Dot Artists Collective, [The Black New World] and his creation of a Black Cultural District in Oakland, California.

Biography

He was born and raised in Richmond, California. Diallo is the eldest of four children. After graduating from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with a B.A. in philosophy, Diallo moved back to the Bay Area, settling in Oakland while earning a Master's Degree at John F. Kennedy University in Consciousness Studies. In Oakland he found himself at the center of the Oakland cafe poetry scene and ended up establishing one of the most crucial venues for the burgeoning movement, The Black Dot Cafe in 1998. He has four sons with his longtime partner, the painter and writer Letitia Inyang Ntofon.

Career

By 1995, he had become a phenomenal open mic poet emcee and in 1996 he founded the Black Dot Artists' Collective with longtime high school pal, Robert Jamal Jackson and Oakland percussion prodigy Kele Nitoto. In this same year, they began a monthly open mic called Rhyme Ritual at a then unknown cafe called The Java House on Lakeshore Ave in Oakland.

Together the three young men experimented with hip hop, poetry, free jazz and African ritual arts to create a sound that would become the foundation of the Bay Area cultural arts and spoken word movement prior to the popularity of slam poetry in the region. Under the name, The Rhyme Ritual Trio, Diallo, Jackson and Nitoto released two underground albums SPACE (1997) and Live @ The CyberCafe (1998).

In 1997, Diallo released the underground classic hip hop album, The Shaman and The Nigga God, and debuted the album as a ritual theater piece in Black Dot's first Ritual Theater 2000 Festival in the spring of 1998 at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, Ca.

Around this same time, Diallo and his Black Dot Artists Collective opened the Black Dot Cafe in Oakland and began weekly programing that included an Artist Workshop with Boots Riley from the Coup, Blue Note Jazz Trumpeter/Sun Ra Arkestra alumnus Eddie Gale, an open mic night called The Word and an afterschool workshop called Beats, Flows & Videos. Black Dot was among the first of a new generation of grassroots collectives that made it their mission to reassert the ideas of the Black Arts and Black Power movements.

As a performance artist and an activist, Marcel Diallo has performed and shared the stage with such legendary poets and artists as Amiri Baraka, The Last Poets, David Murray, Kahil El Zabar, Sonia Sanchez, Kamau Da'oud, Marvin X, Piri Thomas, Micheal McClure, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Gierrmo Gomez Peña, as well as actor Don Cheadle.

By the year 2000, Diallo's artistry, activism and entreprenturism earned him a feature spot in the Source Magazine's Dreaming Americans series and served to introduce Diallo to a national audience.

At this time Diallo was becoming active in land based struggles and real estate acquisition in the predominantly and historically Black neighborhood of West Oakland and began promoting his vision of a Black Cultural District called the Village Bottoms. There has been numerous articles written about his efforts to date.

With the acquisition of an old junkyard in 2000, Diallo also found his curatorial and visual arts voice and was selected to show his first visual arts installation, "Scrapyard Ghosts", at ProArts Gallery in Old Oakland. Since this first exhibition, Diallo has emerged as a visual artist and curator, opening at least four galleries in the Village Bottoms Cultural District as well as exhibiting and guest curating at mainstream institutions such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. To date Diallo has curated exhibits featuring Black Panther Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, West Oakland sculptor Bruce Beasley, eesuu orundide, Keba Konte, Githinji Wa Mbire, Kevin Slagle, Don Fortescue and countless others.

As a writer, Diallo as written for the Oakland Tribune and Black Dot Cafe Magazine, and has self-published one book of poetry. He also has a forthcoming book of prose, short stories and poetry entitled, "Black New World Manifesto", with a forward by Amiri Baraka set to be release by Black Dot Cafe Press in February 2009. The book is somewhat of a companion to the Black New World Annex Exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Bay area Now 5. October 9 - November 16, 2008

Discography

Album/EPsThe Shaman & The Nigga God (1997)Shadows & Moonlight (1998)Overdue Babies (2003)Honey Suga Love (2009)

Bibliography

"The Last Will And Testament of Shitworker Jainkins: Prosessays & Bastard Literature", 1998

Exhibitions

Scrapyard Ghosts, ProArts Gallery, 1998

References

[Against Gentrification: Marcel Diallo sees a black cultural district where Oakland's the Bottoms neighborhood now standsby Anne Stuhldreher, Sunday, January 21, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine]

[The Black Dot: An interview wit’ Marcel Diallo by Minister of Information JR , Wednesday, 23 May 2007, The Bayview Newspaper]

[Roots For The Future: West Oakland, California's Black New World club forges a fresh artistic community in the shadows of a once-thriving district. By Jamilah King, February 20, 2008, Wiretap Magazine]

[NATION: The Fine Art of Rebuiding West Oakland by Richard Gonzales, Morning Edition, February 16, 2007 - NPR]

[The Odd Couple: How developer Rick Holliday reached out to community activist Marcel Diallo to pave the way for Central Station.By Rachel Swan, August 27, 2008 East Bay Express]

[Hipster Invasion: Downtown Oakland's fledgling art scene is booming — and some artists and residents aren't terribly happy about it. By David Downs August 30, 2006 East Bay Express]

[Chief's greatest triumph comes after his death by Marcel Diallo. Oakland Tribune. July 25, 2005. EDITOR'S NOTE: Marcel Diallo, 32, is an Oakland-based musician, writer and cultural historian. His family came to the Bay Area from New Orleans as part of the great migration West by blacks in search]

[Black Dot Artists Collective: Evolving Tradition in West OaklandBy Sonya Smith, Feb 15, 2008, CityFlight.com]