Elegba Folklore Society

African Root, American Fruit: Paintings & Collages by Ronald Jackson
2014-02-07 17:00 - 2014-03-29 18:00 (America/New_York) | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Race, Place & Identity

At the Crossroads: Black Males + Race, Place & Identity
2014-01-20 18:00 - 21:00 | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Elegba Folklore Society is pleased to be among the eight Richmond, Virginia-based arts and cultural organizations partnering to facilitate community-wide conversations inspired by their respective exhibitions and programs that focus on civil rights and social justice beginning in January, 2014.
Elegba Folklore Society is hosting two exhibitions in its Cultural Center that are a part of the collaboration. The first is Body As Art that runs now through January 31. In this series of black-and-white photographs, Thierry Laurence manipulates light, shadow, and water to express an artistic essence of the black male body. An interpretive conversation will accompany this exhibition on King Day, January 20 at 6p.

At the Crossroads: Black Males + Race, Place & Identity
VCU African American Studies Professor Derrick Lanois
King Day, January 20, 6p

Attendees can join a conversation surrounding body + place politics of African American men in the 21st century. Using Thierry Laurence’s photography in Body as Art, the complexities that are facing African American men in today’s society whether social, cultural, artistic, and/or political will be explored. The journey to understand the dynamic and ever changing conditions has to be rooted in history and begin with a discussion of place and identity in Africa prior to enslavement, and currently, then spanning the timeline through and forward to a look at place and identity as expressed in hip hop. Do African American men have a place and identity that is honored, as our cultural DNA and protocols mandate, valued, nurtured and understood or do they serve as the poster child of what is wrong today—criminal, uneducated, shiftless and to be feared/ignored? Professor Derrick Lanois will facilitate this King Day discussion to help us see what has happened historically to “place” African American men in the current dialogue and how to shift the conversation.

On February 7, the Society’s second exhibition in the collaboration, African Root, American Fruit: Paintings by Ronald Jackson, will open with a reception from 5p – 9p during the First Fridays Artwalk. Ronald Jackson paints portraits and figurative works to comment on the identity of African American people and their influence on the landscape of American society. He will give a gallery talk.

Culture, Art and Social Messaging
Artist, Ronald Jackson
February 7, 6p

Jackson will give a talk on the significance of art in African American culture and expound on the implication of his artwork and experience. The evening will also feature a remembrance of the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins which began on February 1, 1960.
Details: 804.644.3900 or story1@efsinc.org. Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center is open Tuesday – Friday, Noon – 6p, Saturday, Noon – 4p and by appointment. Gallery tours are available by reservation.

Among the Yoruba, Elegba is the Orisa or intercessor who guards the crossroads and who opens the roads, bringing clarity out of confusion.

We hope our programs and services are, indeed, road-opening experiences.

Embrace the Spirit!

BODY AS ART - PHOTOGRAPHY BY THIERRY LAURENCE
2013-11-01 17:00 - 2014-01-31 21:00 | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Body As Art opens at Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center on Friday, November 1 as a part of the 1st Fridays ArtWalk, 5 – 9p.
This series of black and white photographs manipulates light, dark and water to express an artistic essence of the male body as seen through the eye of Thierry Laurence. In his edgy portraitures, Laurence shows photography as “extension of my artistic expressions as a actor, dancer, singer and writer. When I have a camera in hand, I want to capture the moments where shadows give way to light and allow us to see.” Through January 31.

ARTisan Cafe
2013-06-08 18:00 - 22:00 | The Observation Deck of City Hall, 900 E Broad Street, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Come see Elegba Folklore Society at the ARTisan Café on Saturday, June 8. Be the first to browse and buy our summer collection of art and imports. Get your unique piece of Mali mudcloth or Maasai jewelry. Wear your culture! Select Kuba Cloth from the Congo to adorn your home or choose the hottest summer fashions from Ghana. Pamper yourself with our Black Love Shea Butter, Whipped Cocoa Butter, Black Soap and Essential Body Oils. Hmmm… Enlighten your mind with books! Buy your tickets for Juneteenth 2013, A Freedom Celebration‘s Friday night event featuring our beloved scholar Anthony T. Browder presented Django Deconstructed, relevant spoken word with the iconic The Last Poets and, of course, Elegba Folklore Society’s soul-stirring African dancers and drummers! Tickets discounted for ARTisan Café patrons.

MALCOLM X DAY BLACK BOOK EXPOSITION
2013-05-18 10:00 - 2013-05-19 18:00 | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
ELEGBA FOLKLORE SOCIETY & UBUS BOOKS & THINGS
Present
MALCOLM X DAY BLACK BOOK EXPOSITION
Saturday, May 18 – Sunday, May 19 ◉ Richmond, Virginia

UBUS and Elegba Folklore Society are combining forces to present the largest Black Literature Expo of the century. After years of breakdowns in plans, by others, to put the Capital City of Richmond, Virginia on the Black Books Map, arguably the largest, most effective cultural organization is connecting to, perhaps, the largest Black publisher in the history of Black people to get the job done.

