From: QMocha Magazine
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009
Where: Columbia, SC

QMocha Magazine to host 1st ever Urban LGBT Cultural Arts Festival and Expo

QMocha Magazine proudly presents CAFE 2009 (Cultural Arts Festival & Expo) November 13 - 15, 2009 in Columbia, SC. The first of its kind, CAFE 2009 highlights the various facets of Urban Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered culture and art from literary to dance, drama to cabaret. The weekend kicks off on Friday night, 11/13 with the Cabaret at CAFE drag king and queen show at The Cabaret Show Bar, 1101 Harden St., hosted by Charlotte’s Elaine Taylor and featuring Columbia’s own Paris LeFaris. Saturday, 11/14 begins with Our Stories, Our Voices Literary Forum with some of today's hottest urban LGBT authors featured in QMocha's Book Club throughout 2009. Atlanta-based Glen Collins (What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You), New Orleans-based Clarence Nero (Too Much of a Good Thing Ain’t Bad), and Baltimore’s Mike Warren (A Private Affair and Sweet Swagger) will conduct readings and book signings as well as answer audience questions regarding their works and challenges they face as same-gender loving writers. After lunch, Bodies in Motion Dance Exposition will feature performances from genres ranging from ball/vogue style to hip-hop and interpretive dance in the SC State Museum's Auditorium. In the late afternoon Spit Fire Poetry Showcase hosted by Columbia’s own “Street Poet”, will feature “Venom” of 100.1 Da Beat sharing the stage with some of the Southeast’s most talented LGBT spoken word artists along with a number of straight poets/allies in the SC State Museum's Vista Room. Following a dinner break, attendees will return to the Museum for an evening theatrical performance of "For the Love of Harlem" by the Carolinas Black Pride Movement.
The musical "For the Love of Harlem," written, directed and scored by Jermaine Nakia Lee, is a combination of comedy, poetry, dance and period music; profiling the lives of some of the brightest artistic visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance. Figures like Wallace Thurman, Alberta Hunter, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bessie Smith, Countee Cullen, A'lelia Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are given real human faces. Their struggles - especially regarding sexuality - between public recognition and devotion to being true to one's self tells a story many people have never heard.*In 2006, "For the Love of Harlem" was nominated 'Theatre Event of the Year' by Creative Loafing Charlotte Magazine.Bringing CAFÉ 2009 to a close, on Sunday, 11/15, South Carolina Black Pride is sponsoring Soul Food & Salsa Sunday, an evening of complimentary urban delicacies and down-home cooking celebrating the richness of ethnic cuisine. This drop-in event will take place at 6-9pm at the Harriet Hancock Center, 1108 Woodrow St.“It’s no accident that Columbia was chosen as the inaugural site of what will become an annual event celebrating the rich culture of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered people of color. The South is more or less the brewing pot of African-American culture dating back to the time of slavery and through the Civil Rights Movement. Further, we can now boast of a steadily growing Hispanic/Latino community in the South as well as other minority groups steadily migrating to this part of the country for various reasons. Likewise, the mainstream LGBT population in South Carolina is growing at a steady pace and establishing a deeper presence in the state year by year. However, unlike the gay-friendly Atlanta, a mere 3 hours away, despite Columbia’s nearly 50% African American population, LGBT people of color are still a newly emerging subculture. CAFÉ is purposed to showcase and celebrate the rich cultural arts unique to a people no longer content with existing in the shadows out of fear and exclusion.”
–Tiffany Adams, Editor, QMocha Magazine.The public is invited to attend this event. For more detailed event information and advance ticket sales, visit www.qmocha.com or purchase tickets directly at http://cafe2009.eventbrite.com/.