"We Had It All" is a skit written and directed by actress in residence, Teirrah McNair. A composition of acting, rap, and song, it depicts the historic highlights of Africans born in America from Ancient Africa to present-day Africans throughout the diaspora.

Performers: Hiruy Amanuel, Rashida Bryant, Jahi Caracter, Jasmyne Daniels, LaPria Dawson, Bernita Dillard, LaVondra Hardnett, DaVonna Jones, Rasheed Lyons, Felicia Sterling, Jamal Wadley, Messina Watley, Anthony Williams, Dewond Williams, Kachif Wright.

The Shule Mandela Academy is a private California 501(c)(3) school located in East Palo Alto. Serving students in grades K-8, the school offers an African-centered academic curriculum consisting of math, science, language arts, foreign languages (Kiswahili and French), history, and social studies. An afterschool program that features traditional African dance, computer workshops, and a science club is also available to our students. Because we understand that the educational experience extends beyond the school, a significant portion of the curriculum is experientially based and allows the students to develop practical applications of the academic process. Parental and/or family involvement is also expected and is a requirement for enrollment. To date, approximately 85% of the Shule students graduating from high school go on to college.

The dances Ganza and Zebola were passed on through generations by the Bakongo and Bakente tribes of the Congo.

African Fire is directed by Donna McCraney, whose dance career began at age 5 and continued. In 1979 Donna became a member of Fua-Dia-Congo and studied Congolese dance. In 1986, she founded a children's group, Bala ba Kongo, who toured the Bay Area. She became a member of African Fire and took the responsibility of group director. The group became more and more demanding therefore. The troupe expanded and continued to perform in numerous events in the South Bay. Donna has received many awards for her work with the dance troupe and children. This legacy will follow people throughout their lives and it is essential to continue this journey to keep the African culture and heritage alive.

Jeanie Ishman-Brown studied Afro-Haitian dance under the direction of Nansisi Kayu at Stanford University, Afro-Jazz under the direction of Halifu Osumari at Stanford University and at the Oakland Everybody's Creative Arts Center. She studied Congolese dance at Stanford University and San Francisco State University with Malonga Casquelourd and Regine N'Dunda and performed with the Congolese dance troupe Fua-Dia-Congo, taught dance in the Ravenswood City School District, and is currently Assistant Director of and performer with African Fire.

Ceslie Brown is a student at Independence High School. She has studied ballet and jazz for many years and is the recipient of many dance awards and first place prizes. She was accepted into the Alvin Ailey summer internship workshop and will be leaving soon as she will begin her freshman year at Miramonte College in New York majoring in Fine Arts.

Tamia Tendaji, a student at Gunderson High School, began dancing with Donna and was a member of Bala ba Kongo when she was 8 years old. Tamia stayed with the company until age 14. She came back into African Fire as a seasoned troupe member.

Kiazi Malonga is a seasoned man-child drummer. He studies and performs with his father Malonga Casquelourd, Director and choreographer of Fua-Dia-Congo. He has drummed since the age of 2 and is still going strong.

Kambui Tendaji began drumming with his father Hakim when he was around 4 years old. He began playing with Bala ba Kongo when he was six years old. Due to his keen ears, Kambui can easily pick up or create a rhythm. He is a high school student at Gunderson High.

The Costano School Choir is composed of twenty to thirty children in grades three to eight. The Choir has performed before many distinguished persons and organizations, including Rosa Parks, the San Francisco Forty Niners Champs Foundation, the Peninsula Chapter of Links, Inc., the Mid-Peninsula Task Force, the Mid-Peninsula Chapter of the NAACP, the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, the San Jose Chapter of the NAACP, and the San Mateo Black Women in County Government Task Force. The Board of Supervisors, County of San Mateo, State of California, issued a proclamation declaring February 23, 1995 as Costano School Day in part because of the performances of the Costano School Choir.

Maululu is a dance about the need of the world to come together in harmony. It also describes the beauty of Polynesia and characterizes Tonga as dedicated to God.

Dancers: Virginia Guttenbeil, Epelehame Kofeloa, Paula Kofeloa, Bruce Mahina, Maeia Makoni, Peau Makoni, Uhila Makoni, Kika Pousima, Sefo Pousima, Ofa Tuipulotu, Center Ainsley Uhila, Cyprian Shanna Uhila, Kolo Uhila, Tiffany Vaiolulu Uhila, Ofa Vaka, Tevita Vaka.

Toli Lou Siale is a dance for boys. Dancers: Bruce Mahina, Uhila Makoni, Ofa Tuipulotu, Paula Kofeloa, Center Ainsley Uhila.

Ofa Mei Pelehake is a dance for girls. Dancers: Virginia Guttenbeil, Pele Kama, Cyprian Shanna Uhila, and Tiffany Uhila.

Composer Nancy Bloomer Deussen has become increasingly concerned about the problem of our planet's natural resources and the fact that we as humans should really be the caretakers of this magnificent planet. In the last few years she has composed a number of works (chamber, orchestral and choral) with this theme in mind. In 1993 she composed a work for the De Anza Women's Chorus. When considering a text for the work, she searched extensively through many volumes of poetry, especially contemporary poetry, without finding exactly the environmental text that spoke clearly of her feelings. It was after this unsuccessful search that she decided to write her own text for the work. It is with great humility that she offers her text as well as her music for this celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Earth Day.

Nancy Bloomer Deussen is well known throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as a composer, performer, arts organizer, and educator. She is a leader in the growing movement for more melodic, tonally oriented contemporary music and is co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the National Association of Composers, USA. Ms. Bloomer Deussen's original works have been performed throughout the United States and Canada, and she has received numerous commissions both locally and nationally from such performing ensembles as the Oakland Chamber Orchestra, the Walnut Street Chamber Ensemble (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), the Augustana College Band (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), the Baton Rouge Concert Band, the Santa Clara Chorale, the Peninsula Children's Chorale, the Bresquan Trio (Humboldt State University), the Palo Alto Unified School District, the De Anza College Chorale and Women's Chorus, OPUS 90 Chamber Ensemble, the Women's Caucus in the Arts, Tanana Jr. High School Band (Fairbanks, Alaska), and Richard Nunemaker, principal clarinetist with the Houston Symphony, for a concerto to be premiered in 1995-96 by a consortium of California and Texas orchestras. She is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Southern California School of Music. Her teachers of composition were Vittorio Giannini, Lukas Foss, Ingolf Dahl, and Wilson Coker. She is the recipient of many awards and honors, the most recent being the winner of the 2nd Bay Area Composers Symposium Orchestral Award (for her orchestral work REFLECTIONS ON THE HUDSON). This resulted in its premiere by the Marin Symphony directed by Gary Sheldon (1994). A multimedia composition THE BAYLANDS was premiered/shown in October 1994 at San Jose State University in a multimedia collaboration of a number of local composers and artists. At the present time she is completing work on the aforementioned clarinet concerto, which will be recorded on the ERM label with Mr. Nunemaker as soloist with the Chico Symphony Orchestra and released in early 1996. In addition to her work as a composer, Ms. Bloomer Deussen is on the music faculties of Mission College (Santa Clara) and the Community School of Music and Arts (Mountain View).

The Valparaiso Singers have performed together since 1984 at major venues in San Francisco (including St. Mary's Cathedral and St. Agnes Catholic Church), in Oakland, many locations on the Peninsula, and in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Their repertoire includes classic sacred literature as well as folk songs, spirituals, and Broadway selections. The singers reside in Menlo Park, Atherton, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Sunnyvale, Fremont, and Salinas, California.

Soprano I: Cindy Hansen, Laura Moore, Evelyn Naylor, Elizabeth Neil, Deborah Otteson. Soprano II: Cynthia Collier, Trudy Fjelsted, Marsha Gustafson, Ruth Kasper.

Alto: Lyn Ashby, Aletha Bradley, Deanne Everson, Laurel Miller, JoAnn Rogers

The artwork is by courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Soundwave has as its mission to inspire people the world over through their harmony, rhythm, and unity. They are determined to attain these goals by battling over their own weaknesses and through their own human revolution. They challenge themselves to manifest their Buddha nature in every situation and to do their very best musically.

Soprano: Teri Keyser, Betsy Bell Ringer. Alto: Patsy Angelillo, Shirley Smallwood. Tenor: Wayne Eisen, Wade Gardner. Bass: David Angelillo, William Bunn III. Accompanist: Jeff Levin.

Towards a Global Ethic interprets in dance and music with audience participation the statement of the ethical principles shared universally by the world's religions that came out of the 1993 Parliament of World's Religions as embodied in a document Towards a Global Ethic: A First Declaration.

The artwork is by the children of the First Grade Class, Piedmont Avenue Elementary School in Oakland, prepared under the direction of Sara Manus.

The opening two verses of the "UN Theme Song" derive from an Iroquois text: "Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will and their minds filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the League."

Treasures of the Heart is a collaboration among friends. Tina Ebey put the words together after reading a speech by Daisaku Ikeda about the origins of the UN Charter. She combined the words from a Buddhist gosho (a compilation of texts) on the Treasures of the Heart and asked gifted song writers Wade Gardner and Carey Evans to write the melody. Wade then worked with Jeff Levin to expand the song through open music sessions and Jeff's own creative ideas. Jazz vocalist Lisa McCarthy brought beauty and wit to the sessions and is having the song produced in Los Angeles through colleagues and friends. Gisella Vergaray has been a close friend who helped bring this song to life by listening to the process and inspired the collaboration through her original fashion design.

