The Grace Jamaican Jerk Festival has the all the right ingredients for a scrumptious time.
Next Sunday at Roy Wilkins Park in Queens, professional chefs and amateur eaters come will together with live music, children’s rides, a video arcade and a domino tournament as a backdrop.
Musical stars Freddy McGregor, Agent Sasco (Assassin) and Serani will perform, as well as comedians Ity and Fancy Cat, the Brawta Folk Singers and the Something Positive performance ensemble.
Of course, a highlight of the annual event, presented this year by Digicel, will be the anticipated mouth-watering Jerk Cook Off.
Chefs will use their grills to unleash their finest jerk recipes – spicing up chicken, pork, seafood, beef, mutton, lamb and vegetarian foods as they vie for top honors and cash prizes.
Chef Mazie Miller will use his skills to display several jerk recipes using Grace Foods products, and celebrity chef Irie Spice (aka Hugh Sinclair) will demonstrate his cooking expertise and share the results with festival-goers.
Event sponsors include the Jamaican Jerk Festival USA, VP Records, Western Union, Vita Malt, Air Jamaica, Irie Jam Media, WBLS (107.5-FM), WLIB (1190-AM) and the Caribbean Life newspaper.
Gates will open at noon and the festival will end at 8 p.m. Roy Wilkins Park is at Merrick and Foch Boulevards in St. Albans. Tickets are $20 in advance and available online at www.jerkfestivalny.com and at neighborhood outlets.
For information, call 718-425-1177. And for vending opportunities, call 718-807-6241.
Education aid
The Kweyol Breakfast for Education, to be held next Sunday in Brooklyn, is an inaugural event dedicated to a primary concern – providing a good education for less-advantaged youth.
Proceeds from the event – which will be held at the Saint Lucia House, 438 E. 49th St. in East Flatbush beginning at 10 a.m. – will benefit Project Education.
The initiative, started in 2010 by St. Lucian’s Jeremiah Hyacinth, provides St. Lucian students from low-income families with school supplies.
St. Lucia-born Urania Petit, Connecticut’s registrar of voters, will be the keynote speaker at the benefit, which will feature St. Lucian food and cultural entertainment.
Last year, nearly 200 book bags filled with school supplies were presented to Saint Lucia’s National Community Foundation for distribution to needy children. Tickets for the Kweyol Breakfast for Education are $25. For information, call 347-715-6280.
Health symposium and fund-raiser
The members of the Barbados Cancer Association are preparing for two special events in September – a symposium on pancreatic cancer on Sept. 24 at Kingsbrook Medical Center in Brooklyn, and the Barbados Hospice Initiative Collaborative Fund-raiser on Sept. 25 at the Floral Terrace catering hall in Floral Park, L.I.
The association promotes prevention and early detection of cancer among Barbadians in the region and the diaspora. For information, call 866-729-1011 and visit https://barbadoacancerusa.org.
Boosting young people’s health
Good health for young people is the goal of a one-day conference in Brooklyn on Saturday.
The Healthy Lifestyle Summer Youth Empowerment conference, presented by the Anne Blue Youth Academic Program under the auspices of Hope Chest Inc., will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Anne Blue Convention Center, 4714 Church Avenue, East Flatbush.
Young people ages 12 to 17 years old are the target audience for the conference, which will provide invaluable information about obesity prevention, good nutrition, the importance of exercise and HIV/AIDS prevention.
Representatives from the Cornell University Cooperative Extension, the city Health Department, the Caribbean Women’s Health Association and other community-based groups will supply information for conference participants.
Certificates of participation will be awarded at the completion of the conference.
There’s new mas & different band in town
And now for something completely different – the “Something with a Difference” mas band for coming for Labor Day Monday’s West Indian American Day Carnival Parade.
Get a preview of the band from 11 p.m. to midnight tonight on Kiss FM radio (WKRS at 98.7-FM)
Presented by Carnival Village International and uniquely billed as a “dynamic presentation of masquerade theater,” the new mas band features input from a several well-respected members of the city’s Caribbean community. Veteran designer Richie Richardson, dancer/choreographer Michael Manswell and the Something Positive troupe and attorney/businessman Brian Figeroux are part of the Something with a Difference nucleus.
Jeff King band takes Machavelle’s stage
Get a good dose of great jazz at an excellent price on Saturdays when the Jeff King Band performs at the Machavelle Bar & Lounge, 602 Pacific Street (between Fourth and Flatbush Aves.), in Park Slope
There’s no cover charge to hear the band – featuring of Jeff King on (tenor saxophone), Yoichi Uzeki at piano), Bryce Sebastian on( bass), and George Gray on (drums). The ensemble will perform jazz standards from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. each week.
For information and reservations, call 718-363-3928. For more information on Jeff King, visit www.jazzking.net.
Festival on the trials & tribulations ‘down under’
Brooklyn’s MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts) will be hosting two-week film festival in advance of its upcoming “Saying No: Reconciling Spirituality and Resistance in Indigenous Australian Art” exhibition.
The film festival’s dramas, shorts and documentaries will reflect historical and contemporary issues facing indigenous Australians. The event premiere, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., features Aboriginal shorts, outdoor chalk drawing activities for children, and music and dance performances by internationally renowned aboriginal artist Cameron McCarthy.
Also that evening, the opening reception for “Dandy Lion: Articulating a Re (de)fined Black Masculine Identity” exhibition, curated by Shantrelle Lewis, will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. There will be refreshments, live music and wine will be served courtesy of Sugarleaf Vineyards.
For information, call MoCADA at (718) 230-0492 and visit www.mocada.org.
Reprinted from the Sunday, July 17 editions of The New York Daily News
