Youth Roots, Talent Showcase, and Media co-coordinator
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Daniel Gray-Kontar is a poet, journalist, and rapper currently based in Oakland, California. His poetry has appeared in such anthologies as Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Three Rivers Press) Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (Syracuse University Press), and on the sound recording Grand Slam: The Best of the National Poetry Slam, Volume One (Mouth Almighty Records). Kontar is also the 1994 national poetry slam co-champion.
With his legendary history as a performance poet, Kontar fuses his studied mastery of the written word with complicated rhyme schemes and imagistic narratives to create vivid snapshots of life in his native Cleveland - a place he calls "the third land" with its poverty rate that rivals some cities in the so-called "third world." In March 2008 performing under the moniker "replife", Kontar released his first full-length album titled "the unclosed mind." The album has received critical acclaim from journalists worldwide, who call the recording a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale hip-hop music industry. Notably, The East Bay Express says the album is "a strong candidate for rap record of the year."
Kontar's music and social criticism have appeared in such magazines as The Source, The Village Voice, Wax Poetics, The Philadelphia Weekly and The Cleveland Free Times. He is also the former editor and publisher of the underground monthly magazine, Urban Dialect. Kontar has received two awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in reporting. His stories about voting irregularities in the city of Pittsburgh during the 2000 Presidential Election impacted local public policy, and his articles about post-911 raids on Muslim and black organizations have been republished in books, magazines and websites across the nation.
As a public speaker, Kontar regularly discusses the impact of hip-hop music and culture on urban youth. His conversations focus on the hip-hop tradition of positive networking and relating the ten elements of hip-hop to the lives of urban youth who have not been taught the culture's true origins. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the University of California, Berkeley's department of Language, Literacy, Society and Culture, and a youth mentor for Youth Roots, a critical media literacy program based in Oakland. Kontar is married and is expecting his first child, Paloma Manning Gray in September.
Love is an Action