Carey Evans has been in the music business for 40 years. He is originally from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He first became interested in music while in grade school due to the profound influence of a teacher, Lawrence Peeler. Playing the guitar has been a passion for at least 45 years. He raised a large family with 7 children. At the age of 50 he put his guitar away and did not touch it again for 7 years. He is now once again recommitted to his art and ready to go.

Lisa McCarthy has been signing all of her life. She began singing professionally in Los Angeles, where she studied with phil Moore in Hollywood. Lisa Studied privately with Eddie Beal, a famous insider Hollywood vocal coach and former music director for the late Nat King Cole. She has studied with Phil Wright, formerly nancy Wilson's music director, and taken masters workshops with Cleo Laine and Nancy Wilson. Lisa has been in the Bay Area 2 1/2 years where she is becoming known as a premiere jazz vocalist. Lisa has a degree in Theater and Communications from the University of Oregon. She has to her credit an award by the National Endowment for the Arts for her role in "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" as the late Lorraine Hansberry. Lisa was a principal member of The Intercultural Committee for the Performing Arts in Orange County, California, for over 5 years. She was a solo performer for the 1984 Opening Ceremony for the United States Olympics held in Los Angeles. She is committed to social change through the arts. She performed for the Unlearning Racism Symposium held at the University of Oregon with Rosa parks, and has performed at la Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley, California.

The Martyrs' Step Dance is offered as a tribute to all those who have given their lives for a just cause. The chains and hoods represent the imprisonment, persecution, torture, oppression and sacrifice endured by these heroes and heroines for their unshakable belief in justice, equality and human dignity. The opening words are these:

"In the early days of every righteous cause, there are those who are called upon to sacrifice all that they possess. These are the faithful, the persecuted, the prisoners."

Step Dancing originated in Africa, known as Boot Dancing, and became popular in the United States among the African-American fraternities. Each group had its own different moves and rhythms. Fraternities would hold competitions among themselves. The Martyr's Step was developed by members of the Los Angeles Baha'i Youth Workshop to portray the unity and steadfastness of the early followers of Baha'u'llah, who were imprisoned and executed during the middle of the last century. The dance has three parts, signifying the stages of imprisonment, execution, and reunion in the next world. The steps themselves are laden with symbolism. In the June 11th performance, in addition to the Baha'i martyrs, the slide projections will include Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Stephen Biko, Anwar Sadat, Gandhi, Anne Frank, and others. For further information, please call Shahani or Jenny Purushotma at (408) 252-2333.

This programmatic composition for violin and piano attempts to capture in music images inspired by the life of Anne Frank with specific reference to particular historical events, but evocative too of recurring archetypal situations in the all-too-human experience of humanity through the ages in relationship to the theme of intolerance.

