The Last Poets & Christine Otten

Abiodun Oyewole, Baba Donn Babatunde, Umar Bin Hassan and Christine Otten

8:30pm

Saturday, October 24, 2020

45 mins

Performing from Harlem, NY, meet The Last Poets: spoken word legends, musicians and the “godfathers of hip-hop.” 50 years since releasing their eponymously titled album, The Last Poets have been producing protest poetry and championing civil rights, from 1960s Harlem to their 2018 album Understand What Black Is. They are joined by Dutch novelist and playwright Christine Otten, author of the novel The Last Poets.

Please be advised that the following event contains language that could be deemed offensive and upsetting. A racially offensive term is used here in the context of referring to song titles by The Last Poets from the 1960s and 1970s.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Performing from Harlem, NY, meet The Last Poets: spoken word legends, musicians and the “godfathers of hip-hop.” 50 years since releasing their eponymously titled album, The Last Poets have been producing protest poetry and championing civil rights, from 1960s Harlem to their 2018 album Understand What Black Is. They are joined by Dutch novelist and playwright Christine Otten, author of the novel The Last Poets.

Please be advised that the following event contains language that could be deemed offensive and upsetting. A racially offensive term is used here in the context of referring to song titles by The Last Poets from the 1960s and 1970s.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.

Featured Authors

Abiodun Oyewole

Abiodun Oyewole is a poet, teacher and a founding member of the American music and spoken-word group the Last Poets, which laid the groundwork for the emergence of Hip-Hop. Every Sunday for the past 30 years, Oyewole has opened his home to feed his fellow artists with food for thought, body and soul. During these sessions, Oyewole critiques, shares life experiences and a love of poetry with poets, writers and musicians from around the world. Oyewole continues to write poetry (almost every day), and travels around the world performing poetry, teaching workshops and giving lectures on poetry, history and politics.

Read more about Abiodun Oyewole

Baba Donn Babatunde

For almost a quarter century, Baba Don Babatunde, a percussionist very much in demand, has performed with many major American dance companies in the world’s greatest performing-arts venues. His recording career is as equally varied as it vast; the jazz idiom, rhythm and blues, and most African derived percussion styles are represented in his discography. He is one of New York City’s master teachers of African Drumming and the rhythms of the Diaspora in the Americas. He is presently on faculty at the Harlem School of the Arts for over 25 years, teaching all ages.

Read more about Baba Donn Babatunde

Umar Bin Hassan

Born Gilbert Jerome Huling, Umar Bin Hassan is an African-American Poet and one of the original members of the legendary spoken-word group, The Last Poets. Born in Ohio in 1948, as a teenager, he worked a day job at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. By night, Umar was at the centre of the 1967 Akron Riots. Sparked by the Black Power Movement, the riots would become the backdrop of Umar's revolutionary career as a poet. These days he tours with The Last Poets and mentors upcoming poets, splitting his time between the Midwest and Maryland.

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Christine Otten

Christine Otten (1961), writer, performer and theatre maker, is driven by a commitment to social issues; her novels are always inspired by real people or actual events. The Last Poets, her much-deserved literary breakthrough, was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize, has been adapted for the stage and was translated into English. The multifaceted Otten regularly performs at literary festivals and in theatres, is the co-founder and presenter of a literary variety show, and creator of the theatre-project Prison Monologues. She teaches creative writing to prisoners. One of Us is her latest novel.

Read more about Christine Otten

The Last Poets