Contact: Jack Bailey (304) 766-4109 Jbaile19@wvstateu.edu
INSTITUTE, W.Va.West Virginia State University (WVSU) will host performances on Thursday, Feb.7, by Miyamoto is Black Enough (MiBE) a contemporary band featuring hard driving rhythms and social commentary delivered by spoken word poetry.
MiBE will have an educational performance at 12:30 p.m. that will include discussions and a question and answer session with the audience, then at 7 p.m. the quartet will perform in concert. Both performances will take place in the theater of the Davis Fine Arts Building and are free and open to the public.
MiBE features the poetry of Roger Bonair-Agard, and the compositions of Andy Akiho (steelpan and percussion) with Jeffrey Zeigler on cello and Sean Dixon on drums. Bonair-Agard’s most recent book of poems, “Where Brooklyn At,” will be on sale and available for signing after the show. Light refreshments will also be served.
MiBE’s music has been described as “Maybe it’s punk, or funk, or new poetry punk, or acid new music; but whatever it is, Miyamoto is Black Enough is pulling audiences out of their seats with a combination of poems and complex musical compositions which together speak directly and forcefully to the issues of all our times, with driving and hypnotic beats.”
The group is named after Ariana Miyamoto, a Japanese national who grew up as a self-described mixed race “hafu,” the child of an African-American father and Japanese mother. After winning Miss Universe Japan 2015, many Japanese expressed concern that she was not Japanese enough.
MiBE’s performance is one of a series of Black History Month events taking place at WVSU during February.
MiBE is presented by WVSU in partnership with CARE (Call to Action for Racial Equality) and with support by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, an agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
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