Yesterday on Ujima – Hate Crime, Jazz & LGBT in Africa

~ Cheryl

There were a whole pile of significant anniversaries to consider with last weeks’ show. I’m annoyed that I missed out on wishing 90th happy birthday to Maya Angelou. I did get in that it was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. But we began the show looking back on the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Alex Raikes of SARI, Bristol’s hate crime service, joined me in the studio to look at the state of hate-based crime in the UK, and specifically in Bristol, today.

To lighten the mood a little I was joined after the news by Dave Merrick of local jazz & blues group, Small Days. Dave and his colleague, Natalie Davis, have been wowing audiences around Bristol for some time now, and they have a new show coming up at the Zion Community Arts Centre in Bedminster. The show, called “Ladies First”, is dedicated to jazz divas and will feature covers of songs from the likes of Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Nina Simone.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

My third guest of the day didn’t turn up. Thankfully she’s OK. I found an apologetic email when I got home. Sometimes life gets in the way of being on the radio. Ben the Engineer and I managed to find enough content on the fly to fill in.

In the final segment I played an interview I made at the LGBT History conference in Liverpool last month. It is with Prossy Kakooza, who works with African LGBT asylum seekers in Manchester, and Frankie Edozien, who has recently written a book on LGBT life in Africa. Annoyingly the Listen Again recording cut off with about 9 minutes of the hour to go, but I have the full recording and I’m going to put it out on one of my podcast feeds.

You can listen to (most of) the second half of the show here.

The music for yesterday’s show was as follows:

  • Winston Groovy – The Stephen Lawrence Song
  • The Specials – Nelson Mandela
  • Small Days – God Bless the Child & Ain’t Misbehavin’
  • Small Days –
  • Clipping – The Deep
  • Labi Siffre – So Strong
  • Janelle Monae – Make Me Feel
  • Big Mama Thornton – Hound Dog
  • Jackie Shane – Any Other Way
  • Jama – No Borders

And if you would like to hear more from Small Days there have lots of free songs on SoundCloud.