Meet Makeda Kumasi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Makeda Kumasi.

Hi Makeda, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have always liked to perform. As a child, my cousins and I would put on talent shows for our elders at family reunions. All my relatives played an instrument of some sort: my uncles, aunts, cousins, and father, who played jazzy blues on the piano. I always enjoyed talking and dancing. I was often seen spinning around in circles while holding conversations with friends and family. I liked playing dress up and other characters and creating costumes. I enjoyed Halloween and still do. I often say I participate, not celebrate, because it is an excuse for me to dress up and mascaraed as a different character in public.

I excelled in art in K-12. Not really drawing, although now I am pretty proficient at visual art. I loved writing, whereas music, theater, and dance became my thing. I was in my high school’s production of Bye Bye Birdie, and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. I would take the lead in choreographing dances for the Black Student Union functions and the Black History assemblies. I loved being on the dance team and taking photos for the yearbook. As a senior in High School, my involvement in the Arts was recognized as I was granted the honor of being a California Arts Scholar for my achievement in dance. I guess that is truly where it all started.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I think there is a saying that nothing good comes easy. Struggles or challenges become the lessons that make us stronger and wiser. My challenges include being a wife, mother, and caregiver while trying to maintain a business and career. These aspects of my life become a great juggling act because time must be invested in to each one. There are only so many hours in the day, plus you must sleep!

Getting sufficient rest, I’m sure, is a struggle for most successful persons. It is an essential part of daily self-care that can be detrimental to our health as well as our prosperity.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am the founder of WE 3 PRODUCTIONS, as well as the co-founder and artistic director of The Umoja Ensemble of the Inland Empire. For 15 years, I have been a beacon of Pan-African Arts and education for all ages in the Inland Empire, working extensively with the youth through various performing arts programs, including “The Sesh Project”, as well as receiving grants to produce cultural events including, Inland Empire’s Ultimate Doundounba Festival in Riverside.

Along with being a featured performer on stage and T.V., I have danced for two prominent Southern California-based African dance ensembles, Abalaye African Dancers; an Orange County Arts Group, and Niancho Eniyaley African Performers, and have performed in several popular American Musicals including a role as Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie, and Cha-Cha in Grease. Furthermore, she has written and directed several plays and multi-media productions, including I Know Women; Soliloquies of Feminine Comprehension which was featured as a UCR ARTSblock event in 2015, where I debuted a Neo-African dance work in progress entitled “Lift”. I have been featured on MTV’s Starting Over, BET’s Fly Poet, and the first season of So You Think You Can Dance?, as well as several independent films and theater projects, including The Last Emancipation by Richard O. Jones and Clickbait 2018 by Michael J. Epstein. I have written two books, 12 Days in Senegal; An Artist’s Journey, Xlibris, 2016. I See Hip Hop Afrika, Xlibris, 2015. And I am working on a few other books that will feature my recent study tour in Egypt.

Also, I am a University of California, Riverside Continuing lecturer in the Department of Dance, as well as a Lecturer in the Department of Theater, Film and Digital Production, where I directed TFDP’s 2019 productions of Marisol by José Rivera and Little Shop of Horrors by Howard Ashman. Recently, I became an adjunct professor in the Performing Arts Department at Long Beach City College (LBCC), where I will be presenting a West African Dance piece in the Fall Production, October 2023. In the Summer of 2021, I released my first wide-release album, A Spoken Word Experience, including music videos for the tracks Maat and Electricity. Currently, I am expanding the tour of my multimedia show, Urban Djali Tour, which is based on the album. The Urban Djali Tour show features various dance genres, original videos, photography, and paintings, as well as music from West African instruments that I play, including a 21-string Malian instrument called the kora.

This year, I received 2023 Living Cultures Grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts as a Culture Bearer and their Apprentice Grant in 2019. In July this year, it was announced that my Performing Arts project, in collaboration with Joy Wilson and Monique Williams-Randolph, as one of the 26 individual artists to receive a California Arts Council grant through Creative Corps Inland Empire to be the lead artists in the production of a year-long performing arts project titled “Dancing with the Leaders of the Inland Empire”.

My commitment to community, culture, and creativity set me apart from others. I hold proud of the torch that my elders have passed down to me and attempt to pass it on to my children and the youth of the community. As a Culture Bearer, I find a responsibility to study and maintain tradition, as well as reflect the times through my artworks. I think the extent of the arts of which I engage in, also sets me apart. I consider myself not just a triple threat (sing, act, dance) yet a multi-demential artist with skills in visual arts, writing, filmmaking, directing, choreographing, and more.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
As a child, I always enjoyed talking and dancing. I was often seen spinning around in circles while holding conversations with friends and family. Back in the day, my cousins and I would put on talent shows for our elders at family reunions. All my relatives played an instrument of some sort, my uncles, aunts, cousins, and father, who played jazzy blues on the piano, so it became a tradition that we would have jam and dance sessions every year.

My cousins and I would spend one whole day, right before the reunion festivities, to choreograph dance pieces and practice singing our favorite top 100 songs. They would always cheer me on into doing an “African Dance” solo. African Dance is in quotations because I really had little idea what I was doing. I would recall a remanence of a Kwanzaa recital dance, contracting and arching my back, hard and quick, hands tucked behind my back, elbows swinging like a bird. That always seemed to get the loudest roar from the elders. It is a memory that I will always cherish.

Pricing:

• $10 -15 books

Contact Info:

• Website: makedakumasi.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makedakumasi/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makeda.kumasi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/makeda-kumasi-37ab1a101/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/makedakumasi?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosOMa5bHu31EM-z8y_W7Rg
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/makedakumasi

Image Credits
William Jones Photograpy Archchives of WE 3 PRODUCTIONS