Brief Bio

International storyteller, truth-teller and remembrance activist extraordinaire, Awele lifts up peoples histories and their change agents, honors legacies of resistance, unearths ancestral wisdom through genealogy, while engaging us in freedom-dreaming and new world building. Always calling us to action, her work enlivens and animates contemporary social movements for reparations, reconciliation and healing through arts and culture.

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Awele (ah-WAY-lay) Makeba is an internationally renowned storyteller, actor, an acclaimed voice artist for film and CDs, an award-winning drama teacher, a literacy specialist, a racial justice activist, and the producer of the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Oratorical Festival (Oakland Unified School District) featured in the Emmy-winning documentary We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical (2020).

Awele uses performance as text, and she animates democracy through her art. She has mesmerized audiences around the world from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.) and Peace Center for the Performing Arts (Greenville, S.C.) to The Musikverein (Vienna), Tsinchu Teachers College (Taiwan), Suriname (U.S. Dept. of State Tour), Russia, Austria, Australia, France, Costa Rica, and Canada and she has toured the United States from Alaska to Mississippi and Hawaii to New Hampshire. Have I got a story for You!

Storytelling was there at the beginning of Aweles life, passed down from her great great-grandparents and grandmother Ruth to Aweles thespian daddy who animated his constant stream of tales with sound effects and gestures during long family car trips to visit extended family in Mississippi. From a young age, she studied dance (ballet, pointe, tap, and Modern, Dunham Technique, Afro-Hatian, waltz, fox-trot, tango, salsa) and piano, plus excelled at gymnastics, and started her career in theater arts in high school.

She cherishes her professional training in song, dance, and theater at Webster Universitys Conservatory of Theater Arts where she earned a B.F.A. Other credentials include: M.A. in Education: Language and Literacy, a Career Technology Education (CTE) Credential from University of California at Berkeley, and multiple teaching credentials.

She has given keynote performances, guest lectures, and interactive workshops at museums, cultural centers, festivals, libraries, churches, and universities (including Stanford) across the fifty states. Inspired by folklore, life experiences, and the hidden histories of African Americans, her stories focus on making meaning of the present, understanding the influences of the past, and imagining new futures.

Make it Yours (Short, 2026), Ballet Master

California Suits You (Romcom, Short, 2026), Editor

Win or Die (Action, Sci-Fi, 2027), 2nd-C, Gambler