By Angela Woodall

Two new jazz operas are coming to town beginning Thursday.

The first piece, "The Sisyphus Syndrome," by Black Power poet-playwright Amiri Baraka and sax man David Murray, opens Thursday.

The Baraka-Murray duo combines poetry, live music and mixed media to tell the story of African-Americans'" struggles in the United States.

"The subject has got to be America and what America is trying to be, so let's make an opera about what it can be,— Murray said.

The play is named for the crafty, greedy, deceptive Greek king whose "Sisyphusian task— was to roll a huge rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down again. That's the story of African-Americans, Baraka told a crowd in November during an early reading of the play at the Eastside Cultural Center, where the full version will be staged Thursday through Saturday.

Baraka described how the story of African-Americans and the Greek tale relate. Slavery: The rock rolls down. Reconstruction: push it up the hill again. The birth of the Ku Klux Klan: rolls back down again. Harlem Renaissance: back up it goes. Fascism/Klan/Lynching: down again.

"It rolled back down on our heads," Baraka chanted. Then came activist Malcolm X, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Nationalist Congress of African People. Up, up, up went the rock. "But now it's back down again. So we have to roll it back up again," Baraka said.

The

Advertisement
Eastside Cultural Center is at 2277 International Blvd. General admission for the play is $20, $10 for students 19 and younger with student ID. Discounts are available for student groups by calling 510-533-6629. For more information, visit www.eastsideartsalliance.org or call 510-533-6629.

On Friday, an adaptation of jazz great Duke Ellington's last large-scale work and only opera opens. The premier of the restored opera will be the first time Bay Area audiences will be able to hear "Queenie Pie," which was unfinished in 1974, when Ellington died.

Ellington wrote "Queenie Pie" to pay tribute to Madame C.J. Walker, the first female African-American millionaire. The performance by the Oakland Opera and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra runs from Friday to May 25 and pays tribute to both. The Oakland Opera is at 630 3rd St. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

Advance tickets for the show at the Oakland Opera are $28 ($35 at the door) and can be purchased at www.oaklandopera.com, by mail (1734 Campbell St., Oakland, CA 94607) or by calling 510-763-1146.