Arts and Culture

Jazz Professor’s African Roots Inspire Students

Published

9 years ago

April 8, 2016

By Arvin Temkar, University of San Francisco

Look no further than the title of USF adjunct professor and alumnus Pascal Bokar Thiam’s latest release Guitar Balafonics for a hint to the album’s unique and creative sound.

As the jazz and blues magazine DownBeat says in its glowing review of the album, “It takes a moment for your ears to adjust and realize that it is, in fact, a guitar producing those stately notes.”

That’s because, Thiam EDD 2006, who was raised in Mali and Senegal, slightly mutes his guitar’s strings with his palm to create a marimba-like sound that emulates the West African percussion instrument the balafon.

The technique gives the American jazz standards featured on Guitar Balafonics a distinctly African vibe.

The album, which DownBeat chose as a best CD of 2015, is, in a way, a reflection of the performing art professor’s work at USF. Thiam, who earned his doctorate in education here, is the author of 2011’s “From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta: How West African Standards of Aesthetics Have Shaped the Music of the Delta Blues.”

It chronicles how West African musical aesthetic has influenced mainstream American culture — the banjo, for example, can be traced to a string instrument brought from West Africa in the Atlantic slave trade. In USF classes like Jazz Culture and Social Justice and Survey of African Music, Thiam teaches students how the blues, bluegrass, jazz, and other American music forms were born from these African roots.

“That’s why American music is so different,” he says. “American music has nothing to do with the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.”

Maggie Gehegan ’12 says Thiam’s class on African music was one of her favorite classes at USF — and it wasn’t even part of her degree.

“It opened up this whole repertoire of music I had never really explored,” says Gehegan, who earned a bachelor of science in nursing at the School of Nursing and Health Professions.

Gehegan’s fond memories of that class contributed to her decision to join a jazz ensemble taught by Thiam. There was only one hitch: She wanted to be a vocalist — but she’d never sung in public before.

Thiam, who doesn’t require auditions for the class, pushed her to practice and improve. He’s brought students to play at his Savannah Jazz Club, where some of the Bay Area’s top musicians perform. The club hosted one of Gehegan’s first live performances.

“It’s easy to perform on campus because your friends are there, but when you walk into a club and people are looking at you — there, you have to produce,” says Thiam. “In some cases they’ve paid an admission fee and they don’t know you. That’s when you realize it’s important to practice.”

Now Gehegan, a nurse living in New Orleans, is also a touring rhythm and blues singer with her first recorded EP.

“I’m playing and performing music in a city that lives and breathes music,” she says. “It’s definitely a testament to the confidence Dr. T instilled in me during my time in his classes.”

Thiam says while he doesn’t expect all of his students to become jazz musicians, he wants them to at least appreciate the art form’s powerful history.

“In order to appreciate music, you have to understand its origins,” he says. “It comes from a culture. It has a story.”

For more information, go to www.usfca.edu/news/jazz-professors-african-roots-inspire-music-students

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New Oakland Moving Forward

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

Published

5 hours ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Post Staff

Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.

Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.

So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

3 weeks ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

3 weeks ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.