About — A Thousand WordZ

“An organization of mixed genre artists who share their works in community — to build community.”

Our Mission

A Thousand WordZ is a community arts organization that brings together mixed-genre artists — musicians, poets, visual artists, performers, culinary artists, home brewers, and makers in shared public spaces to build community, amplify underrepresented voices, and direct resources toward local and global causes.

Through accessible live events, ATW creates a marketplace where artists make direct sales to the public, culinary artists share their craft, and community members gather around shared creativity. A percentage of proceeds from every event supports charitable causes chosen by the community.

ATW invests in the production infrastructure — sound, lighting, space, and skilled contractors — that makes meaningful gathering possible.

— When artists thrive together, the whole community is strengthened.

A Thousand WordZ was born from a simple and enduring belief: that when artists share their gifts in community, community grows stronger.

Founded by Atiim Chenzira in the East Bay of California, A Thousand WordZ began as a gathering place for musicians, poets, visual artists, culinary artists, and storytellers — people working across genres and disciplines, united by a commitment to creative expression and collective healing. From its earliest events in Oakland in 2005, ATW carved out a space where a spoken word poet could share a stage with a jazz musician, where a muralist’s work could live alongside a live band, where food and art and music and community collapsed into one living, breathing thing.

ATW’s first major event was held at the Oakland Noodle Factory in 2010, organized in response to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January of that year. That event set the tone for everything ATW would become: art in the service of community, community in the service of the world.

The Noodle Factory Performing Arts Center, West Oakland, February 2010 — West Oakland · February 27, 2010

Jack Eastgate painting live — Jack Eastgate, live

Work hung for sale on the gallery walls — Everything was for sale

Hand-lettered bar sign reading Haiti Hopeweizen — Haiti Hopeweizen

The crowd at the Noodle Factory benefit — The room, full

Photographs by SooozhyQ and Bethanie Hines · Live art by Suzie Ferras and Jack Eastgate · Brews by D.N.A. Brewing Org. · Artists from Local 365 and Project Elefont

Over nearly two decades, ATW organized events that raised funds for communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, the Chile earthquake, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the Nepal earthquake — understanding early that art is not separate from the world’s pain, but one of its most powerful responses. ATW partnered with Oakland Drops Beats — the Bay Area’s first music crawl — bringing together over 20 artists, 10 venues, and thousands of community members across downtown Oakland, featuring the work of visual artists Jack Eastgate, Lorenzo Vasquez, Freedom Bean, Joel Thompson, and master artist Calvin Grey, alongside musicians, DJs, culinary artists, and spoken word poets.

In 2020, ATW’s founder represented Maine at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Arts Across America initiative — presenting Destiny Manifest: In Pursuit of Happiness, a seven-part multimedia work exploring multi-generational discrimination and the resilience of Black and Indigenous communities.

Now ATW has come home — to Greater Portland, Maine, where Atiim Chenzira has spent years building community through music, mental health work, education, and organizing. Atiim serves on the advisory circle of Indigo Arts Alliance and the boards of Portland Ovations, the Cultural Alliance of Maine, Avesta Housing, and Maine Inside Out — rooting his artistic practice in the civic and community life of Greater Portland. These roots run deep, and they run in the same direction they always have.

A Thousand WordZ is not a venue. It is not a label. It is not a grant program. It is a living organization — a gathering of artists who believe that mixed genres, shared stages, open calls, and community themes can do what policy alone cannot: connect people across difference, heal through expression, and build the kind of community where everyone belongs.

Roots & Routes · Nov 18 → Join As An Artist →

Founder

Atiim Chenzira

Multidisciplinary artist — poet, musician, songwriter, painter, spoken word performer.

At a glance

Born in Oakland, California
Writing songs at 12 · performing at 14
Ridah Ridah Entertainment, est. 2001
A Thousand WordZ, est. 2005
In Portland, Maine since 2018

Elsewhere

atiimchenzira.com
music & spoken word ridahridah.com
Ridah Ridah Entertainment @Atiim_Paints
painting

Atiim Chenzira is a multidisciplinary artist — poet, musician, songwriter, painter, and spoken word performer — whose creative work is rooted in community health, renewal, and resilience. Born in California and shaped by a blend of African, Filipino, Native American, and European heritage, his voice carries both rhythm and reflection, bridging struggle and spirituality, and examining how inherited stories shape self-understanding, healing, and belonging.

He started writing songs at twelve and performing at fourteen, after his elders made it clear that what he was doing mattered. His father played the Last Poets in the house. Years later, at Cal State Northridge, he would be mentored by Dr. Johnny Scott — one of the Watts poets. The line from a record on a turntable to a teacher in a classroom is not one he planned, but it is the one he followed.

In junior high he joined a Berkeley group called Gangstas By Heart, formed to put something creative in the space where street violence was. At Berkeley High in the early nineties he trained with the Live Lyricist Society, an elite club of lyricists focused on freestyle, performance, and public speaking. He went on to form Fourth Kind, and then 5N’Dime with his brother, his best friend, and his cousins.

Since 2001 he has owned and operated Ridah Ridah Entertainment as an umbrella for his creative work — a record label, multimedia productions, audio and lighting design, and voice-over. His debut album In Pursuit of Happiness followed in 2003. Over the next decade he sang and wrote with Bekka’s Frogland Orchestra, Shotwell 25, Divasonic, and Con Brio, and formed his own band BOMANI Musik. He began painting in San Francisco in 2008 and has not stopped.

While living in Oakland he produced grassroots community events under the name A Thousand WordZ, bringing people together to raise money and awareness for local and global causes. In 2020 he represented Maine at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Arts Across America initiative.

“It speaks to genre-less, to an extent. Music that doesn’t just box me into one direction.”

Alongside the art he built a second life in service. He holds a master’s in counseling psychology from the University of San Francisco, a BA in sociology from San Francisco State, and a BA in Pan African Studies from Cal State Northridge — one of the first men of his generation in his family to finish college. He works in forensic clinical mental health for the State of Maine, in the Family Court Program.

He moved to Portland in 2018. He serves on the boards of Avesta Housing, Portland Ovations, the Cultural Alliance of Maine, and Maine Inside Out, and sits on the advisory circle of Indigo Arts Alliance. He lives in the West End.

He now lives and works in Maine, where he continues to create poetry and spoken word pieces that honor ancestry, community, and the quiet work of becoming whole.

The research is clear.The arts build economies, heal communities, and spark innovation.

The research is clear.
The arts build economies, heal communities, and spark innovation.