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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 2018)
Celebrating ‘City of Roses’ BLACK HISTORY MONTH Volume XLVII • Number 8 Established in 1970 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • February 21, 2018 Committed to Cultural Diversity The soulful voice of Kathleen Saadat is captured in ‘Love for Sale’ a new debut album of jazz classics with Thomas Lauderdale and Pink Martini. Longtime Portland civil rights leader Kathleen Saadat (left) gets some love from Portland singer Storm Large and the band Pink Martini. Saadat collaborated with Pink Martini founder Thomas Lauderdale and members of the renowned Portland jazz band to produce ‘Love for Sale,’ a debut album of jazz standards. The cd is celebrat- ed on March 1 when an album release party takes place at the Aladdin Theater in southeast Portland. Music and Activism Intersect Civil rights leader fronts new CD with Pink Martini by D anny P eterson t he P ortlanD o bserver Longtime Portland civil rights leader Kathleen Saadat has a hidden musical talent that the rest of the city is about to experience. A respected and admired advocate for Af- rican American, women, and gay and lesbian rights since the 1970s, Saadat has a debut album of jazz classics “Love for Sale’ coming out on March 1. The recordings were made with long time friend, Thomas Lauderdale, founder of the internationally renowned Portland jazz band Pink Martini. The two serendipitously met back in the summer of 1991 when Lauderdale got a job working at City Hall between his junior and senior years in college and was Photo by K. K enDall Kathleen Saadat attacks social and economic inequal- ity during an Occupy movement rally, downtown. supervised by Saadat who was an assistant to the office of former City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury. Before forming his multi-million record selling group, Lauderdale, who was born in Oakland Calif., was on track to a budding political career as a Grant High School stu- dent in Portland and later as a Harvard student in his early 20s. “I guess the thing I remember first about Thomas was his enthusiasm and his sense of humor and great spirit. And I liked him immediately,” Saadat remembered. The city office was in the midst of drafting a civil rights ordinance to prohibit housing discrimination against gay and lesbian people and to protect families and individu- als denied housing based on legal sources of income like housing assistance, a first of its kind for the city. Lauderdale was learning to build coalitions in support C ontinueD on P age 7