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Tales of a Lifetime:
Stories of American History, Politics, & Healing
with Brother Blue
7 pm, Saturday, April 3, 2004 in MIT Killian Hall (14W)


Brother Blue is to story-telling what John Coltrane is to jazz. Walking down the street in Cambridge, people of all ages, sizes, and shapes light up when they see this griot covered in butterflies, bells, balloons, ribbons, and a banner. Underneath the trappings of a roaming town crier and his allegorical tales of the triumphant underdog is a man fueled by a faith in the transformative power of story-telling & service.

The great-grand-son of a slave-owner and his slave, with degrees from Harvard and Yale, Blue rose within the majority-dominated military, ministry, and academia, and emerged as one of the original Afro-American street-hipster-rappers. The official story-teller for Cambridge, Boston, and even the United Nations Habitat Forum, he is often called the "father of modern story-telling," and devotes most of his unrelenting energy to the public domain — street corners, parks, subways, prisons, hospitals, and classrooms across the urban mosaic. (Text adapted from Warren Lehrer's Portrait series.)

[Brother Blue]

Co-sponsored with the MIT Program in Writing & Humanistic Studies and the MIT Committee on Campus Race Relations.