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Marcel Diallo (born October 9, 1972) is an American musician, poet, artist and community builder, known for his founding of the Black Dot Artists Collective, [The Black New World] and his revitalization efforts in West Oakland's historic, predominantly African-American Prescott neighborhood aka the Lower Bottoms.

Biography

Diallo was born and raised in Richmond, California. Diallo is the eldest of four children. After graduating from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with a B.A. in philosophy, Diallo moved back to the Bay Area, settling in Oakland while earning a Master's Degree at John F. Kennedy University in Consciousness Studies. In Oakland he became involved in Oakland's cafe poetry scene. He opened a poetry venue, The Black Dot Cafe in 1998. He has four sons with his partner, the painter and writer Letitia Inyang Ntofon.

Career

Diallo began as an open mic poet emcee. In 1996 he founded the Black Dot Artists' Collective with his friend Robert Jamal Jackson and Oakland percussionist Kele Nitoto. In this same year, they began a monthly open mic called Rhyme Ritual at The Java House in Oakland.

In 1997, Diallo released a hip hop album, The Shaman and The Nigga God. He debuted the album as a theater piece in Black Dot's first Ritual Theater 2000 Festival in the spring of 1998 at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, Ca.

Around this same time, Diallo and his Black Dot Artists Collective opened the Black Dot Cafe in Oakland and began weekly programing that included an Artist Workshop with Boots Riley from the Coup, Blue Note Jazz Trumpeter/Sun Ra Arkestra alumnus Eddie Gale, an open mic night called The Word and an afterschool workshop called Beats, Flows & Videos.

As a performance artist and an activist, Marcel Diallo has performed and shared the stage with such legendary poets and artists as Amiri Baraka, The Last Poets, David Murray, Kahil El Zabar, Sonia Sanchez, Kamau Da'oud, Marvin X, Piri Thomas, Micheal McClure, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Gierrmo Gomez Peña, as well as actor Don Cheadle.

By the year 2000, Diallo's artistry, activism and entreprenturism earned him a feature spot in the Source Magazine's Dreaming Americans series and served to introduce Diallo to a national audience.

At this time Diallo was becoming active land-based community building in West Oakland's Lower Bottoms, with the intent of making sure that African-Americans residents did not get displaced by the rapid wave of gentrification that was taking hold of the historically black neighborhood. He purchased property from his great aunt which originally belong to his great-grandfather, sold it and used the proceeds to help purchase a house for his elderly grandparents and to secure a permanent headquarters for the Black Dot Artists Collective in the Bottoms. He also coined the name Village Bottoms for the district he revitalized as a way of retaining an aspect of the neighborhood's vernacular nomenclature, i.e "Bottoms" and at the same time reasserting the neighborhood's identity as a quaint and historic "Village". His vision for the area is a "Black Cultural District" much like it was before BART and the Post Office destroyed the original West Oakland Black Cultural District along Seventh Street by using urban renewal policies and eminent domain in the 1960s and 70s. While some of his anonymous internet critics and determined detractors continuously attempt to undermine his efforts by characterizing them as "exclusively black", Diallo and many of his non-black supporters have been quoted in countless mainstream media stating that the revitalization of Oakland's oldest Black neighborhood is for the benefit of all residents of Oakland, regardless of race, color or creed. [San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2000, Diallo was selected to show his first visual arts installation, Scrapyard Ghosts, at ProArts Gallery in Old Oakland. Diallo has since opened galleries in Oakland's Prescott neighborhood. He has also exhibited and guest curated at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. To date Diallo has curated exhibits featuring Former Black Panther Emory Douglas, West Oakland sculptor Bruce Beasley, Eesuu Orundide, Keba Konte, Githinji Wa Mbire, Kevin Slagle, Don Fortescue and others.

As a writer, Diallo has self-published one book of poetry. He also has a forthcoming book of prose, short stories and poetry entitled, Black New World Manifesto, with a forward by Amiri Baraka. It set to be released by his company, Black Dot Cafe Press in February 2009. The book is a companion to a 2008 show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, entitled "Bay Area Now".

Discography

Album/EPs The Shaman & The Nigga God (1997) Shadows & Moonlight (1998) Overdue Babies (2003) Honey Suga Love (2009)

Bibliography

The Last Will And Testament of Shitworker Jainkins: Prosessays & Bastard Literature, 1998

Exhibitions

West Oakland Today/Scrapyard Ghosts, ProArts Gallery, 1998 (artist) Reparations!, Asian Resource Gallery, Oakland Chinatown, 1999 (artist) Sampling Oakland/ Eastside Story, YBCA, 2006 (guest curator & artist) OSHUN, Cornelia Bell's Black Bottom Gallery, Oakland, 2007(artist) Decolonization! An installation of Self-Rule, Cornelia Bell's Black Bottoms Gallery, Oakland, 2007 (curator & artist) Betcha Bottom Dollar: An Underground Currency Game, Cornelia Bell's Black Bottom Gallery, Oakland, 2007 ( curator & artist) Black Panther: The Cultural Ministry of Emory Douglas, ART@THE CANNERY, Oakland, 2008 (curator & artist) West Oakland at The Moment, ART@THE CANNERY, Oakland, 2008 (curator & artist) Ekpu & The Fattening House: The Art of Inyang Ntofon, ART@ THE CANNERY (curator) BAN5/ The Black New World Recipe Book One: Sanctified Gumbo, Yerba Buena Center for The Arts, 2008 (guest curator & artist)

