PROJECTS & RESIDENCIES

2008

NEFASHA AYER - The Space of In Between

A commissioned work by the San Francisco Foundation's Fund for Artists

Nefasha Ayer, loosely translated from Amharic as “the wind that travels”, explores a transcontinental odyssey of multiple characters who find themselves caught between national identities, cultures, and politics. The project joins together the talented song-writing capacity of Meklit Hadero with guitarist/composer-arranger, Todd Brown, South-Indian Carnatic Jazz composer/saxophonist, Prasant Radhakrishnan, drummer/tablaist, Sameer Gupta, composer/bassist/flautist, Eliyahu Sills, and Ethiopian born hip-hop artist, Gabriel Teodros. Nefasha Ayer weaves together Ethiopian and South Indian melodies/rhythms against a varying backdrop of North American jazz, while Hadero’s voice and song, as the wind that travels, serve as the narrator.

Through its tones and colors, poetic texts and trans-cultural melodic scores, Nefasha Ayer joins the continents of Africa, South Asia, and America to explore the most essential and universal qualities shared among individuals worldwide whose identity no longer fits within the boundaries of one country, culture, or tradition. Whereas one would expect the content of such a project to focus on the social/cultural context of its characters, Nefasha Ayer builds on the internal: the subjective yet universal human desire for home. For these characters, “home” is no longer an external place – for some it never was. Home has taken shape instead as a longing within. This is “the space of in-between.”

As Hadero states,

"When growing up in Brooklyn, my mother would refer to Ethiopia simply as “back home.” Years later, during our first trip to the Horn of Africa, I witnessed her using the very same words to describe the United States, which struck me profoundly. It became instantly clear that there was, in fact, no such place as “back home.” Rather, it was a reference to an in-between, heavy with nostalgia and fluid enough to change from moment to moment, as she herself was capable of doing."

The lyrical content, written both in Amharic and English, follows the story of five characters, each expressing a different part of the story of “in-between”: nostalgia, exile, return, the moment of break-through, and, finally, revealing to others what has been learned. In each song, the wind, which does not belong to any nation, is ever-present as the narrator or a character, constantly calling the listener to move from the external world, through the songs, and into the internal landscape that ultimately grounds the music.

Although there are innumerable works, in almost every discipline, that address the interface of racial and/or cultural groups, immigration, etc, Nefasha Ayer's central focus brings to life a deceptively simple and most elusive quality. Though the stories are told through the lens of Ethiopian musical idioms and language, it is not an Ethiopian story. Rather, Nefasha Ayer explores a living history found universally amongst people of movement, and indeed all human beings, whose life and identity cannot be bound by nation, religion, or cultural tradition. At its heart, Nefasha Ayer - the space of in-between, represents a free-ness from ideological construct and a fluidity of being - moving and livng in constant redefinition.

"In a recent recording project, undertaken during my last trip to Ethiopia, I collected essential raw material for “Nefasha Ayer” by capturing the sounds of various Ethiopian musicians, including my grandmother singing, traditional poets known as Asmari, modern bands, and traditional bands playing music from each major ethnic group in the country. This independent study enabled me to deepen my knowledge of the Ethiopian pentatonic scale, as well as to understand the forward-pushing rhythms, found so often in music from that region."

THE ARTISTS. . .

Meklit Hadero -

Meklit Hadero is an emerging San Francisco-based singer and songwriter who is giving new voice to the experience of a transcontinental identity. Born in Ethiopia and raised in New York, Hadero’s story lays at the heart of her music and songwriting. Over the last year, she was featured twice in the San Francisco Chronicle and is currently in the process of developing her first EP.

www.myspace.com/meklit

Todd T. Brown -    

Todd Brown is an interdisciplinary artists, more widely known in the Bay Area for his large-scale paintings. Few people know he began study of guitar 20 years ago, and has played ever since. His studies include bass, as well as percussion - within the Afro-Cuban and Haitian traditions. As part of independent research, Todd has toured Northern and Western Africa, South America and the Caribbean, exploring the relationship of music and dance as set within their distict historical cultural/political contexts.