The Exposition will feature a vast, awesome display of Black literature. It will feature must-haves, Carter G. Woodson’s MisEducation of the Negro and Elijah Muhammad’s Message to the Blackman to Ivan Van Sertima’s Before the Mayflower and The Souls of Black Folk. This classic by W. E. B. DeBois may well sound of the theme, as Black writers, publisher and distributors come to Richmond for the Malcolm X Day Expo. Attendees can also choose from a variety of novels and children’s books.

This book event happens from 10a – 8p on Saturday and 2p – 6p on Sunday at Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, downtown in the RVA Arts District at 101 East Broad Street (corner of 1st & Broad). Live jazz and refreshments will spice the Malcolm X Day Black Book Exposition on Saturday evening.

Celebrity Guest Authors will make presentations at the Exposition, and there will be Independent Black Writers. These writers will come, for the most part, from the publishing house of UBUS.

All Black writers are respectfully invited to send books to be sold at the Expo, or attend and participate.

Elegba Folklore Society, Richmond’s Cultural Ambassador, was founded by Sister Omilade Janine Bell, whose signature spectacular career as a cultural artist, folklorist and producer was the springboard used to form the Society in 1990. Elegba Folklore Society is known worldwide for its three annual cultural festivals, dance theatre and music performing and teaching programs, cultural history tours along the Trail of Enslaved Africans and other notable sites and exhibits of African Diasporic art in its cultural center. www.efsinc.org

United Brothers and United Sisters Communications Systems was founded by H. Khalif Khalifah in Harlem, New York in 1975. A Master Printer, Khalifah has plied his trade into the publication of more than 600 different titles. Fundamentally, he is the catalyst that reconstructed the book buying habits of Black people. Without a marketplace to receive his and his colleagues’ publications, he built and grew a comprehensive Black Book Industry.

UBUS has promoted and sponsored dozens of national book events, published Your Black Books Guide and has presented the Black Book Achievement Awards for Excellence in Black Literature in 19 installments on the first weekend of June. This event has happened in recent years at The Nat Turner Library in Southampton County. www.black-e-books.com

Among the Yoruba, Elegba is the Orisa who opens the roads, bringing clarity our of confusion. We hope our programs and services are, indeed, road-opening experiences. Embrace the Spirit!

THE ELEVATION OF THE QUEEN MOTHERS - April 5th through April 30th
2013-04-05 10:00 - 2013-04-30 17:00 | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Come behold a new gallery exhibit at Elegba Folklore Society giving honor to the Ancestral Queen Mothers of RVA.
THE ELEVATION OF THE QUEEN MOTHERS is presented by Ms. Maat Free and The Guardians of African Ancestral Remembrance in RVA. Photo Credits: Patience Salgado.
This exhibit is interactive. You will be able to sit down and craft an altar card to establish a sacred space within your own home. Bring your family and your friends.
The Guardians for African Ancestral Remembrance in RVA were inspired to perform the elevation ceremony in March 2013 because that is International Womens History Month.
The exhibit features a collection of photographs depicting a celebration to honor the mighty women of RVA from our earliest known African Ancestral Mother, Queen Mother Betsy all the way up to the last to make her transition, our Beloved Queen Mother Joyce Branch.
Learn these women’s stories, seek guidance from their collective wisdom. Gain insight about the age-old practice of Ancestor Veneration and lifting up the names of those with impeccable character and strength, upon whose shoulders we stand.
Group Ancestral Remembrance workshops can be arranged.
For more information please call 804 564 6163 or send your email inquiries to oracle@myclearpeople.com
VIsit us on the web at www.MYCLEARPEOPLE.com

[Exhibition] Africa in Portraits - On exhibit through June 30th
2013-04-01 10:00 - 2013-06-30 17:00 | Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, Richmond, VA, 23219, United States
Africa in Portraits
Africa in Portraits is the exhibit in Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E Broad St, corner of 1st & Broad in the downtown Arts District. The exhibition runs through June 30.
Africa in Portraits features the paintings and print of Joseph Harris’. He has been an artist since he learned how to hold a pencil in his hand. He evolved from drawing to painting throughout his primary school years, and he developed his craft to become a competitive award winner. Joseph Harris is certified in Commercial Art from The Art Instruction School in Minneapolis, Minnesota and in Fine Art from The Brookline Institute in Anaheim, California. He currently resides in Richmond.
