Welcome to the Nia Network: A Program Bureau, a division of Celeste Bateman & Associates. The program bureau features visual and performing artists, historians, writers and motivational speakers of African descent who present in various venues nationally and internationally. CB&A has compiled a roster of extraordinarily talented individuals who are available to perform and present at colleges and universities, performing arts centers, schools, churches, corporations, festivals, trade shows, etc. What makes this program bureau unique is that all of the participants present topics and art forms pertaining to the African Diaspora.
Nia is the Swahili word for ‘purpose.’ Our purpose is to promulgate what is rich and positive about African, Caribbean, and African-American culture, history, heritage and art. For booking information, email us at info@celestebateman.com or call 973.705.8253.
PLEASE NOTE: We are unable to take on additional artists/speakers at this time, but please feel free to forward your information for future consideration.
Nia is the Swahili word for ‘purpose.’ Our purpose is to promulgate what is rich and positive about African, Caribbean, and African-American culture, history, heritage and art. For booking information, email us at info@celestebateman.com or call 973.705.8253.
PLEASE NOTE: We are unable to take on additional artists/speakers at this time, but please feel free to forward your information for future consideration.
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Amiri and Amina Baraka
Amiri and Amina Baraka poets, authors and civil rights activists, founded and direct Kimako’s Blues People, a multimedia arts space, from a small theater in their home in Newark, NJ. Amiri founded the jazz/poetry ensemble Blue Ark, which has played at the Berlin Festival, and throughout the US. In 1964, Amiri’s play, Dutchman, won the OBIE award for Best American Play. His Jazz opera Money, with Swiss composer, George Gruntz was performed in part at the New York Jazz Festival in the early 90’s and Primitive World, with music by David Murray, was performed in New York and at the Black Drama Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina. His Bumpy: A Bopera with music by Max Roach was performed in 1991 in Newark and San Diego. Amina and Amiri edited Confirmation: An Anthology of Afro American Women. They have been married for over 30 years and have five children. Their group, BlueArk: The Word Ship is available for performances worldwide. Amiri and Amina are available for performances, seminars and lectures on Art, Politics and Black Liberation.
Amiri Baraka
Poet, Author, Dramatist, Political Activist
Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934. After graduating from Howard University and serving in the Air Force, he moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1968 and co-edited the avant-garde literary magazine Yugen and founded Totem Press, which first published works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others.
He published his first volume of poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. Blues People: Negro Music in White America, still regarded as the seminal work on Afro-American music and culture. He also edited The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America were published in 1963.
Baraka's reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won an Obie Award for "Best off-Broadway Play" and was made into a film. (The play will be revived by the Cherry Lane Theatre in January 2007).
In 1965, Jones moved to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS). BARTS lasted only one year but had a lasting influence on the direction of Afro American Arts. Sending five trucks a day into the Harlem community, art show on one, poetry reading from the other, music, another, drama the other -- where performances would be given in a changed location each day. Vacant lots, play grounds, housing projects pushing art that would be Black as Bessie Smith, mass-based and taken to the people and revolutionary, reflecting the intensity of the entire Black Liberation Movement.
In 1966, when the BARTS was dissolved, Baraka returned to Newark, his hometown and set up with his new bride, Amina Baraka, (who was a founder of Newark’s “Loft” a local venue of contemporary art), Spirit House and the Spirit House Movers, which brought drama, music and poetry from across the country.
During this period, the Barakas founded the Committee for Unified Newark and the Congress of Afrikan People which led to the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as the first Black Mayor of a major northeastern city spearheaded by the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention. In 1968, he co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal. He and his wife, Amina Baraka, edited The Music (Meditations of Jazz & Blues) (Morrow), Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984. More recent publications include Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies, (Marsilio, 94,) Transbluesency, (Marsilio 1996), Somebody Blew Up America and Other Poems (Nehesi 2002).
Amiri Baraka's numerous literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and in 2002 was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey and Newark Public Schools.
His recent book of short stories, Tales of the Out & The Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late 2007. Home, his book of social essays, will be re-released by Akashic Books in early 2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of Music (Univ. of California) is also due out this year.
Amiri and Amina Baraka, have been married for over 30 years and have five children including the late Shani Baraka.
Poet, Author, Dramatist, Political Activist
Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934. After graduating from Howard University and serving in the Air Force, he moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1968 and co-edited the avant-garde literary magazine Yugen and founded Totem Press, which first published works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others.
He published his first volume of poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. Blues People: Negro Music in White America, still regarded as the seminal work on Afro-American music and culture. He also edited The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America were published in 1963.
Baraka's reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won an Obie Award for "Best off-Broadway Play" and was made into a film. (The play will be revived by the Cherry Lane Theatre in January 2007).
In 1965, Jones moved to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS). BARTS lasted only one year but had a lasting influence on the direction of Afro American Arts. Sending five trucks a day into the Harlem community, art show on one, poetry reading from the other, music, another, drama the other -- where performances would be given in a changed location each day. Vacant lots, play grounds, housing projects pushing art that would be Black as Bessie Smith, mass-based and taken to the people and revolutionary, reflecting the intensity of the entire Black Liberation Movement.
In 1966, when the BARTS was dissolved, Baraka returned to Newark, his hometown and set up with his new bride, Amina Baraka, (who was a founder of Newark’s “Loft” a local venue of contemporary art), Spirit House and the Spirit House Movers, which brought drama, music and poetry from across the country.
During this period, the Barakas founded the Committee for Unified Newark and the Congress of Afrikan People which led to the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as the first Black Mayor of a major northeastern city spearheaded by the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention. In 1968, he co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal. He and his wife, Amina Baraka, edited The Music (Meditations of Jazz & Blues) (Morrow), Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984. More recent publications include Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies, (Marsilio, 94,) Transbluesency, (Marsilio 1996), Somebody Blew Up America and Other Poems (Nehesi 2002).
Amiri Baraka's numerous literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and in 2002 was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey and Newark Public Schools.
His recent book of short stories, Tales of the Out & The Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late 2007. Home, his book of social essays, will be re-released by Akashic Books in early 2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of Music (Univ. of California) is also due out this year.
Amiri and Amina Baraka, have been married for over 30 years and have five children including the late Shani Baraka.