The Free Library of Philadelphia's Monday Poets Series- Season Finale

 

Passing the Bow: Young Musicians in Conversation with Violist Jay Julio and Violinist Emily Bakakati by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 Let me start from the end. This beautiful violin, with a photo of my mother watching over it, was “checked out” from the library. Yes, the Central Branch of the Free Library lends instruments.

My mother looking on as I return to the violin borrowed recently from the Free Library.

After conversations with my Aunt Mabel Mabel reminiscing about the many musicians in our circle, I decided to begin playing again. Music shaped my childhood. Many of us studied with the same teacher, William Hill, who was so stately and exacting. A Black American child prodigy from Georgia, sponsors arranged for him, as a very young man, to come to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute. In the photo, my grandmother stands in the back on bass, Mr. Hill in the foreground, and my young mother just behind him along with other friends.

My mother, my grandmother, William Hill, and friends playing together.

I began violin in third grade, at Overbrook Elementary, and continued through Philadelphia High School for Girls. In our neighborhood, most homes had a piano, and most children played an instrument. Music was central to our lives. My own children would go on to play violin as well.

All of this has led me to a small but meaningful effort to honor that legacy: The Legacy Strings Initiative, through which I organize intimate concerts and conversations for young musicians.

Earlier in April, string students at the Powel School met two extraordinary artists: violist Jay Julio and violinist Emily Barkakati. Jay, a Juilliard School-trained musician, serves as assistant principal violist for the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and has performed widely, including with touring productions like Hamilton and locally with the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra. Emily performs with Opera Philadelphia, Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

The students were captivated and full of questions about training, discipline, and life as a working musician.

Young string students lean in, listening, asking, and learning as violist Jay Julio and violinist Emily Bakakati share their music and their journeys.

A heartfelt thank you to Powel School string teacher Ashley Vines and the school leadership for making this experience possible.

Holding Rwanda: Remembering the Genocide, Honoring Renewal by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 Today I spent the morning calling and texting my friends in Rwanda, letting them know that on this momentous day in the history of their nation, I am holding them in my thoughts.

Standing with my daughter in Rwanda at the Kigali Genocide Memorial,  learning and holding close the stories that must never be forgotten.

7 marks the beginning of Kwibuka, Remembrance,a national period of mourning. The word Kwibuka, in Kinyarwanda, means “to remember.” It commemorates the start of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when, over the course of approximately 100 days, an estimated 800,000 to one million people, primarily Tutsi, along with moderate Hutu, and Twa were systematically killed.

Names of some of the victims who
were killed, remembered here.

Kwibuka is not only a time of grief, but also of witness. Across Rwanda and throughout the diaspora, there are vigils and acts of collective memory ensuring that the lives lost are not reduced to numbers, and that the truth of what happened is neither denied nor forgotten.

Rwanda, a small country in central East Africa.

And yet, alongside this profound mourning, there is also a recognition of what has followed. In the decades since 1994, Rwanda has undertaken a remarkable and intentional process of rebuilding. Through community-based justice systems such as Gacaca, national reconciliation efforts, and investments in education, healthcare, and infrastructure, the country has worked to restore a sense of unity and shared future. Today, Rwanda is often noted for its stability, its emphasis on collective identity over ethnic division, and its leadership in areas such as gender equity and sustainable development.

We visited many genocide memorials across Rwanda.

To remember Rwanda is to hold both truths at once: the depth of its loss, and the strength of its renewal. Today, I remember. I reach out. I stand in quiet solidarity with my friends and with a nation that continues, with dignity and determination, to carry its past while building its future.

My daughter conducted interviews in Rwanda, exploring why so many African American women are choosing it as their new home.

Rwanda is incredibly lush, its greenery constant and alive.

Feeling on top of the world!

My daughter reconnected with a friend from Stanford in Rwanda, and she graciously invited us to a beautiful Rwandan wedding.

We loved navigating the local markets.

Another dear friend opened his home to us, introducing us to his wife and family.

Poetry Across Borders: A Conversation with Kakuma’s Young Writers by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Explore the work of photographer Steve Kiza, a Kakuma resident whose images document his community not for the Western gaze, but to reveal its humanity, resilience, and vibrancy despite difficult circumstances. Here is the link: Kakuma Photographer Steve Kiza

Established in 1992, Kakuma has become one of the largest refugee camps in the world. It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled violence and instability in neighboring countries, particularly South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For many residents, the camp is the only home they have ever known.

The poets I met are part of that generation. Their poems document life in the camp including its hardships, its long waiting, but also its communities of resilience, imagination, and artistic expression.

Other writers joined our gathering as well: the Somali -American writer Zainab Hassan, Ethiopian, London-based poet Alemu Tebeje and, of course, the London-based organizers of this event Ambrose Musiyiwa and Omobola Osamor, who convened us. Musiyiwa and Osamor are the force behind the Forced Migration and The Arts Poetry Project and the poetry anthologies complementing this project, of which my work is included along with other African writers based on the continent and throughout the diaspora. Last week’s gathering, poets shared their work and began discussing ways to continue supporting projects with the Kakuma poets, including helping them translate their work into Swahili so that their voices might reach wider audiences across East Africa.