^[1] [Against Gentrification: Marcel Diallo sees a black cultural district where Oakland's the Bottoms neighborhood now stands by Anne Stuhldreher, Sunday, January 21, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/21/CMG93N6V7B1.DTL]

[The Black Dot: An interview wit’ Marcel Diallo by Minister of Information JR , Wednesday, 23 May 2007, The Bayview Newspaper http://blackdotcafe.blogspot.com/2007/06/marcel-diallo-interview-by-jr-valrey-in.html]

[Roots For The Future: West Oakland, California's Black New World club forges a fresh artistic community in the shadows of a once-thriving district. By Jamilah King, February 20, 2008, Wiretap Magazine http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/43420/]

[NATION: The Fine Art of Rebuilding West Oakland by Richard Gonzales, Morning Edition, February 16, 2007 - NPR]

[The Odd Couple: How developer Rick Holliday reached out to community activist Marcel Diallo to pave the way for Central Station. By Rachel Swan, August 27, 2008 East Bay Express]

[Hipster Invasion: Downtown Oakland's fledgling art scene is booming — and some artists and residents aren't terribly happy about it. By David Downs August 30, 2006 East Bay Express]

[Chief's greatest triumph comes after his death by Marcel Diallo. Oakland Tribune. July 25, 2005. EDITOR'S NOTE: Marcel Diallo, 32, is an Oakland-based musician, writer and cultural historian. His family came to the Bay Area from New Orleans as part of the great migration West by blacks in search]

[Black Dot Artists Collective: Evolving Tradition in West Oakland By Sonya Smith, Feb 15, 2008, CityFlight.com]

References

^ Sources

[1] Sources

[1]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{Like-resume|date=November 2008}}
 {{Wikify|date=November 2008}}
-'''Marcel Diallo''' (born October 9, 1972) is an American musician, artist and real-estate developer, known as the leader of the Black Dot Artists Collective, [The Black New World] and his attempts to exclude people who are not of African decent from living in the Prescott neighborhood of Oakland, California.
+'''Marcel Diallo''' (born October 9, 1972) is an American musician, poet, artist and community builder, known for his founding of the Black Dot Artists Collective, [The Black New World] and his revitalization efforts in West Oakland's historic, predominantly African-American Prescott neighborhood aka the Lower Bottoms.
 == Biography ==
@@ Line 17: / Line 18: @@
 By the year 2000, Diallo's artistry, activism and entreprenturism earned him a feature spot in the Source Magazine's Dreaming Americans series and served to introduce Diallo to a national audience.
+At this time Diallo was becoming active land-based community building in West Oakland's Lower Bottoms, with the intent of making sure that African-Americans residents did not get displaced by the rapid wave of gentrification that was taking hold of the historically black neighborhood.  He purchased property from his great aunt which originally belong to his great-grandfather, sold it and used the proceeds to help purchase a house for his elderly grandparents and to secure a permanent headquarters for the Black Dot Artists Collective in the Bottoms.  He also coined the name [[Village Bottoms]] for the district he revitalized as a way of retaining an aspect of the neighborhood's vernacular nomenclature, i.e "Bottoms" and at the same time reasserting the neighborhood's identity as a quaint and historic "Village". His vision for the area is a "Black Cultural District" much like it was before BART and the Post Office destroyed the original West Oakland Black Cultural District along Seventh Street by using urban renewal policies and eminent domain in the 1960s and 70s.  While some of his anonymous internet critics and determined detractors continuously attempt to undermine his efforts by characterizing them as "exclusively black", Diallo and many of his non-black supporters have been quoted in countless mainstream media stating that the revitalization of Oakland's oldest Black neighborhood is for the benefit of all residents of Oakland, regardless of race, color or creed. [[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/21/CMG93N6V7B1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle].
-At this time Diallo was becoming active real-estate development in West Oakland's Prescott District, with the intent of selling property solely to people of African decent.  He inherited property from his aunt, sold it and used the proceeds to fund a development corporation.  He also invented the name [[Village Bottoms]] for the district he hoped to create. His vision for the area is a "Black Cultural District" where only blacks may live, though others are free to visit.
+[[File:Diallo&[email protected]]]
 In 2000, Diallo was selected to show his first visual arts installation, ''Scrapyard Ghosts'', at ProArts Gallery in Old Oakland.  Diallo has since opened galleries in Oakland's Prescott neighborhood.   He has also exhibited and guest curated at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and [[California College of the Arts]] in San Francisco. To date Diallo has curated exhibits featuring Former Black Panther Emory Douglas, West Oakland sculptor Bruce Beasley, Eesuu Orundide, Keba Konte, Githinji Wa Mbire, Kevin Slagle, Don Fortescue and others.
@@ Line 67: / Line 70: @@
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