Baba Ngoma on the RemiX Morning Show
Ngoma is a performance poet,multi-instrumentalist,singer/songwriter,Artivist and paradigm shifter, who for over 50 years has used culture as a tool to raise socio-political and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's "The Spirit House Movers and Players" and the contemporary freedom song duo"Serious Bizness",Ngoma weaves poetry and song that raises contradictions and searches for a solution to a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown,CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine,Long Shot Anthology,The Underwood Review,Signifyin' Harlem Review,Bum Rush the Page/Def Poetry Jam Anthology,Poems on the Road to Peace-(Volumes 1,2,and 3)Yale Press and Let Loose On the World-Amiri Baraka at 75,The Understanding Between Foxes and Light-Great Weather For Media and New Rain/Blind Beggar Press 35th Anniversary Issue,Amiri Baraka/Brilliant Flame/Third World Press. He was featured in the P.B.S spoken word documentary The Apropoets with Allen GinsburgNgoma was selected as the Beat Poet Laureate of New York for 2017 by The National Beat Poetry Poetry Foundation and the New Beat Poet Laureate in 2021 Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Martin Luther King Family Festival of Social and Environmental Justice at the Yale/Peabody Museum since 1995.He was also selected to participate in the 2009 Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Capetown,South Africa.In December of 2011 He was initiated as a Priest of Obatala in Ibadan,Nigeria.In June of 2013 he was initiated as a Priest of Ifa On his latest CD 's On "Conversation with Esu Ngoma serves up another helping of smokin' spoken word with jazz/funk/fusionwith a slice or two of world beat. Electric Violin,Yidaki a.k.a Didgeridoo ,Bamboo Flute, Bass and Garage Band tracks serve as a platform for his political and spiritual conscious raising lyrics along with his vocalizing a song or two to sweeten your palate and feed your mind. Known for controversy this CD will not disappoint as the newly initiated Ifa Priest invokes Orishas and Eguns to join the party with enough funk to put a hump in your back. You'll be nodding your head to this. He has also released a compilation CD "Music for My Soldiers" work from 1999 to 2018 “Ngoma is a living sage amongst those who do not have the courage see their greater selves. His poetry is profound,poignant and necessary at a time like this or any other. It is not traditional but is our tradition. Once again in the midst of madness sanity creeps through to remind us all is not lost and if we choose to we have the power to make a better day” ~Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets
