Ras Mo

Delmance 'Ras Mo' Moses is one of the most gifted teachers and cultural activists to come out of the Caribbean Popular Theater movement. Born in Dominica, of African and Amerindian ancestry, Ras Mo is a dynamic performance poet, master drummer, recording artist, composer, and theater director, as well as a Popular Theater teacher and a consultant on youth empowerment and organizational development.

Ras Mo's riveting stage performances include poetry, storytelling, music, and song, combining folklore and rhythms of the Eastern Caribbean with urban US styles. Ras Mo's lyrics explore the struggles of today's youth, the resistance of the poor to oppression, the pranks of jumbies and other mythic beings, the hopes and griefs of immigrants, the need for men to oppose the abuse of women and value and support their children, and the powers of nature, Jah, and human love.

Ras Mo was the featured artist at Trinidad's International Rapso Festival and performed at the Afribbean Arts Festival, the National Performance Network Showcase, and many musical, drumming, poetry and storytelling performances in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent stage performances also include appearances at conferences on racism, education, welfare and the economy, and domestic violence in Vancouver, Canada, and the San Francisco area.

As a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence, Ras Mo teaches Caribbean performing arts and Popular Theater at Berkeley's La Peòa Cultural Center and in Oakland. He also teaches Traditional and Contemporary Caribbean Music at the University of California at Berkeley. Ras Mo has published three books of poetry and released his second CD/cassette recording, Tjèbè/Hold On, in 1998.

Now based in the San Francisco Bay area, Ras Mo also trained community and labor organizers, school teachers, youth leaders, anti-violence and health educators, and artists from Latino, African-American, Asian, white, native American, Caribbean and multicultural communities.

Ras Mo directed the Popular Theater for Youth Development Project. PTYD has trained staff and youth peer leaders from 36 area agencies in using performing arts to explore and express personal and community issues. Through Men Overcoming Violence (MOVE), Ras Mo's does youth development and domestic violence prevention work with young people in high schools, middle schools, and San Francisco's juvenile jail.

Ras Mo has helped groups with themes ranging from street violence and sexual abuse to dramatizing the historical and economic roots of community problems. He has worked in detention centers, staff retreats, large conferences, classrooms, women's shelters, and even a Greenpeace ship. He excels at bringing together multiple performers and media, fostering cooperation, nurturing young artists, and bringing out creativity in anyone.