4th District’s Voice for Arts : Culture: Indefatigable champion of social change and founder of Harlem 21 has seen that group’s Jazz Iz Forever succeed, and she has big plans for the future.

SAN DIEGO — She had an interview to do, but first, Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson wanted to play a favorite new jazz CD.

Life and work blur together for Thompson. She’s dedicated to the arts, which explains why she’s chosen the arts as her vehicle for social change in San Diego’s 4th City Council District.

Three years ago, Thompson founded 21 Harlem, a nonprofit arts organization, with the goal of using the arts to help revitalize the 4th District. Jazz Iz Forever, the annual music event presented by 21 Harlem, has become the area’s largest cultural event.

With the jazz fest an annual institution, Thompson is leading 21 Harlem into other projects, including a new cultural center she hopes to build in the 4th District.

The district represents a sizable section of San Diego, defined by Interstate 15 on the west, College Grove Shopping Center on the north, Lomita Village on the east, and Paradise Hills on the south. This part of the city is home to 143,000 San Diegans, 29% of them African-American, 24% Hispanic.

But there’s a severe shortage of arts programs.

Jazz playing, incense burning in a far corner, Thompson, whose home office in Emerald Hills is stocked with books on subjects ranging from African-American history to eastern spirituality, spoke about her vision for 21 Harlem.

She says the lack of arts events is not unique to the 4th District, but is a problem throughout San Diego County and even California.

“I don’t know if the sun bleaches out brain cells or there’s something in the water,” she said. “There’s no shortage of money, but there is a shortage of involvement.”

Thompson sees events like Jazz Iz Forever as a positive force in bringing people together, attracting new business, helping to transform the area’s sometimes troubled image as a haven for drugs and crime.

“We are the only African-American organization in the city that has raised the kind of money we’ve raised in three years, the only one that has done massive events with massive community support,” she said. “From that standpoint, we are unique in the entire city and county.”

Thompson said 21 Harlem, which she runs with one paid part-time assistant and a host of volunteers, has a budget of close to $200,000 this year. With the tremendous success of Jazz Iz Forever, 21 Harlem’s reputation is spreading.

“I don’t think there’s another event in the (4th District) community that draws so many people,” said Jerome Groomes, chairman of 21 Harlem’s board and president of the Southeast Economic Development Corp., a city agency charged with developing new business in San Diego’s struggling inner city.

In its fifth year, the music festival, which this year was held Aug. 1, drew more than 15,000 to the Gateway Business Park across from Mt. Hope Cemetery. The talent roster was topped by first-rate jazz performers Najee and Papa John Creach.

Groomes said Jazz Iz Forever has proven to Gateway Center businesses that involvement with the arts can make good marketing sense. It brought hordes of potential new customers to the center.

Thompson pronounced this year’s Jazz Iz Forever a big success, even though income from all sources, including ticket sales, corporate and individual donations, and a $15,000 contribution from the California Lottery, fell about $5,000 short of the $58,000 production cost.

Since corporate sponsorship dropped because of the recession this year, Jazz Iz Forever instigated an admission charge--$5--for the first time.

Although attendance topped 15,000, only 5,000 people paid to get in.

“That was where we really blew it,” Thompson said. “We let in everyone under 18 for free. We didn’t think we’d get as many kids and teen-agers as we did. We let everyone who came before 10 a.m. in free too. We thought we’d get 100 or 150, but we got 1,000, so that’s $5,000 right there.”

Thompson vowed to improve security. Hundreds of folks attended Jazz Iz Forever without paying by slipping through gaps in the fence.

Also, Thompson found out souvenirs don’t sell. 21 Harlem spent about $6,000 for 1,000 commemorative T-shirts, 1,000 caps and 300 seat cushions. Only 200 T-shirts, 100 caps and fewer than 100 cushions sold.

There also was a parking shortage, which Thompson says may have kept hundreds of people away from the event.

Next year may improve.

“We want a new home, and we have our eyes on a place,” she said. Thompson wouldn’t say where, but it is in the 4th District, and outdoors. “Jazz Iz Forever will always be in a park-like setting.”

