Arts & Entertainment
The ninth annual African American Cultural Festival will offer the exhibit Freedom: The Story of Us, along with plenty of children’s activities, vendors, dancing, mini-lectures and more. The festival is from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Hartford Park in Oak Bluffs on July 25 and 26. It is sponsored by The Cottagers of Martha’s Vineyard.
Guitar lessons are coming to the West Tisbury Library this fall thanks to a grant from the Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard. The $2,400 grant allows the purchase of six good quality student guitars, and Steve Maxner is set to teach the free classes for both young adult and adult Islanders.
The Harlem Quartet returns to the Vineyard with two concerts, July 15 at 8 p.m. at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown and on July 16 at 8 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Center. The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society is producing the event.
Teens can find out if they have the right stuff at the Write Stuff summer poetry workshop running July 15 to 19 at Alex’s Place at the Martha’s Vineyard YMCA in Oak Bluffs. Enrollment is open for teens ages 13 to 18 for this 9 a.m. to noon writing experience.
On July 4th a group of writers and artists gathered on the beach at the Little Bridge in Oak Bluffs. They were not there to sunbathe or go swimming. Instead, they took turns raising their voices in the wind and reading from a speech first given by Frederick Douglass in 1852 in Rochester, N.Y.
On the day that celebrates the birth of independence and political freedom for this nation, Mr. Douglass’s speech, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, reminded those in attendance that the nation’s freedom was not a universal experience.
The stage was filled nearly to capacity with musicians, fans and their instruments. The crowd was raucous. The lights were bright.
As a special birthday treat to Derek Davies, one of the organizers of the Stars & Stripes Festival, the band St. Lucia was going to play their hit single September with the help of Haerts and a full entourage of Derek’s friends. St. Lucia’s frontman Jean-Philip Grobler pressed keys and twisted knobs on his synthesizer, cueing up September’s opening chords.
