On a recent Saturday night, singer Mwanza Furaha took the stage at the Two Bird Café to perform her monthly jam session. Other than her jade beads and jade-colored heels, Mwanza donned all yellow: tight, bright yellow pants, a yellow tunic that ran down to her ankles and a yellow flower brooch clipped to her cropped hair. Even the fuzzy head of her microphone was yellow.
“I’ve just got to pop a color when I’m on stage. And this here, it’s like a dress with a view,” she said, referring to the deep slit on the sides of her dress that allowed her legs to roam freely around the stage. Then she shook her head and spun across the stage before launching into Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
Mwanza has been a bit of a performance renaissance woman in the Bay Area, with a long resume that includes singing, dance, theater, production and teaching credits. Next weekend, for the third year in a row, she is putting on West Marin’s premier Black History Month variety show, a 10-song set called Cabaret Underground that will feature readings of Maya Angelou’s poetry before a backdrop of live John Coltrane tunes and an assemblage of straight-ahead blues tunes.
The combination of music and poetry is meant to heighten the impact of the words of Ms. Angelou, who died last May at age 86. In one song, Mwanza will splice a reading of Ms. Angelou’s famous “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” with the rollicking Caribbean tune “Run Joe,” a song first recorded on Ms. Angelou’s 1957 album Miss Calypso and featured in the 1967 movie “Caribbean Heat.” Mwanza will also show off her gospel-tinged chops by singing Ms. Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” as a medium-tempo standard blues form in G.
The show originated three years ago as a modest performance piece at Project Artaud, an artist live-and-work warehouse in San Francisco’s Mission District. Originally from Texas, Mwanza moved to San Francisco as a child, and attended the same high school as Ms. Angelou (albeit not at the same time: “I’m not that old!” the 69-year-old Mwanza said.)
She first met Ms. Angelou in the late 1960s, when the poet was recruiting actors and dancers for a KQED television series on the influence of African American culture on modern American society, called “Blacks, Blues, Black!” The two became friends, and Mwanza hung out with Ms. Angelou at her family home in Santa Rosa, absorbing the wisdom of one of the 20th century’s foremost literary and activist minds.
“She really was a mentor,” Mwanza said during a Monday afternoon rehearsal for Cabaret Underground. “There was one time when we were on Sixth and Folsom. We passed a drunk man lying asleep on the street, and I looked down my nose at him. That’s when Maya said to me, ‘You should never look down your nose at someone. Even if they’re in a bad spot, you can still learn from their condition. And you should honor them for teaching you something.’”
Cabaret Underground was Mwanza’s attempt to a fill a gap in West Marin’s celebration of African American history—prior to the show, Mwanza noted, there was no commemoration of Black History Month in the San Geronimo Valley. “I figured it was time to change that,” she said.
The show became a platform to chronicle the history of African American music since the mid-1800s. Coltrane was Ms. Angelou’s favorite jazz musician, and when she died last May, Mwanza decided it was time to combine the poet’s and the saxophonist’s work.
The show will also mark the first occasion that Mwanza will be joined by another longtime Bay Area musician: blues guitarist and vocalist Gail Muldrow. A San Francisco native, Gail fell in love with the guitar long ago when, during family gatherings, she would watch spellbound as her longshoreman grandfather played while he cooked chicken in the kitchen.
Mwanza and Gail have played in the Bay Area music circuit for years, often working with the same people, but it wasn’t until about three months ago that Mwanza caught wind of Gail’s act and sent her a message online. After some back and forth, Gail finally sat in on jam night at the Two Bird. Dressed in an elegant black wool coat, Gail provided a contrast to Mwanza’s flare and began belting out a gritty version Bill Withers blues hit, “Ain’t No Sunshine.”
“Little did I know that we have similar paths in the way our careers have gone,” Mwanza said. “It’s amazing the journey life takes you on.”
Mwanza has shared the stage with the likes of Billy Eckstine, George Duke and Curtis Mayfield. Not to be outdone, Gail has torn up the electric guitar alongside acts like Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Otis and Prince, with whom she once played basketball and ate pancakes at five o’clock in the morning. (“He asked me, of all people, who I voted for,” Gail said of the experience. “I said, ‘Man, I voted for Jesus.’ And that right there cleared the room, because he and everyone with him were Jehovas Witnesses and they didn’t like anyone being sacrilegious like that. Prince just got up and left, right then and there.”)
Both women are transplants to the San Geronimo Valley by way of San Francisco. Though gifted musicians, both longed to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. (“The groupies don’t come out here,” Gail said. “They’re scared of the trees.”)
They are also lifelong students of improvisation. Although Cabaret Underground will be scripted, there will be plenty of room left for improvising. People who have played with Mwanza praise her precisely for her insistence on keeping performances free and open.
“She’s free, and that’s what makes it fun,” said Michael McQuilkin, who helms the piano at for Mwanza’s Two Bird sets. “She’s a natural singer.”
Cabaret Underground will start at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 7 at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. Doors will open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance, and may be purchased at http://angeloutribute.bpt.me; tickets at the door are $20. Children under 10 are $5.