Prasant Radhakrishnan -

Prasant Radhakrishnan is the founder/composer for the SF-based Carnatic/jazz ensemble, VidyA. He is a former student of pioneering carnatic saxophonist, Padmashri Kadri Gopalnath, and is a saxophonist identified with the South Indian classical (Carnatic) music and jazz disciplines. He has performed solo internationally in both traditions, with two critically acclaimed Carnatic saxophone albums to his credit.

www.prasantmusic.com , www.vidyamusic.com

Sameer Gupta -

Sameer Gupta has been gaining more and more recognition in the international music and jazz scene. He is the founder of the Supplicants and Kosmic Rennaissance, and has studied percussion since 1985. His most recent and innovative work is with VidyA, combining Indian classical percussion with North American jazz.

www.sameergupta.com , www.vidyamusic.com

Eliyahu Sills -

Eliyahu Sills studied upright bass at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. Sills later began an in-depth apprenticeship of the ney and bansuri flutes (The ney reed flute is the oldest known melodic instrument.), studying under the guidance of master G.S. Sachdev.

www.eliyahusills.com  

Gabriel Teodros -   

Teodros is a first generation Ethiopian hip-hop artist out of North West (Seattle). His performance and educational stints range from classrooms to theatres, clubs, protests, prisons to street corners alongside the likes of Zap Mama, Fishbone, KRS-One, The Coup, Souls Of Mischief, Digable Planets, Aceyalone & Abstract Rude, and GZA/Genius. He released his first solo album, Lovework, in early 2007 on Mass Line Records and was recently featured on NPR.

www.myspace.com/gabrielteodros

Nefasha Ayer – The Space of In Between & The Red Poppy Art House

The integration of creative work within organizational development and enterprise

As Directors of the Red Poppy Art House of San Francisco, Meklit and Todd have been in constant dialogue and collaboration with musicians from every corner of the world. This placement, as artist at the intersection of musical lineages - living, working, as well as developing within San Francisco's Mission District (known for its strong immigrant presence), allows for a unique engagement of the complex issues and themes that Nefash Ayer seeks to express.

Nefasha Ayer, which was commissioned through the Red Poppy Art House, is exceptionally significant in that represents the evolution of a new model of “Artists-in-Directorship” with which the Art House is experimenting. The Red Poppy Art House is known for its intimacy and the intensity of creative/artistic out-put. The “Artists-in-Directorship” was devised as a way of insuring that, as the Art House continues to grow, creative work and the creative process will continue to be actively engaged at the highest level of the Art House organization. That which determines the vitality of the organization is not only the artwork on display and the performances and workshops that are offered by its guest artists, but, also, it is the individual creative endeavors of the staff members and directors themselves. There are many stories of organizations that began with tremendous creative force but then lost the heart and spontaneity of the work as they began to grow and succeed, a development which inevitably necessitates a more comprehensive and complex organizational structure. We recognize this profound and honest challenge that is facing the Red Poppy Art House as it moves forward expanding and deepening its programs. The model of “Artists-in-Directorship”, which divides the responsibilities of an executive director into a shared directorship that requires creative out-put of both of its artist-directors as part of their responsibility to the organization, is our experiment in meeting this challenge.

All Nefasha Ayer images by Nate Keck.

LULACRUZA

Performing Artists

                                    
Alejandra Ortiz is a singer/songwriter from Bogotá, Colombia. She has a deep connection with the immemorial practices and sounds of her land and plays native instruments such as the Cuatro, kamza flutes, tar and kalimba. She has recorded 7 albums singing South American folklore, jazz and other cross-culture/border-less music. Since leaving Colombia in 2001, she has toured Argentina, Brazil, Japan and the US. She is a teacher and student of self-knowing practices including yoga, TaKeTiNa, sound healing and traditional indigenous medicine. Her music is nurtured by being in nature, being in silence, and by exploring the possibilities of using sound for transmission.

Luis Maurette is a percussionist and electronic musician involved in free improvisation, electro-acoustic composition, multimedia performance and sound installation. He received an MFA in electronic music from Mills College in Oakland where he worked with Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros. As en electronic musician he has performed and released material in places such as USA, France, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. He is also co-founder of the environmentally-conscious NY-based art non-profit organization Eidelon Culture. His music is a continuous exploration of nature, ancestry, culture and spirit, a practice that is in constant growth and is directly influenced by the indigenous essence which is universal to all human origin.

