East St. Louis Cultural Arts Festival Coincides with 1917 Race Riot Centennial:
Annual Tribute to Miles Davis, Henry
Dumas & Katherine Dunham May 19
(Poetry by Soular Systems Ensemble & Michael Castro. Jazz by Delano Redmond Quintet. Art by Edna Patterson Petty. Dance. Exhibits. Book Sales.)
East Saint Louis, Illinois—Three artistic giants who greatly impacted this city and the world will be honoredFriday, May 19, 2017, at 6:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room of Building “D” on the Higher Education Campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), 601 J.R. Thompson Dr., East St. Louis (62201).
Known as “Da-Dum-Dun,” the annual free family festival is a tribute to music avant-gardist Miles Dewey Davis III (1926-1991), after whom the city named a school in 1982; Arkansas-born literary treasure Henry Lee Dumas (1934-1968), whom Toni Morrison called “an absolute genius”; and dance doyenne/institution builder Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), who maintained a home in ESL for more than 30 years.
“Da-Dum-Dun 2017” intersects the Writers Club's 31st year of programming and the Centennial of ESL's 1917 Race Riot. Among art forms and events to be featured: poetry, dance, drumming, jazz, cultural vendors, exhibits/sales of books, and photo/art displays from the EBR/SIUE Collection and works of Edna Patterson Petty. Performers will include poets of the Writers Club's Soular Systems Ensemble--Roscoe “Ros” Crenshaw, Charlois Lumpkin, and Jaye P. Willis--led by Darlene Roy; translator and former St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro; published poet/educator Treasure Shields Redmond; and jazz musicians under the leadership of trumpeter-educator Delano J. Redmond.
Davis, raised in this city, graduated from Lincoln High School in 1944 and joined his Lincoln High classmate--pianist Eugene Haynes, Jr. (Lincoln '43)--at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Dumas taught at SIUE-ESL's Experiment in Higher Education (1967-68) and years later the city honored Empress Dunham by renaming North Tenth Street after her.
Besides Davis, other renowned Lincoln High alumni (and contemporaries of “Da-Dum-Dun” honorees) include National Black Theater Founder Barbara Ann Teer, singer/yodeler Leon Thomas, former UN Ambassador Donald McHenry, EBR Writers Club President Roy, Sylvester “Sunshine” Lee (who directs his namesake Cultural Arts Center & Performance Ensemble), and Dr. James Rosser, retired president of California State University-Los Angeles, who graduated from Lincoln High in 1957 with EBR.
Thousands more could be listed, from Olympian Jackie Joyner Kersee to former Peace Corps Director Reginald Petty to former ESL Schools Superintendent Dr. Lillian A. (Adams) Parks to the late Honorable Wyvetter Hoover Younge of the Illinois House of Representatives.
Current and late “trustees” of the EBR Writers Club, founded in 1986, include Margaret Walker Alexander, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Haki R. Madhubuti, Quincy Troupe (Davis' biographer), Walter Mosley, Raymond R. Patterson, Barbara Ann Teer, Dr. Jerry Ward, Jr., and Dr. Lena Weathers.
For information about “Da-Dum-Dun” or the Writers Club, call SIUE English at 618 650-3991; write the Club at P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, Illinois 62201; or email eredmon@siue.edu.