A Place to Harvest Handicrafts of Africa

Know what a kinara is? Shoppers at the Pasadena African Marketplace will find out this weekend.

They’ll also learn about Kwanzaa, a holiday based on the traditional African celebration of the first harvest. Kwanzaa was developed in 1966 in the United States by Prof. Maulana (formerly Ron) Karenga, chairman of the department of black studies at Cal State Long Beach. It begins Dec. 26 and lasts a week. The Marketplace is celebrating both Christmas and Kwanzaa this weekend.

The Marketplace, a venue for about 200 minority and female entrepreneurs who create their own goods and services, is sponsored by the Pasadena Neighborhood Enterprise Center. The 3-year-old marketplace offers handmade crafts and jewelry, clothing, art and food on the first Saturday of every month.

For Christmas and Kwanzaa, the marketplace’s two-day festival will feature 65 to 80 vendors, at least twice as many as usual.

“It’s a very community-based marketplace,” said Patricia Duff Tucker, enterprise center manager. “(Shoppers) will find unique items that they definitely won’t find in the department stores where everyone is.”

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Among these items are kinaras, or candleholders, soft-cloth books, African print towels and blankets, African jewelry and clothes. Shoppers can munch on sweet-potato cakes made from a generations-old recipe.

And they can listen to live jazz. The Brooks Brothers and Maple City Band will entertain shoppers from 2 to 5 p.m. Music, food and holiday cards and ornaments will be sold as part of the Christmas celebration, and there will be crafts workshops for children and demonstrations teaching the history of Kwanzaa.

The Pasadena African Marketplace is at Lincoln and Montana streets in Pasadena. Information: (818) 794-7191.