Beyond Dreams: Hip Hop Performances and Immigration Panel

Join us for BEYOND DREAMS pt. 3 Saturday FEBRUARY 20th!
Featuring performances by
BAMBU
NAIMA SHALHOUB
DIANA GAMEROS
KIN FOLKZ
STEELO (DJ set)
HOSTED by RAW- G
IMMIGRATION PANEL DISCUSSION W/ ALL THE ARTISTS Moderated by DAVEY D starts at 7PM
Live Painting by James Gayles Art
$12 Advance, $16 Door

Beyond Dreams is a series that celebrates the cultural richness and diversity that immigrants contribute to our communities through the performing arts.
Feb. 20 is the third installment of a four-month long series of panel discussions, performances, pre-show workshops, and community events at schools and other community sites and public spaces showcasing artists who engage the four elements of hip-hop in their work and are also immigrants with both the greater hip-hop culture and the pressing dialogue in immigration policy in the United States. The project is a cultural activist series that makes an asserted attempt to bridge the cutting-edge music of artists with their identity as immigrants uncovering some of the important historical and current day dialectic through music, dialogue, activism, and community engagement. Beyond Dreams makes the link between immigration and the arts, and has the capacity to educate all audiences but particular young people about the contributions of immigrants to our culture and musical heritage, especially here in the Bay Area. Each event will showcase the impact of music and art by immigrants and the impact on the hip hop movement and arts and culture locally and globally. This series builds on the 2012 NEA supported program Hip Hop Beyond Gender, a project that illuminated the inherent connection between hip hop culture and the struggle against misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. BeyondImmigrant Dreams takes the art form of hip-hop and explores it within another civil rights struggle of time in the context of immigration, documentation, and “dreamers.”

Live performances by:
Bambu
Bambu music is not for mere performance – he utilizes his music as a tool for a larger goal – to reach and support youth who face similar issues that he did, and move them to question what goes on in the world.  Bambu has reached audiences across the country and internationally with his explosive and engaging live performance, and has shared the stage with such acts as Common, X-Clan, Medusa, Dilated Peoples, Psycho Realm, Planet Asia, Zion-I, the Blue Scholars, Immortal Technique, the Visionaries, Pac Div and more. For more on Bambu, visit www.bambu.la.
Naima Shalhoub 
Naima Shalhoub is a vocalist, composer, musician, actress, and educator. A first-generation Lebanese American, Shalhoub’s parents were born in Sierra Leone and raised in Lebanon weaving her artistic influences at a young age with a range of sounds and cultures that reflect in her music and work. After receiving her MA in 2008 in Postcolonial and Cultural Anthropology, Naima turned her focus toward music and song as vessels for freedom, advocating for social justice and inspiration for healing and feeling deeper.
Diana Gameros
Diana Gameros creates authentic, inspiring music that reflects the 21st century experiences of a young indie artist at the borderlands between cultures, languages, and genres. Whether teasing every ounce of expression from her acoustic guitar in an intimate cafe or bringing people to their feet in a club with her dynamic full band, Gameros transfixes listeners with her soaring vocals, impressive playing and captivating stage presence.
Kin Folkz
Kin Folkz is the founder and CEO of Oakland’s Spectrum Queer Media,  is founder and host of Oakland Queer Open Mic, a published author, poet, Creative Artivist! Indigenous Digital Interstellar Dandy, Two-spirit Queer Mama – Solution Wired – Matrix moving maven.
Raw-G
Raw-G Born and raised in Gaudalajara Mexico. She brings her own distinct cross-cultural, multi-lingual, politically charged Hip-Hop to the Bay Area music scene captivating audiences with her passionate and aggressive performances. Raw-G developed an engaging, insightful, social conscious flow that challenges our musical and gender preconceptions of Hip-Hop culture.
Davey D 
Davey D is a journalist and Hip Hop activist who is originally from the Bronx and now lives in Oakland where he does a daily radio show –Hard Knock Radio heard on KPFA 94.1 FM and writes a column for the San Jose Mercury news.  Davey D also teaches a class on Hip Hop culture and politics at SF State. He maintains the website Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner which is one of the oldest and largest Hip Hop websites.

$12 Advance, $16 Door