The featured poets from Kakuma, Mamuch Bey and Mudadi Saidi, have lived most of their lives in the camp. Their work was striking. Their poetry was informed by displacement yet it was filled with clarity and courage.

Poet Mudadi Saidi

This reading was an extraordinary experience. It was one that reminded me how poetry continues to travel across borders, even when people cannot.

This reading was recorded, and I will share the link once it becomes available.

Poet Mamuch Bey

Beautiful Stranger, Come to The World; Who Built the Sound? by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Before the salons and symphonies, there were her hands, his mother, grooming, guiding, grounding Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges in a love no title could outrank.

In Beautiful Stranger, Come to the World, women do and will play prominently in shaping what we now call classical music. The documented record rarely centers them. The contributions of enslaved Africans to the formation and evolution of classical music are also seldom acknowledged. So I am imagining them here: women and enslaved Africans from across the world meeting, collaborating, and making music while moving through dark and complicated histories.

*Remember, this is an ongoing series where history slowly unfolds through many voices, so you can truly hear the world. If you would like to revisit the earlier installments before listening to Part III, all are accessible in the link below.

Actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. playing Chevalier in the 2022 movie.

And you must see the 2022 film Chevalier, which portrays the brilliance of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges who was often called the “Black Mozart,” and he was a contemporary of Mozart. Though raised and groomed within a privileged, white, French world, he was never severed from his Black mother or the Black community that shaped him. What moved me most in the film were the tender depictions of those bonds.

Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Frederick  Douglass with his grandson. 

I salute, too, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), who was an amateur violinist and owned a copy of a Stradivarius. His grandson, Joseph Henry Douglass (1871–1935), became one of the first Black musicians to tour internationally as a concert violinist and later led Howard University’s School of Music.

And many of us learned, in school, about Solomon Northup (1808–1864), whose memoir Twelve Years a Slave documents his kidnapping into slavery. He was also a professional violinist.

While we honor these men, the women and the enslaved Africans who preceded them stand at the center of this musical genre. I am using this series, along with imagination and history, to raise the dead and restore their contributions.

Give a listen: If you feel moved to support this work as it unfolds, contributions are always appreciated.

 

Click link to listen:  

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/octaviamcbride/p/beautiful-stranger-come-to-the-world-2c1?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Who Gets to Declare Forgetting? On Judge A. Leon Higginbotham and Memory by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 

Artist Jerry Lynn- Discover more of his work: https://artbyjerrylynn.com/

Dear Malcolm Burnley and Philadelphia Magazine:

When headlines suggest local forgetting of Black icons like Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, they can unintentionally obscure the ways Black communities preserve and transmit their own histories, often without validation from mainstream platforms. Framing his legacy as lost and rediscovered risks centering absence rather than continuity.

That headline carries a quiet erasure, even if unintended. It frames local Black memory as absence, and centers the outsider’s gaze instead of the community that has long honored Judge Higginbotham.

I read this piece on him with great appreciation for your desire to underscore his phenomenal achievements. His legacy is urgently needed in this moment of legal and moral reckoning.

But I need to strongly push back on the framing suggested by the title, particularly the implication that Philadelphia “forgot” him. For a significant portion of Black Philadelphia, Judge Higginbotham has never been forgotten. He is known and taught. He is spoken of with reverence. His legacy has lived not only in institutions, but in community memory, classrooms, churches, and family conversations.

I wonder what it might have offered to lead instead with celebration, to foreground his contributions and his courage, and why his jurisprudence and moral witness matter so profoundly right now without first positioning him as forgotten.

I share this in the spirit of dialogue and care for how our city, and especially its Black communities, are represented. I’m grateful for the attention you’ve brought to Judge Higginbotham and hope future conversations continue to honor both his national stature and his deeply rooted place in Philadelphia’s Black civic life.

Here is the link to the article : Philadelphia Magazine-Philadelphia Forgot A. Leon Higginbotham. America Can’t Afford To : https://www.phillymag.com/news/2026/01/30/a-leon-higginbotham-history/

The Final Two Audio Installments of Mr. FiFi’s Summer by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 

I’m adding here the final two audio installments of Mr. FiFi’s Summer.  At its heart, this is a story about how generosity travels: through the practice of craft, through friendships sustained across borders, and through the quiet, enduring acts that allow people to remain connected despite change and departure.

Thank you for listening and for staying with the story to its close. Stay tuned for the next stories. You never quite know where you might find yourself: Rwanda, Mauritania, North Philly and all points in between.

Comments are welcome for those who wish to respond. *The audio version is narrated by a voice artist. All installments are available here. Click link.

https://open.substack.com/pub/octaviamcbride/p/the-final-two-audio-installments?r=74n5p0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web