A new location could be a financial boon for the festival. No alcohol is allowed at the city-owned Dennis V. Allen Park in the Gateway Center, but at the privately-owned location Thompson is considering, beer could be sold, which might allow Jazz Iz Forever to attract a beer distributor as a major sponsor, much as the annual Street Scene downtown received major support from Michelob for many years (Michelob dropped out this year).

With the crunch of producing the music fest behind her, Thompson is deep into other projects, the most important being developing plans for a new cultural center.

This year, 21 Harlem received a $100,000 community development block grant from the city of San Diego to fund selection of a cultural center site and preliminary feasibility studies.

Early this year, Thompson had pinned down what she considered to be an ideal place. It was a vacant building that had housed a discount store at Federal Boulevard and Euclid Avenue, in the heart of the community. But the chain decided to re-open the store, and on June, 21 Harlem informed the city that it would have to find another site.

Now, Thompson is scrambling for a new location. She has two in mind, and still hopes to build a center next year.

Thompson wants to put up a pre-manufactured modular building, at a cost of about $350,000. She is busy writing grant proposals and said she thinks she can assemble financing within six months. She dreams out loud about the many positive benefits the center could bring to her community.

The building would serve as headquarters for 21 Harlem, along with other new, younger arts organizations. It could be a focus for theater groups, music, lectures, even business forums.

Thompson envisions a banquet room that could accommodate 1,000 to 2,000 guests, so that local organizations no longer have to take their big gatherings out of the community.

A big kitchen would dish up food while doubling as a laboratory for a culinary program Thompson envisions for area young people. She also wants the new structure to include a 400-to 500-seat theater.

She thinks it’s great that the La Jolla Playhouse has produced several plays by South African-playwright Athol Fugard, but she’d like to produce African plays by black African writers.

Such a cultural center is a tall order, but if anyone can pull it off, it may be Thompson, who seems comfortable wearing the many hats the head of a small, nonprofit arts organization must wear.

She’s a promoter, businesswoman, talent scout, and fund-raiser, and she also finds time to act with San Diego theater companies. She’s also an effective grant writer, a skill that keeps 21 Harlem afloat.

Before moving to San Diego in 1983, Thompson wrote numerous proposals for a variety of arts organizations in Washington D.C., including the District of Columbia’s Commission for Arts and Humanities, where she served as grants officer.

This year alone, Thompson estimates, she has applied for 20 to 30 grants for 21 Harlem.

Last month, the organization received $8,000 from the San Diego Commission for Arts & Culture, to be used for organizational expenses.

For the first time, Thompson has applied on behalf of 21 Harlem to the National Endowment for the Arts. She has two proposals in, one for $15,000 for Jazz Iz Forever, the other for $30,000 for 21 Harlem to use toward expanding its arts programs in the 4th District.

She has also applied for $9,000 from New York-based American Dialogue, a national organization that funds arts programs in diverse ethnic communities. She would use the money to present the nine-hour video history, “The Africans,” in the 4th District.

It has been shown on public television, but Thompson wants the series to be the focus of discussions led by Ali Mazrui, an African-American history professor at Binghamton University in New York who created and narrated the shows.

“African-Americans, particularly on the West Coast, don’t have a good sense of their history,” she explained. “We’re losing a wealth of knowledge. History is dying out, and we can’t afford to let that happen.”

With her boundless energy, Thompson serves as an inspiration to those around her.

“Jazz Iz Forever is a wonderful event,” said Debra Stephens, coordinator for Project I Believe, a nonprofit educational organization that joined 21 Harlem’s board this year.

“To see the time and commitment M’Lafi puts into Jazz Iz Forever, that kind of motivated me to help her make it the best it could be,” Stephens said. “So many of us sit on the sidelines. I admire commitment from people who want to do something to make things better.”

But Thompson doesn’t rest on her laurels.

“There’s an educational quest I’m on that has to do with the fact that we only have eight years left in this century,” she said. “The 1980s and 1990s have changed the face of this country. I’m really concerned that, if we don’t find common ground, we will dig ourselves this hole and kill ourselves off.”