For Immediate Release: May 5, 2008 Elaine Mariner, Director, elaine.mariner@state.co.us Colorado Storyteller Opalanga Pugh to Perform in Washington D.C. Part of Library of Congress Homegrown Concert Series 2008

DENVER (May 5, 2008). The Colorado Council on the Arts announces a storytelling and music performance by Denver artists Opalanga Pugh and Askia Touré on May 28, 2008 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Opalanga Pugh is a storyteller in the African oral tradition. She will tell stories from her African cultural experiences as well as classic tales of the African American experience and stories from the lives of early Blacks in the American West. One of Opalanga's stories will come from Historical Five Points, the cultural mecca of Black Denver.

Askia Touré, another Denver native and a member of Opalanga's extended family, will use his voice and drums to add rhythm and fullness to the stories. Together they will honor Opalanga's commitment to bring "traditional wisdom into the heart of the modern world."

The Library of Congress will present this concert as part of the American Folklife Center's Homegrown Concert Series 2008. Called "The Music of America," this series serves as both as a vehicle for documenting traditional performing artists and a public presentation of the featured artists to a live audience.

Greeley Folklorist Georgia Wier will introduce the concert in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Colorado Council on the Arts. The Colorado Council on the Arts is a cosponsor of the storytelling and music concert.

Concert details
Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 12 noon - 1 p.m.
Coolidge Auditorium, ground floor of Thomas Jefferson Bldg., Library of Congress
10 First St., S.E. Washington, DC
For details: www.loc.gov/folklife or call the Library of Congress at 202-707-5510

Opalanga's Background and Achievements
Working for the railroad led both of Opalanga's grandfathers to migrate to the West around the start of the 20th century, and Opalanga grew up in the small but culturally rich African American community of Denver, Colorado. Under her grandmother's tutelage, Opalanga absorbed cautionary tales and proverbs while she learned the ethic of hard work and "how to make a creative way out of no way." She embraced the civil rights movement during her high school years in the late 1960s and began the cultural activism she has continued throughout her life. Opalanga answered a deep call to visit Africa, "the mother of us all," and she spent her senior year abroad at the University of Lagos in Nigeria. As she traveled among the Yoruba and other people of West Africa, Opalanga listened closely to the way people shaped language into story and song and witnessed first hand how tightly storytelling was woven into the fabric of human life.

Opalanga has traveled as a professional storyteller and urban griot/jali throughout the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. She has worked in education, mental health, and corporate settings since 1986. In these contexts she uses story as a tool for personal development, a vehicle for education, and a force for social change. NBC selected Opalanga as one of 10 African American Living Legends in 1992. In Denver, Opalanga has twice won the Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and she has received the Ambassador for Peace Award from the Conflict Center of Denver. To contact the artist: 303-297-8355, www.opalangastoryteller.com  Print-ready photos available at this website.

About the Colorado Council on the Arts
The Colorado Council on the Arts, a state agency, combines state funds with federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, and invests in communities across the state to ensure that the cultural, educational and economic benefits of the arts are enjoyed by thousands of Colorado youth and millions of Colorado citizens and visitors every day.