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SYNOPSIS
THE VODUN JAZZOETRY PERFORMANCE PRESENTATION
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"Red, Black and Moonlight
dramatizes an experience......"
"It's got an authentic voice..."
"...illustrates with clarity the injustices and inequalities...."
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Dramatized with a percussionist, saxaphonist, Vodun drummers and sometimes
a jazz pianist, this a one-woman presentation of autobiographical writings
in prose/poetry pieces about a trip to Haiti by Entertainment attorney,
poet and performance artist, Ezili Dantò/(or, Marguerite Laurent,
for her colonial name).
Documenting the often tragic journey of Haitians in the US and abroad
for human justice, the monologues cover Vodun cosmology, Haitian history,
culture and US geopolitics and humanitarian imperialism with the 1995
"Return of Democracy." It's a musical memoir full of coming of age stories
of a woman raised African-American-Haitian in the US, who returns, for
the first time, to her parentsą homeland. The work testifies to the tragic
plight of the Black nation of Haitians surviving within a hostile American
Mediterranean. it's a striking journey through intriguing personal experiences,
revealing, through spoken word, drama and dance, the harsh realities encountered
in the process of pushing boundaries and breaking down the walls of government
policy and of cultural, racial and sexual biases. You are introduced to
an independent spirit, who, when faced with despair and containment-in-poverty,
refuses to succumb, or, to be reactive. You see a woman whose psyche is
torn by the acceptance of hunger she sees, the hopelessness transcending
anger she crashes into, the de-Africanization, the lack of dollars (compared
to US "AID's" billions), the lack of Haitian vision, unity and political
and policing prowess she crumbles into. Yet, with grace, this prodigal
daughter rises from the crevasses of ambiguities of being raised in exile
and seemingly belonging to nowhere, and, in the process, at the crossroad's
serpentine tracks, finds, she travels with forces greater than self; rediscovering
her cultural and spiritual source while exploring the connections others
don't find.
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