Music And Words Fill Downtown

Hot Corner Festival and 29th Annual Athens Human Rights Festival

originally published May 2, 2007

8th Annual Hot Corner Festival

The 8th Annual Hot Corner Celebration is Friday night only this year, with all activities centered in The Morton Theatre, at the corner of West Washington and Hull streets downtown. The centerpiece of the evening is Rose of Athens' production of North Star Light: Pathways To Freedom. This play, written by Jon Lipsky and directed by Lisa Cesnik, features local performers Carole Kaboya and Bajo Sonubi, with live music provided by Jason Beckham. North Star Light, by turns harrowing and humorous,

incorporates stories of flights to freedom and includes slave songs which often carried secret messages to guide them and uplift their spirits during their arduous and dangerous journeys.

Silent Hands, a gospel group from the Waggoner Grove Baptist Church in Colbert, GA, will perform before the play. Following the play, the Howard Stroud Jazz Ensemble and the singer-songwriter collective Committee of Vigilance will perform.

Hot Corner was, and, to some extent, still is a center of African-American business, entertainment and social gatherings in Athens. The Hot Corner Festival commemorates and extends awareness of this downtown area with its rich history, vibrant present and future potential.

The Hot Corner Celebration begins at 8 p.m. in the Morton Theatre on Friday, May 4. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged and will go to help support the Black Arts Learning Center. The celebration is presented by the Hot Corner Association, Wilson's Soul Food and the Downtown Development Authority. It is open to all ages. For more information, contact Homer Wilson at 706-543-2080.

29th Athens Human Rights Festival

It's hard to believe the Human Rights Festival folks have been at it for 29 years, but they have, and they'll be back downtown on College Square this weekend speaking truth to power and soothing the savage breast with music. These human rights activists (and who isn't, or shouldn't be one?) are famous for their self-run DIY festivals, devoid of corporate sponsors (unless you count the ads in their newspaper program) and scrupulous about cleaning up after themselves. As usual, there is a diverse lineup of speakers and musicians, including a Saturday morning (10 a.m.–3 p.m.) program for youth. The weekend is such that you can come downtown and hang on every word, or you can drift in and out, tuning in on the bands and speakers you want and then easing away to buy groceries and cut the grass before you come back for more. Enjoy and learn from the Human Rights Festival: an Athens institution more valuable than ever in this age of right-wing rhetoric and cowed communications combines. See www.athenshumanrightsfest.org. Here's the schedule:

Saturday, May 5

• 10 a.m. Center for Development in Central America
• 10:10 a.m. Pam Blanchard & The Sunny-Side Up Band
• 11:10 a.m. George the Story-Teller
• 11:30 a.m. Dr. Arvin Scott & Drumming for Success
• 12:20 p.m. Maggie Hunter & The Montessori Singers
• 12:55 p.m. Rites of Passage
• 1:30 p.m. Ian Dunne
• 1:35 p.m. Girls With Guitars
• 2:20 p.m. Heaven Lee Colt
• 2:25 p.m. Lost Art - Battle of the Bands Teen Category Winner
• 3:10 p.m. Festival Welcome
• 3:15 p.m. Clarke Central High School Human Rights Club, Cedar Shoals High School Battle Against Poverty
• 3:30 p.m. Shank
• 4 p.m. Habitat for Humanity, Food Not Bombs
• 4:15 p.m. Gabriela Mejias
• 4:45 p.m. PACE - Post-Partum Depression, Department of Peace
• 5 p.m. Dancing Flowers for Peace
• 5:15 p.m. Art Rosenbaum
• 5:45 p.m. Open Mic
• 6 p.m. T-Nebula
• 6:30 p.m. Millard Farmer - Attorney and Orator, Women in Black
• 6:45 p.m. Kite to the Moon
• 7:15 p.m. Featured Speaker: Brooke Campbell - Sister of Sgt. Ryan Campbell, KIA in Iraq
• 7:45 p.m. Time Toy
• 8:15 p.m. Alexis Zeigler - Author, Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil and the End of Empire8:30 p.m. Music Hates You
• 9 p.m. Common Ground Athens, Jonathan Robert - School of the Americas Political Prisoner
• 9:15 p.m. Divas After Dark
• 9:45 p.m. GLOBES, UGA Greens
• 10 p.m. Strawberry Flats.

Sunday, May 6

• 2 p.m. Incatepec
• 2:30 p.m. Featured Speaker: Matt Rothschild - Editor, The Progressive2:45 p.m. Hope for Agoldensummer
• 3:15 p.m. Project Safe, Sexual Assault Center of Northeast Georgia
• 3:30 p.m. Tommy Jordan and String Theory
• 4 p.m. Moore's Ford Committee, Economic Justice Coalition
• 4:30 p.m. Omega Rising - Battle of the Bands, Adult Category Winner
• 5 p.m. Open Mic; 5:15 p.m. Phoenix Pharaoh
• 5:45 p.m. Professor Eugene Wilkes - UGA Law School,  UGA Law Students for Choice
• 6 p.m. Breathlanes
• 6:30 p.m. Featured Speaker: Coleman Barks - Poet and Scholar
• 7 p.m. Bearfoot Hookers
• 7:30 p.m. Jubilee Partners Janice Mathis, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
• 7:45 p.m. Squat
• 8:30 p.m. Ed Tant - Athens Writer & Festival Volunteer
• 8:45 p.m. Cosmic Charlie

Pete McCommons