An Inside Look at Cafe Unity

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

The first poem I ever performed in public, I performed at Café Unity. I was dragged by an upperclassman friend during the fall of my sophomore year. He offered to accompany me on the harmonica as I read. It was too close to Dylan-ness for me to refuse.

We arrived that Thursday evening, and like any first-time performer, I was nervous. But as the evening began, I got my first glimpse of our campus’ creative collective. Alum Anirudh “Eka” Dhullipalla wowed me with his wordplay. Now junior, then freshman Daniel Weingarten taught me about the power of “Virgin Swag” through his poem of the same name. Current senior and Café Unity President Ariel Wolpe strummed softly on her guitar, playing sweet melodies that were stuck in my head all week.

They were casual, comfortable. It wasn’t so much a performance with any of them, but a conversation, a sharing of who they were and what they really think about the world. Everyone was genuine. So by the time I stepped to the mic in front of those dozen or so people to read, I wasn’t nervous anymore. It felt like sharing with friends; I’d gotten to know so much about them as the evening progressed.

Two years later, the friends have turned into family. For the creative-conscious on this campus, Café Unity isn’t just about performing their work, it’s about monthly family reunions.
Your people get busy. The performers get bogged down by academics. There’s the EMT class, the labs, the midterms, the meetings. It’s often hard to reconnect with everyone’s artistic side. That’s why when we ask fellow regulars if they’ll be at Café Unity, it’s not so much said as an event, but as a Sunday dinner, a time for the family to reconnect.

For me, Café Unity was where I found this family. Before my first performance, I had barely begun to explore the artistic outlets on this campus (there was no Chalk Girl). Café Unity showed me the creative consciousness that exists on our campus, and though it’s not always the most visible piece of Emory, it’s such an inspiring collection of people that have truly changed who I am.

When I first walked into Common Grounds for Café Unity, this collection was relatively small. Fifteen to 20 people sat in the couches and pulled up a few chairs from the tables. This year as I walked up to read that same poem I did my first night, I saw so many more faces waiting for me to start. About 30 people now fill Common Grounds for Café Unity, with chairs lined up to the back wall. It’s growing, and I say that not with egotistical ambitions, but in the way parents look with pride at teenagers, excited about how they’ve evolved. It’s also always expanding. There were 15 scheduled performers last Thursday; some were the regulars, but most of them were first-timers. The family is always open to newcomers.

Jordan Explores Ethics and Art

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

Growing up in a communist regime, junior Mariangela Jordan learned about the revolutionary value in art and its ability to change the course of human events.

Today, she continues to fuel the power of art as co-president of the Ethics and Art Society at Emory, a student arts organization whose mission is to explore the intersection between creativity and ethics, and the role art plays in inspiring positive social change.

Jordan grew up living in Soviet-occupied Romania.

“Living under communism in a family which defied the regime was a rather traumatic experience,” Jordan said. “However, under my father’s guidance, I quickly learned to escape the bleakness of our immediate existence by employing my imagination.”

Imagination opened the door for Jordan’s artistic inclinations, despite the war-torn nation she lived in.

She learned quickly that “books are worth their weight in gold.”
For Jordan and her family, art was essential.

“Poetry was a cathartic form of political resistance and freedom,” she explained.

Today, as a well-established member of the Emory community, Jordan continues to catalyze change through creativity as one of the founding members of the Ethics and Arts Society.

The Society began as part of Carlton Mackey’s Ethics and the Arts Initiative, a program in the ethics center with a variety of partners: the Atlanta Opera, High Museum of Art, Alternate ROOTS, The Alliance Theater Company, WonderRoot, the Atlanta Music Project and others.

“As the first president of the Society, together with the society’s first artist members, alums Anirudh Dhullipalla [(’11C)] and Shreyas Sreenath [(’11C)] and senior Ian McCall, who is my current co-president, I was entrusted by Mr. Mackey with the opportunity of envisioning, articulating and setting in motion the Society’s vision,” Jordan said.

Jordan is constantly developing relationships with local artists and organizations for events such as the Society’s Best in Show Performance this year. The Society collaborated with activist music group Voices in the Treetops, headed by long-time “artivists” Paula Larke and Kim Nimoy.

As the year continues, the Society is working on developing a music program that offers young Burmese refugees in Atlanta an opportunity to learn music, as a platform for cathartic expression.

“We are also hoping to connect Emory music students with this program, in order to expand the number of music teachers as well as the number of youth participating in the program,” Jordan said.

The Society also organizes art events on campus throughout the year. For this fall, the Society is hosting the Ethics and Arts Café, a collaborative arts symposium organized by the center for Ethics and WonderRoot Atlanta. The event is about “bringing artists from eclectic backgrounds ... [in] varied art forms together under the umbrella of ethics,” Jordan said. “The event offers an opportunity to spark challenging conversations about various ethical issues.”

In addition to organizing on-campus art venues, Jordan is also constantly looking for a way for art to make an impact off campus.

She recently began teaching English as a Secondary Language (ESL) course to members of the refugee community in Atlanta.

Rather than sticking to previous ESL curricula offered by the resettlement agencies, Jordan plans to build her own curriculum for the course in collaboration with a local musician.

“[It’s a] primarily kinetic, culturally-sensitive technique of teaching English that integrates the use of photography, instructional songs, music and movement, and the awareness of rhythm and cadence of the English language,” Jordan said.

Jordan explained she plans to return to Romania in the future.

She hopes to one day become an ethnographic filmmaker. In an effort to integrate her interests in film and human rights, she is currently developing a non-governmental organization (NGO) to promote human rights in Eastern Europe.

“Unfortunately, even after the collapse of communism, corruption remains prevalent in Romanian journalism,” Jordan said. “The mission of my NGO is to recruit local ethical journalists, photographers and documentary filmmakers who will offer people who do not have a voice, as I once didn’t, a platform of expression and a way of stepping out of their invisible cloaks.”