Black Act Conference Kalamazoo

"No fat on black artists." That's what LeRoi Ray, co-ordinator of the Black Arts Conference, said as he summed up the weekend 's activities at Western Michigan University. But with this conference, the brothers and sisters who put creativity in our lives and meaning in our community got a little exposure. A predominantly student audience of about 300 listened to and viewed the wordsworks of poets like Eugene Perkins and ' Sonia Sánchez, theater folk like Demon Smith of the Afro-Centric Theater group and John McCantsof W.M.U.,and painters jon Lockard and jeff Donaldson. Ray, director of the Black Americana Studies Center at W.M.U., ndicated that with the success of this conference he will be planning to produce another next year. But more than this, the artists themselves taiked about coming together and producing an arts conference on their own. Praise the Lord ! The Afro-Centric (Detroit), Imani Ujima (WIVÍUKalamazoo) and Afro-Renaissance (EMU Ypsilanti) theatres discussed performing a weekend of shows coupled with workshops on theater, and the Associated Black Publishers of Detroit talked of putting on an all-African literar ture seminar. It is this kind of self-determination that will explode the arts in our environment. The conference was not without problems. At the last ute the university cut down on the number of dorm rooms that were available to the attendees, forcing many out-of-towners to sleep n some of Kalamazoo's flea-bag hotels and motels. Some of the artist-workshop leaders didn't show up, so that subs had to be pressed nto service. And, while they did the job, subs tend to give the mpression of untogetherness. On Saturday the action was supposed to start at 9:00 a.m. with a presentaron by Jeff Donaldson of Howard University. Donaldson got there, but you know us. We arrived all the way up to lunchtime. But we got there on TIME for the disco that evening. Party hardy, negroes. But for all of it, it was down. Clean country air and spacious facilities. Creative concepts and boss black folk. Good show, LeRoi Ray & Black Americana Studies. Do t again-one rhore time.