The agitated swirling motif that opens the work suggests Fortuna, the Medieval and Renaissance motif connoting the unpredictability, uncertainty, and ambiguity of human destiny. The following theme characterizes the carefree childhood of Anne Frank leading a completely normal existence in Holland during the 1930s even as the lives of Jewish children and adults in her German homeland assume the desperate proportions of a nightmare. A musical portrait of Otto Frank, Anne's father, follows, emphasizing both his strength of character, resourcefulness, but also his kindliness of heart that endeared him to his Dutch friends and employees, inspiring in them a loyalty to him and his family that enabled the Franks, the Van Danns, and Mr. Dussel to hide for two years from the Nazis. Anne's happy innocent childhood before the impending nightmare is briefly recalled. A quietly ominous march intrudes, suggesting the mists of fear oozing throughout Europe and even heard across the Atlantic in distant America, though generally ignored, that both precede and encourage the Nazi storm that will engulf the lives of hundreds of millions. A theme imbued with the spirit of romantic yearning evokes the transition from girlhood to adolescence for Anne on the eve of the flight of her family from the Nazis into the Secret Annex. In her Diary, Anne expresses her adolescent concerns: "In spite of all justice and thankfulness, you can't crush your feelings. Cycling, dancing, whistling, looking out into the world, feeling young, to know that I'm free - that's what I long for. . ." The catastrophe of displacement from an essentially carefree existence abruptly erupts into the lives of the Franks just as it already has and will for millions of Jews and other racial and political undesirables in the eyes of Hitler and the Third Reich. The insistent march that follows announces the triumph of National Socialism impelled by the spirit of the will-to-power, a complex of ideas coalesced by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche out of the writings of her brother, Friedrich Nietzsche, and colored with a pervasive racial anti-Semitic sentiment alien to her brother that lies at the core of National Socialist ideology. As all Europe lies prostrate in terror or adulation before Hitler, the would-be world conqueror and heir of Julius Caesar and Napoleon, and the residue of the free world lies in anguished anticipation of the next move of the Nazi juggernaut, the Horst Wessel Song, anthem of the Nazi Party, ceremoniously celebrates the seeming invincibility of National Socialism. But the motif of Fortuna, the capriciousness of human destiny, returns, anticipating the fiery end of the Third Reich, though only after some sixty million people, including six million Jews, have lost their lives. The confined existence of the Franks and their fellow hidden Jews in the Secret Annex is evoked in a theme that suggests the fusion of the routine and quiet desperation in their lives before their discovery and betrayal to the Nazis. The journey to Auschwitz follows. The theme expresses the bleakness of the prospects of those who enter the hell that might just as well have had over its entrance the caption over the entrance to Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here!" Anne's mother dies in Auschwitz as do millions of others both there and at other death camps, victims of the Final Solution to the age-old riddle of the Jewish Question. A guard contemplates the smoke curling above the crematoria of Auschwitz into an apparently indifferent blue sky. But even he cannot help but think of the anguish beyond hope borne by the smoke like incense to the heart of heaven. A song of mourning laments the death of Anne and her sister Margot in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The lamentation embraces the millions of others, largely forgotten, who perish in the Holocaust of World War II, but also all victims of intolerance both before and after the Holocaust, including the episodes of ethnic cleansing we witness today in many places around the world and what is perhaps worse, in our own hearts. There follows a sepulchral dirge to commemorate the victims of intolerance, past, present and future. The conflagration ignited by the Nazis consumes its perpetrators as well. From the Bunker deep below the shards of devastated Berlin, Adolf Hitler remorselessly contemplates the goetterdaemmerung of the Thousand-Year Third Reich. Hitler commits suicide. Victim and victimizer, Jew and Gentile, tormented and tormentor, the tolerant and the intolerant recede from the stage of history as, ironically, they enter together into Eternity. The coda: In her Diary, Anne writes: "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." Two dissenting chords interrupt the musical confirmation of her naive affirmation of human goodness ascending into the empyrean as though to suggest that we have many miles to go before we can sleep in the confidence that tolerance shall triumph over intolerance and man's inhumanity to man.

David Nebenzahl plays violin with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus and the Peninsula Symphony. He formerly played with the Flagstaff Symphony and the Flagstaff Festival of the Arts Orchestra when he lived in Arizona.

William Byron Webster is a volunteer affordable housing advocate.

Jancy Limpert is a dancer and choreographer associated with DanceVisions of Palo Alto. Mary Forrest is also a dancer associated with DanceVisions.

Marjorie Wallace is a community activist and graphic artist. She as well as her late husband Vernon Wallace for decades has been an outspoken advocate of maintaining the integrity of the political process as the key to the preservation of democracy and freedom.

The evening will culminate in a musical setting of all thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is celebrated in song and dance by the SGI USA Kinmon Chorus of San Francisco and by dancers who reflect the diverse heritage of the world's peoples. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights arose as a direct result of the Founding of the United Nations, which emerged out of the ashes of World War II. This great document affirms the universal right of all children, women, and men to dignity, justice, and freedom. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, in Paris. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Commission on Human Rights that drafted it, hoped that the Declaration would be "the Magna Carta of all mankind." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights together with two Covenants passed subsequently, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, constitutes the International Bill of Human Rights, which has the force of international law.

SGI-USA's Kinmon Chorus was founded in 1980 by Daisaku Ikeda. Kinmon means Golden Gate. The SGI with membership worldwide is devoted to the accomplishment of peace through culture and education. Since the early 1980s, SGI has played an active role in the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) supporting a host of UN activities from disarmament to humanitarian relief, from human rights to voter education and environmental protection.

The conductor of the world premiere of the multimedia cantata The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Wade Gardner. Wade Gardner graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelors Degree in Performing Arts. Besides being a vocalist and a performing artist, he has conducted choruses since high school.

Additional musical direction was provided by Cary Cedarblade and Suzanne Pittson.

Tina Ebey is one of the dreamers who helped create the Festival. She is a professional dancer and singer currently working on a Ph.D. at the Fielding Institute. Additionally, she is Curriculum Resource Coordinator for The Education Coalition (TEC). Tina supports opportunities in education globally using new technology. She is dedicated to UN reform and renaissance.

The dancers are Jenny Eagle, Jessica Fisherman, Anna Javier, and Jessica Short.