Saturday, 8/23, 7:30pm
JAMMING at 84 with AVOTCJA
Francisco Herrera, Heshima Mark Williiams & Val Serrant
plus special guests, including San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim,
San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita Kim Shuck,
Jordana, David Kubrin, Kaylah Marin,
Gregory Pond, Maurisa Thompson, Dan Brady
and possibly, schedules permitting,
Rico Pabon & blues guitarist Ronnie Stewart

Join us to celebrate Avotcja’s 84 years on the planet!

Avotcja’s 85th year is already underway!
And she’s going strong!
If you don’t know, find out! At Avotcja.org.
Then tell everybody to tell everybody!

$25 cover charge; students $10; kids free.
Donate more if you can! Avotcja is a natural national hero!
Aside from being among our most valued poets,
Avotcja is a deep musicologist and displays her wares weekly
on KPFA (Tuesdays 8-10pm) and KPOO (Fridays noon-3pm)

Below, you’ll find video of Avotcja’s most recent appearance at Bird & Beckett, in January of this year, with her group Modúpue. We’ve presented Avotcja & Modúpue on the first Sunday of each year for a decade or more, as our way of showing respect to one of the great forces in Bay Area music, poetry and culture, and for the sheer joy of it. The constellation of musicians who make up Modúpue include the bassist Heshima Mark Williams and steel pan master Val Serrant, violinist Sandi Poindexter, saxophonist Francis Wong, pianist Jon Jang, percussionist Raul Ramirez, talking drum virtuoso Baba Ken Okulolo, the late vibes player Yancy Taylor and others!. 

For the past four years, since Avotcja turned 80, we’ve invited her to our stage in the late summer to celebrate her birthday. As with this 84th birthday celebration, she’s joined on these mid-year celebrations by members of Modúpue along with others from the San Francisco Bay Area’s wonderful community of multi-cultural musicians, poets, artists, culture workers & eulipions, including the Paraguayan born harpist Carlos Reyes,

the Jewish-American drummer Myron Cohen, pianist Rudi Mwongozi, and next generation musical prodigies Genius Wesley, Isaac Coyle and Luis Peralta. All converging to carry forward the wisdom, joy and vibe of Avotcja’s ancestors, mentors, collaborators, students and fellow travelers on an arc that extends from Africa to the Caribbean, South America to New York City, where Avotcja grew up in the Afro Puerto Rican community interlaced with immigrant American cultures from all over the globe. This is the America we’re proud to inhabit.

Along with Avotcja, Bird & Beckett salutes the African disapora culture in America and Avotcja’s cultural siblings, aunts & uncles in jazz including Black Arthur Blythe, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and all the greats who live on. Bright moments!