Davidson College invites the public to its inaugural Africana Festival on Saturday afternoon April 21. The event will be held in the Alvarez College Union beginning at 4:30 p.m., and there is no charge to attend.

The festival will highlight the heritage and cultures of international students and students who come from families of African ancestry through lectures, performances and workshops. The cultures represented will include African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, and Afro-Latino.

Obaknule Akinlana

There will be performances of dancing and drumming by Yoruba folklorist Obankule Akinlana, and of capoeira by Brazilian-French martial arts expert Gabrielle Motta Passajou. Professor Tanure Ojaide from UNC Charlottewill speak on “The Folklore of Africa and the African Disapora.” There will also be a Zumba workout session, and a presentation of portraits, images and masks by Saundra Porter Thomas.

The festival will also feature two public discussions. On Friday, April 20, at 3:30 p.m. in the Duke Residence Hall Lounge, the discussion will focus on the crisis in Uganda and U.S. involvement in a session titled “Joseph Kony: Western Depictions of and Intervention in African Crises.”

On Saturday, April 21, there will be a book club discussion on The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir by Stacyann Chin. The book talks about the author’s life in Jamaica as a Chinese-Jamaican lesbian poet in a country where homophobia is prevalent. That discussion will begin at 1 p.m. in the Multicultural House on Patterson Court.

The Davidson College Africana Festival is an Ethnic Studies Concentration program co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department, the English Department, the History Department, the Education Program, the Art Department, the Music Department, the Dean Rusk International Studies Program, the Multicultural House, the President’s Office, and the French Department.

For more information about the festival, contact Keneya’ Edwards at africanafestival@gmail.com.