Black arts and music

This year's National Black Arts Festival includes a musical menu featuring folk, blues, jazz, contemporary R&B and much more, enough to satisfy virtually any appetite for African-American music and culture. Highlighting the festivities are performances by the female a cappella sextet Sweet Honey in the Rock, R&B songsters Ashford & Simpson and the piano jazz group the Geri Allen Trio. The Geri Allen Trio perform Satur-day, July 29, at Spivey Hall. Pianist Allen studied jazz in high school in Detroit, later earning a degree in jazz studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She subsequently moved to New York, where she studied with pianist Kenny Barron, before earning a master's degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. She's recorded for Blue Note and more recently for Verve, with mid-'90s recordings under the guidance of jazz icon Ornette Coleman. The show begins at 8:15 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $20. For more info, call 770-961-3683 or visit www.spiveyhall.org.

Allen will perform later that night with her trio at a "Midnight Jam" session at the Renaissance Hotel. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band also hosts a late-night show, on Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 11 p.m., and several other late jams take place throughout the coming week. Admission for the jam sessions is $10.

The Renaissance also features free afternoon performances throughout the festival. For example, on Friday, July 28, pianist Gary Motley kicks off the series of 5 p.m. performances; other afternoon shows include Bill Anschell on Saturday, July 29, Kenny Banks on Tuesday, Aug. 1, and Teri Harper on Wednesday, Aug. 2. The Renaissance Hotel is located at 590 W. Peachtree St. For more info, phone 404-881-6000.

Sweet Honey in the Rock performs Friday, Aug. 3, in King Chapel at Morehouse College. Bernice Johnson Reagon founded the group, which blends spirituals, jazz, blues and traditional African music in a politically conscious approach. Reagon, a native of Doughterty County, Ga., near Albany, and a graduate of Spelman College, was a member of the first Youth Chapter of the NAACP, dating to 1959, and was active in the civil rights movement. In the early '60s, she joined the Freedom Singers, performing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. Reagon also performed with the Harambee Singers in the late '60s before founding Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973, emerging from her work with the Washington, D.C. Black Repertory Company. The show begins at 8:30 p.m. Admission is $25. For more info, call 404-215-2608.

The following morning, Reagon will lead a discussion group on the topic, "Artist As Activist: Political and Social Movements As Inspiration." Also including photographer Roland Freeman, spoken word artist Carl Hancock Rux and visual artist Charnelle Holloway, the group will meet at 11 a.m. at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African Culture and History.

Later, on Saturday, Aug. 4, the R&B songwriting/vocal duo Ashford and Simpson perform at the Atlanta Civic Center, on a bill with poet Maya Angelou. Nickolas Ashford, 58, and Valerie Simpson, 53, broke into the music business as songwriters, penning Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," Diana Ross' "Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand," Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman," as well as hits for Ray Charles, Gladys Knight and others. The greatest success of their own recording and performing career began in the mid-'70s and lasted for roughly a decade, featuring R&B hits "Don't Cost You Nothing" and "It Seems to Hang On." The show begins at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $25. For more info, call 404-523-6275.

While those are among the biggest names appearing at the festival, it's only a sampling of what's available. For example: Other performances include an Afro-Cuban concert with Vocal Baobob, a Havana-based roots group that specializes in Yoruba chants, bata and rumba rhythms (Sat., July 29, 7 p.m., Georgia State University, Urban Life Auditorium, free admission); a concert by West African guitarist Ali Farka Toure (Sat., Aug. 5, 8:30 p.m., Variety Playhouse, $18 in advance, $23 the day of the show; for info: 404-524-7354).

Local and national blues artists are spotlighted at the Great Atlanta Blues Revue, Friday through Sunday at Woodruff Park. For more info, call 404-525-0525 or visit www.sweetauburn .com (see also the Talkin' Blues column in Vibes).

In addition, from Aug. 3-6, the festival will celebrate its "homecoming" on the campuses of the Atlanta University Center, with performances by Ann Nesby, Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble, Coolbone, Francine Reed, James Bignon, OutKast and Goodie Mob, Sandra Hall and others.

Full coverage of __The National Black Arts Festival

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