The Pepe Sales Festival in Girona, which this year is dedicated to the American writer Maya Angelou, wants to bring out the black talent that exists in the Girona region. “Going to Salt, to Banyoles … we found a culturally very powerful scene, people with an impressive talent that I can’t explain how invisible it was,” says Consol Ribas, of the La Penyora Cultura association, which organizes the festival. of independent art.
The event starts its fifteenth edition on Saturday 22 January, a quote centered on writer and social activist Maya Angelou, one of the great voices in African American literature and “a pioneer in every way,” according to Ribas. He emphasizes that the contest is always “fixed in the current context, even if it talks about characters from decades or centuries ago” and that with Angelou they have found a figure who through the word “empowered women and men”.
To delve into the life and work of Angelou, the situation of black women and also the racism that is lived in our country, the organizers have sought to “make visible” Afro-Catalan creators in all their activities, such as art exhibition, short film festival or live performances.
In this sense, the teacher and singer Diana Español emphasizes that this year’s program woman sees a group that suffers from racism in their daily lives and that it “highlights things that happen here,” such as the implicit racism that comes with changing the language for the sake of the speaker.
“There are magical artists of all ages at this festival, with a quiet artistic background,” said Diana Español, who is also running cultural projects for young people at risk of exclusion and lamented that it is being lost. talent for the inability to access music training.
Poetry, art, music and cinema
The fifteenth edition of Pepe Sales will begin on Saturday at 8 at the La Mercè Cultural Center with the intervention of the creator and director ofWhite garlic, Pepe Ribas; the inauguration of the group exhibition Black woman i la performance Sister, not anymore, from Kaatjadg; percussion music by Afro Djembe, and a poetry recital by Dididayan and Melisa by Erausquin.
The screening of the documentary And still I rise, dedicated to the life of Angelou or the conference Maya Angelou (descendant of slaves), civil rights and parity activist. Racial segregation, by Professor of Literature and Romance Languages Àngel Delgado; the festival gala, with performances of the author’s work through different artistic disciplines, are some of the festival’s activities.
As usual, the Truffaut Short Film Festival, which this year focuses on black women, is also planned.
The open debate Maya Angelou. Segregation and slavery. Social change. The Afro-Catalans. Migrations now, with Montse Anguiano, Obam Micó, Amparo Parra and Abel Debritto will complete the program of this year’s festival.
From silence after trauma to one’s own currency
“Angelou was a woman of the Renaissance, with an enormous artistic and personal breadth,” says Consol Ribas about this year’s protagonist. Lluís Llamas, the other half of La Penyora Cultura, also claims the author’s literary work, especially his autobiographical books, the best known of which is I know why the caged bird sings.
Maya Angelou did not have an easy life. She was raped as a child by her mother’s lover, who would end up being murdered when she was released from prison. As a result of the trauma, he was speechless for years. In this time of silence, however, he turned to the world of books.
She was, in addition to being a poet and novelist, actress, screenwriter and civil rights activist, a woman with a long and varied career for which she received, among other awards, three Grammys and the Medal of Freedom, the distinction most important civilian in the United States.
He died in 2014, but his legacy is still valid and now the US Treasury has announced he will pay tribute by minting coins with his face.
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