[ East Bay | Metroactive ]

Celebrate the Summer Solstice at twilight. Urban Guide Listings to plan your week by Garden of Memory--A Columbarium Concert Even though held in a columbarium, "a vault with niches for urns containing ashes of the dead," the Garden of Memory concert will be more magical than creepy. The twilight summer solstice celebration will be held outside at the Chapel of the Chimes, overlooking the quiet stretches of lawn at Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery. Julia Morgan designed the Chapel, a labyrinthine structure with gardens, fountains, and stained glass skylights, a mystical setting for eternal sleep, or perpetual music. The New Music Bay Area group, a nonprofit promoting agency, has put together a near exhaustive list of performers playing simultaneously in different parts of the building. Wander freely through the multilevel maze of alcoves and antechambers making your own concert. Composers and musicians present a wide variety of acoustic and electronic music, installations, and interactive events to choose from, with something for everyone, from caffeinated kids to tuckered grandpas. Spend a few hours on the longest day of the year wandering through the grounds, exploring, listening, and stopping for a break next to some starlit fountain, or unsuspecting vault, whichever way you look at it. Fri/21, 5pm-8pm. Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl. $5-$20. 415.563.6355 x 3. (EP) Hip hop critic Bakari Kitwana reads at Marcus Books. The Hip Hop Generation What will become of the hip hop generation in the 21st century? Urban cultural critic Bakari Kitwana has a few ideas. As former Executive Editor of The Source, Editorial Director of 3rd World Press, and music critic for NPR's "All Things Considered," the Village Voice, and The Progressive, Kitwana has garnered much due respect for being on the forefront of rap and black youth culture. In his new book The Hip Hop Generation, he takes it a step further by exploring the historical significance of the young black generation born between 1965 and 1984. "What will be our generation's contribution to the centuries-long African American struggle for liberation, and how do we redefine this struggle for our time?" he asks, offering a sharp look into the generation's high incarceration and unemployment rates, and disintegrating gender relations. Join him this Saturday at Marcus Book Store for a hard-hitting political and social analysis of the issues plaguing the first black generation to have grown up in a post-segregation America. Sat/22, 6:30pm. Marcus Book Store, 3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakl. Free. 652-2344. (CS) Breathe the hot liquid magma. Fire Arts Festival 2002 The Crucible is hoping we'll all be moths to its benefit flame. The Bay Area's only non-profit sculpture center, education foundry, and metal fabrication studio galore invites everyone to its 3rd Annual fundraising event, a celebration of creation through fire and light. The 17,000 square foot mega-studio is your oyster, and around every corner there will be something new to awaken the folk artisan and craftsman in you: hands-on demos of welding, glassworking, blacksmithing, stone carving, neon, ceramics, and more. Ooh and aah at the liquid hot magma flows, sign up for art classes, meet teachers, and get the kids involved. Or, forget the kids and stay up for the combustive "After Dark Revel." The lights go down and the neon goes up while pyrophilic performers, DJs, aerial acts, and musicians delight a drinking and dancing late night crowd. The after party features DJ Vordo, Aiye! Capoeira, Capacitor, Copper Wimmin, Benn Mendoza, and Velocity Circus's Solar & Nemesis. Even watch the neon sculpture show, "Ashby-a-Glow," blazing with installation artwork from local artists and members of the Crucible community (exactly what the Crucible would like to have more of). Sat/22, Festival, 4-8pm; After Dark Revel, 8pm-2am. The Crucible, 1035 Ashby, Berk. $10-$20. 843.5510. (EP) Picks by Erica Pedersen (EP), and Cicely J. Sweed (CS). [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]