{"id":36791,"date":"2025-11-04T01:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/36791\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T01:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:36:12","slug":"grand-lake-theatre-hosting-film-concert-honoring-singer-barbara-dane-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/36791\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Lake Theatre hosting film, concert honoring singer Barbara Dane"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one would have been more pleased with the Rebel Women\u2019s Voices<\/a> series than vocalist Barbara Dane.<\/a><\/p>\n

During her long, eventful journey she held her own with era-defining artists across the musical landscape, from Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan<\/a> to Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins and Pete Seeger.<\/p>\n

By every measure, the longtime Oakland resident, who died in October 2024 at the age of 97, lived an epic life, combining mastery of blues and traditional jazz with a passion for civil rights and leftist politics. Veteran filmmaker Maureen Gosling shoehorned her myriad adventures into the 2023 documentary \u201cThe 9 Lives of Barbara Dane,\u201d which plays Nov. 5 at Grand Lake Theater.<\/p>\n

The hometown screening, a benefit for radio station KPFA-FM 94.1, is also the latest edition of Rebel Women\u2019s Voices, a program that pairs \u201c9 Lives\u201d with performers carrying on Dane\u2019s legacy. Following the film and a Q&A with Gosling and producer Jed Rife, The Nov. 5 event features a concert by Miko Marks, the Oakland vocalist who\u2019s been at the forefront of a wave of Black women earning renown in country music.<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend turned me on to her song \u2018Ancestors,\u2019 and it\u2019s just incredible,\u201d said Gosling, referring to the 2021 gospel-country anthem that Marks recorded with her band the Resurrectors (who\u2019ll join her at Grand Lake). \u201cIt\u2019s political but not hit-you-over-the-head, talking about standing on the shoulders of the ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marks wasn\u2019t familiar with Dane\u2019s music before she connected with Gosling, but after seeing \u201c9 Lives\u201d she felt a deep kinship with her. Dane often referred scornfully to her \u201cso-called career,\u201d as she walked away from opportunities for fame and lucrative gigs in favor of lending her voice to struggles for racial equality, peace, and improved labor conditions.<\/p>\n

\"OaklandOakland singer Miko Marks will perform during a screening of “9 Lives of Barbara Day” in Oakland. (Courtesy of Miko Marks)\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, Dane turned down gigs and television appearances when presenters pressured her to alter her integrated band by dropping the great Creole bassist Wellman Braud, who\u2019d anchored the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the 1920s and \u201830s.<\/p>\n

Marks has spent years building a profile in Nashville, a struggle that she relates to Dane\u2019s path. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m one of those who took the road less traveled,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s from Detroit, I\u2019m from Flint. She could have been this huge commercial artist, but wanted to sing about meaningful subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond Dane\u2019s politics, what stood out for Marks was the power of her voice. At a time when the classic 1920s blues sound of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey had largely disappeared, Dane brought such authority to the idiom that she was hailed by Black colleagues like Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the anointing we talk about in the Black community,\u201d Marks said. \u201cShe had this raw, deep, rich, soulful contralto kind of voice. For her to be mentioned by Dizzy Gillespie and Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins spoke to her skill and the power of her voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebel Women\u2019s Voices isn\u2019t Gosling\u2019s first rodeo when it comes to combining film and live music. She got her start in the documentary world in the mid-1970s as a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Academy Award-winning Berkeley filmmaker Les Blank, whose intimate portraits of American roots musicians encompassed bluesman Mance Lipscomb, Cajun revivalists Mark and Ann Savoy, Mardi Gras Indians, polka aficionados, and the recently departed norte\u00f1o accordion maestro Flaco Jim\u00e9nez.<\/p>\n

Adding live music to film premieres \u201cmade it a much bigger deal, and it is always really fun,\u201d Gosling recalled. \u201cMore than one time at the Telluride Film Festival we had Cajun music and dance and food with the Savoys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c9 Lives\u201d premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2023 in conjunction with a sold-out concert at Sweetwater Music Hall featuring Dane\u2019s son, Cuban rocker Pablo Menendez, with Dane\u2019s band led by pianist Tammy Hall. The guest artists included Holly Near and the Chambers Brothers\u2019 Willie Chambers (with whom Dane recorded a classic album gospel album).<\/p>\n

The Grand Lake screening is a tribute to Dane\u2019s daughter Nina Menendez, who died 10 months after her mother in August at the age of 69. A respected flamenco singer who founded the Bay Area Flamenco Festival, Menendez launched the Barbara Dane Legacy Project in the late aughts, seeking to share the wealth of material Dane had gathered over the years.<\/p>\n

Starting with the 2018 double album \u201cHot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs,\u201d an anthology released by Smithsonian Folkways spanning six decades of Dane\u2019s music-making, Menendez also oversaw her mother\u2019s 2022 autobiography \u201cThis Bell Still Rings: My Life of Defiance and Song.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe really had the fantasy of having a film about her mom,\u201d said Gosling, who knew Dane casually from parties thrown by Arhoolie Records\u2019 Chris Strachwitz, \u201cwhen she\u2019d show up and jam with the musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking for a new project, Gosling got a sense of Dane\u2019s depth and breadth when Menendez \u201cintroduced us to the archives, with all the recordings, posters, photos, and letters from Ella Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, and Marcel Marceau. Whoa, she\u2019s got a story!\u201d<\/p>\n

With Rebel Women\u2019s Voices, Dane\u2019s story continues to resonate.<\/p>\n

Contact Andrew Gilbert at\u00a0jazzscribe@aol.com.<\/p>\n

\u20189 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE\u2019<\/p>\n

Film screening featuring live performance by Miko Marks<\/p>\n

When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 5<\/p>\n

Where: Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland<\/p>\n

Tickets: $25; www.renaissancerialto.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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