Oakland Symphony's Playlist with Angela Y. Davis, hosted by W. Kamau Bell, features the Oakland Symphony and special musical guests, conducted by Rickey Minor, performing the 'Playlist' of Davis's life.
Angela Y. Davis will join W. Kamau Bell on stage for this concert of music she personally selected and has inspired her throughout her life of activism and education. She will share how her journey was shaped by the genres, artists, and music being performed.
In 2018, W. Kamau Bell, the award-winning comedian, director, and producer, was the first person to collaborate on a Playlist with the Oakland Symphony and Michael Morgan and he returns to host this evening’s musical journey of Angela Y. Davis.
Through her activism, scholarship and writing, Angela Y. Davis has been at the forefront of our nation’s quest for social justice. Her work as an educator has always emphasized the importance of building communities in the struggle for economic, racial, and gender reform. Her teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She also has taught at UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. She spent the past fifteen years at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D program, and of Feminist Studies. Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression and is a living witness to the historical struggles of the last half century. She is the author of several books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race, and Class (1980), Women, Culture and Politics (1989), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Abolition Democracy(2005), and The Meaning of Freedom (2012). She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, an organization that aims to end the prison industrial complex.
W. Kamau Bell is a stand-up comedian, director, producer, and dad. For seven seasons, he was the host and executive producer of the five-time Emmy Award-winning CNN docuseries United Shades of America. Kamau won a Peabody Award for his Showtime program We Need To Talk About Cosby. As a stand-up comic, Kamau has recorded two comedy specials. The second one, Private School Negro, is available on Netflix. Kamau is on the board of directors of DonorsChoose - a non-profit that helps teachers raise money for class projects, and Live Free - a non-profit dedicated to ending gun violence, mass incarceration, and mass criminalization. Kamau is also the ACLU’s Celebrity Ambassador for Racial Justice. He lives in Oakland, California.
Music Director and Conductor Rickey Minor led the Oakland Symphony for Debbie Allen’s Playlist in 2022. He has worked with renowned recording artists such as Adele, Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, Demi Lovato, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, Katy Perry, Aretha Franklin and his numerous television credits include The Tonight Show starring Jay Leno, American Idol, The Grammys, The Emmys, and The Academy Awards. He’s received Two Emmy Awards, 12 Emmy Award nominations and he was music director for the Academy Awards.
Following Bell’s inaugural Playlist in 2018, the second installment, in 2019, presented the favorite music of Dolores Huerta, the Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, co-founded the United Farm Workers. The 2020 edition honored the memory of Bernard Tyson, the CEO of Kaiser Permanente. In 2022, Debbie Allen, the five-time Emmy-winner, actress, dancer, director, and youth mentor, shared the musical soundtrack of her life.