National Black Arts Festival 2006

It’s a mission that Executive Director Stephanie Hughley is excited and serious about. "If someone doesn’t spend quality time exposing our young people to creative expressions, where will they learn how to survive in a world that is designed to minimize one’s creative ability?" she asks in her online blog. "How will they ever sustain their lives if they are not creative enough to solve the issues that confront us everyday?"

While the 10-day festival of dance, music, film, theater, and visual and literary arts is the most visible aspect of the NBAF (www.nbaf.org), it’s not all the nonprofit cultural institution does.

The NBAF celebrates the contributions of those of African descent and their impact on world cultures through education initiatives, year-round programs and this big bash, held every July since 2001. (The summer festival began in 1988 as an every-other-year event.)

Although a few of its 70-plus offerings started as early as June 10 this year, the festival officially begins July 13 with the Opening Party at Mason Murer Fine Art, hosted by Georgia-born collagist, painter and sculptor Benny Andrews ($75). That’s followed July 14 by the annual Living Legends Celebration, which this year honors Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador. The evening at the Woodruff Arts Center’s Symphony Hall features the world premiere of "A Great and Shining Light" by Grammy Award-nominated composer-musician-poet Hannibal Lokumbe.

The piece, composed around Young’s life, celebrates the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles and others — the shining lights — in all of our lives, Hughley says. It is another in a series of Lokumbe-composed tributes to civil rights icons including Rosa Parks ("Dear Mrs. Parks," performed with the Detroit Symphony shortly before her death in October 2005), Medgar Evers ("Hannibal’s God, Mississippi and a Man Called Evers") and Malcolm X ("Soul Brother").

"A Great and Shining Light" features a jazz ensemble, a 150-voice choir and Atlanta vocalist Bernardine Mitchell ($25-$100).

The festival is a dream for the budget-minded, with myriad free events, including the entire Creatively Speaking Conversation Series; workshops on quilting, jazz and contemporary African-American; the Children’s Education Village at the Woodruff Arts Center; author panels, conversations, readings, and book signings that make up the literary fest within the festival; a night of spoken word hosted by Live Poets Society; Jazz Around Town events with Mose Davis, Ike Stubblefield and Atlanta vocalist-songwriter Kathleen Bertrand; the 1970s group the Spinners in concert at Wolf Creek Park; a classical music recital featuring a young musician from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Talent Development Program and a counterpart from a similar program in Detroit; the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in concert at Ebenezer Baptist Church; such visual arts exhibitions as "Fabricated Harmony" at Wertz Contemporary and "Body Maps" at City Gallery East; and an artist talk with Amalia Amaki at Spelman College.

Here’s a look at what’s new this year:

"Beautiful Things: A Showcase of South African Craft": This three-site exhibition places traditional South African crafts in "environments" created by Atlanta artists Lillian Blades, Jillian Higley, Tae Earl Jackson, Susan Loftin and Red Weldon. At Abernathy Arts Center, for example, Weldon has placed carvings of animals among covers of National Geographic magazines. Many of the Atlanta artists used recyclables for their environments, Hughley says, from rocks and leaves to multicolored dryer lint. Each piece is on the floor so visitors can get a bird’s-eye view.

The show was first launched in Charlotte this year, where it was managed by Sue Heathcock of South Africa and former Atlantan Harriet Sanford, who now lives and works in Washington, D.C. June 10-July 23 at Abernathy; June 15-July 23 at City Gallery East; and June 29-July 23 at the Bank of America Plaza. And it’s free.

"Embrace": The NBAF’s first fine-art fair features some of the nation’s top galleries displaying and selling museum-quality work by the likes of masters Robert S. Duncanson, Hale Woodruff, Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Victor Turner and John Biggers, and such contemporary artists as Carrie Mae Weems, Amalia Amaki, Charlie Palmer and Jim Alexander. Hughley says the July 14-16 event is a response to serious collectors who wanted the NBAF to offer high-end art. Participating local galleries include host Mason Murer Fine Art on Armour Drive and Avisca Fine Art in Marietta. ($10 admission.)

The fest still will hold its popular Artists’ Market at Greenbriar Mall (July 14-23), a juried show and sale of ceramics, fiber art, jewelry, glass,†painting, photography, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture and wood, as well as the International Vendor Marketplace (July 13-16), which moves from Underground Atlanta to Atlantic Station’s 17th Street. Both events are free.

Late-night music: The nearly nightly Soul Suite jamfests, which drew mostly the young and limber to Underground Atlanta the past few years, have been replaced by a weekend of late-night tunes and dance parties at three venues.

Trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist Russell Gunn leads the first jam, beginning at 10 p.m. July 20, at Churchill Grounds Jazz Cafe. His jazz is known for its hip-hop influences. $10 at the door.

Pianist Kevin Bales headlines the early show, the reggae band Elvis White and the Afro-Cuban band Orchestra MaCuba lead the 10 p.m. show in a two-tiered night of jazz, reggae and Latin music on July 21 at the High Museum of Art. The evening begins at 5 p.m., with closing time about 1 a.m. Admission: $15.

The Late-Night Soul Suite lineup, convening at 11 p.m. July 22 at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, features a mix of music, interviews and guests co-hosted by Leon and Gunn, with Gunn leading the Soul Suite Band with performances by, among others, R&B singer-songwriter-keyboardist Angie Stone, Leon & the Peoples, and Days Ahead. Admission: $25.

 For more information and complete scheduling, visit www.nbaf.org.