Hanifa Walina

African American poet, playwright, musician, and actress Hanifah Walidah performs her highly praised multi-character one-woman show. The place is Anyblock, USA. There is Dee, who runs the neighborhood daycare and takes care of all of the 9-5 mama's babies. There's the Cheatam clan, who runs the Friday fish-fry. There's Top Pop the elder (nobody knows how old exactly), Cuzin' Puddi', a social worker and Top Pop's favorite manchild. Just down the block is Lynn who sells incense, books, and loves ladies with pretty feet. Across the street is the Church of Love Everlasting with Pastor Ebonise Preeds. And at the end of the block there is The Last Stop, where Ms. Invincible stands on a soap box that reads "Say Yo' Peace" and speaks to the one who counts the stars.

Hanifah plays an entire neighborhood of characters linked together in a polyrhythmic mesh of love and life's lessons. Straight Black Folk' Guide to Gay Black Folks approaches the topic of homophobia in the black community by remaining true to the familiar as it blurs the lines and giggles in the faces of sexuality, health, love, faith, and fear.

Hanifah says that she is "fed up with the ostracization of gay folks in the black community. The feeling that we are, on some level, less than black or 'bringing down the race' or my favorite 'a creation of white folks.' I was raised by a black mother, around black people, music, tastes and smells. My story has no more or less tears and laughter than the statistical black experience. My experience is my own but is shared extensively by a vast number of black peoples. The bottom line mission is to make inclusive the gay black experience with the 'black experience' in its entirety." The recently transplanted New Yorker premiered Straight Black Folks Guide to Gay Black Folks at The Black Box in Oakland in October 2002.

Hanifah Walidah Biography

Hanifah Walidah is an artist amongst the artists. First introduced as Sha-Key with the 1994 Hip Hop LP release, A Headnadda's Journey to Adidi-Skizm, helping to dismantle some of the given expectations of women in hip hop. She has since, along with reclaiming her birth name (Hanifah Walidah), developed a vocal and performance style that is rooted in the midnight of blues, the backrooms of house, the silent moments of soul and the unshaken will of hip hop. Where to place her in the musical and performance spectrum may always be up for debate, but where to find her is clearly an inch below the skin and just right of the point.

Born in the Bronx and raised in Yonkers, Hanifah has always entered and exited as a pioneer. In the early 90's she spearheaded and laid the foundation for the hip hop poetic revolution in New York with collectives Vibe Khameleons and The Boom Poetic. She signed to Imago records in 1993 to release her debut album A Headnadda's Journey to Adidi-Skizm (Imago) which produced the infectious single Soulsville. She continued to perform with the Boom Poetic which was an early platform for groups like the Roots and Rahzel the Godfather of Noyze. She and the Boom Poetic were also featured on the Lolapolooza tour of 1994.

With the demise of Imago Records and her contract, Hanifah Walidah (then Sha-Key) started to explore other vocal styles while touring in Europe in 1995 on the 19-city Vibe Khameleon Trans Euro Tour. Somewhere between Nottingham and Lussanne, Hanifah planted the seeds of what would be her present day sound. The years to follow would be dedicated to collecting dues on stages around the world while recording and touring with groups like The Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Along this timeline she recorded with BFE LP’s Cool, Steady and Easy, In the Buzzbag and Make Them Like It, also releasing singles Ducking Lessons (Connected Compilation CD), Not Every Angel (Alex Kid's Bienevenue) and Woman Thing (BFE/Make'm Like it).

Along with music, Hanifah Walidah's theatrical background is just as rich. A long standing member of the WOW Theater Collective in NYC she was producer and host of Rivers of Honey, an improv and open theater night for women of color. She was also co-writer and actor of the stage play Bloom (Ain't I A Flower), which had runs at both WOW and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1999. Bloom was a cast (on and offstage) made up of entirely Black, Latina, straight and lesbian women that weaved a fantastical story around mother and daughter relationships, dreams and disappointment. It took place in an imaginary front yard divided between Flower Bed Heights, Pollen Projects and the parallel reality of 3 young girls growing up within it. Web site: www.trustlife.net.