photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Robbyne Demyse Kaamil
...........................................................................................

Robbyne Demyse Kaamil, comic actress and singer, teacher and, in a good way, preacher, brought her show “Raw & Real: Life from One Woman’s Perspective” to the Cherry Grove Community House, thanks to the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, on August 13, not only to entertain, but also to enlighten.
You knew you were in for a very different kind of journey when Kaamil began by singing “Tomorrow,” from “Annie,” a cappella; followed the line “I just stick out my chin and grin and say” with an aside of “What the fuck do I say again?”; and went on to explain that the real Annie was Shequanda, from the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn; her mother, a crack head; and the orphanage, foster care. She then recited hard-hitting ghetto haikus.
In poetry and prose, Kaamil gave us her take on a mother who was never warm and loving; fucking to avoid getting depressed about an eviction notice; satisfying autoeroticism; “there ain’t no pussy like a black pussy;” “the gold-tipped dick”—“attached to a deadbeat;” “the maintenance fuck” while waiting for Mr. Right; diversity—“You have to be an equal opportunity ’ho’;” “motherfucker” as a word that demands to be sung; her recent weight loss and the surprising new phenomenon of anorexia among black women; and, in “I feminist of a darker hue,” on how the movement didn’t work for black women.
Kaamil read a speech, given by a colonial Virginian slave owner named Lynch—from whose name the concept of lynching was derived—about controlling slaves, as a prologue to singing “Strange Fruit,” the song about lynching made famous by Billie Holiday. Kaamil’s “Amazing Grace” was prelude to her holding forth about trusting the church, but not being able to pay bills, and “keeping up with the Joneses,” which doesn’t make for happiness.
Pointing out that it isn’t government, but “ordinary people [who] bring about change” and, working together, do “extraordinary things,” Kaamil remembered Viola Rizzo, killed by the Ku Klux Klan, during the civil rights era, for registering black people to vote in South; Jack Greenberg, lawyer for the NAACP; lesbians who took care of gay men early in the AIDS crisis; and Stonewall, when “stupid cops” messed with gay people “on the day Judy Garland was buried.”
Kaamil concluded with “If My Friends Could See Me Now”—performing on stage instead of being in shackles and having to get up at 5 a.m. to pick cotton—and an appeal for her new charity—Broke Black Bitches in Brooklyn!
Hopefully this extraordinary woman brought about some change in some of the people of Cherry Grove.