OUR INTENTION

Lulacruza comes to the Art House a year and a half after releasing our debut album Do Pretty!. After traveling through Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, we are now living in the East bay; and our presence at the Red Poppy symbolizes the growing of roots in our new home. By inhabiting the Art House for 5 months we are hoping to weave all of our relations, continuing the process of creating bridges between seemingly different worlds and strenghtening community ties. We are bringing fellow travelers, noise & electronic musicians, folk singers, sound healers, visual artists, educators and community builders to foster the dream of listening to each other and co-creating with and through all of our relations.
 
Thus, our residency wants to explore how we can rightly relate to the world. What it means to be human, right here, right now. And hopes to deepen and nurture all of our relations, not only the relations to people around us, but the relation to ourselves and to every single other being on the planet. By placing special intent on the act of listening and becoming more present, we are wishing to remember our true place as co-creators of the world.

Lulacruza is working towards their second album, and so, the Red Poppy will also serve as a greenhouse for its ripening. The different concerts, collaborations, screenings, talks, workshops, open laboratories and the on-going installation will all nurture the album's creative growth.

http://www.lulacruza.com

Guests/Collaborators:

Gregg Kowalsky – PERFORMANCE collaboration
Born in New York City and raised in South Florida, Gregg Kowalsky has had the opportunity to perform throughout Europe and the United States under the Osso Bucco moniker for the past several years. He participated in festivals such as WDR’s SoundArt-Köln Festival, Sonar, OFFF (Online Flash-Film Festival) and The Nursery Summer Festival in Sweden alongside artists like Stephan Mathieu, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Wolf Eyes, fm3 and others.  He now resides in Oakland, California where he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College with the guidance of Fred Frith.  Kowalsky’s compositions range from textural ambient to drone and noise pieces, which are highly influenced by the thick, humid air of South Florida where Gregg lived for most of his life. He is interested in filling the spaces his music occupies through dense, live, multi-channel mixes. He has composed for film, dance, acoustic ensembles and sound installations.
www.greggkowalsky.net


M.J. Greenmountain – PERFORMANCE collaboration. Forth coming collaboration EP.
M.J. is the lead vocalist and percussionist for the conscious world-groove band Hamsa Lila. He has learned sacred songs, root rhythms, and chants from around the globe, while also participating in sacred ceremonies with many indigenous tribes from India to Australia, Egypt to the Americas. He has composed and produced complete original music scores for feature films, and documentaries. M.J. has played with world and other music notables such as Michael Franti & Spearhead, Ozomatli, Hassan Hakmoun, Jai Uttal, Babatunde Olatunji, String Cheese Incident, Stanley Jordan, Shim Shai and many others. He also does direct healing work with people using music as the medium. He is currently working on his first solo album to be released in Fall of 2007, as well as a collaboration EP with Lulacruza.
www.hamsalila.com
 

Loren Chasse – TALK + PERFORMANCE collaboration
Loren Chasse considers the sounds of natural and unnatural settings, situations, and found objects as spirited material that may be transported, mutated and reintegrated under new conditions to yield hybrid apparitions of spaces, things and moments.  Loren's recorded work and performances often incorporate electronic noises which emulate sounds that occur in nature. The combination of such objects as motors, clocks and strobe lights with materials such as stones, branches, gravel, sand and leaves creates an atmosphere of fantasy, something familiar yet unnameable, neither here nor there.
He is Director of Education with the sound arts collective 23hive and teaches in the San Francisco School District. He works with children to develop their sense of creative listening, often leading 'sonic hikes' in addition to workshops in the classroom. Additionally, Loren records and performs with the groups idBattery, Thuja, Coelacanth and The Blithe Sons.
www.23five.org/lchasse


Sergio Lialin –  PERFORMANCE Guest for Acoustic concert: Healing songs of Pan-America


Julián Martinez– TALK:  Right relating to the world / Indigenous spirituality / Prophecy of the condor & eagle / Sacred Fire of Iztachitlan.

Classes and Workshops:

Mirroring Nature with Music: Sound Composition using Ableton Live
In this 4-week workshop participants will gain basic knowledge of loop-based software music sequencer "Ableton Live" to expand their concepts of sound, music, space, place, silence and nature.

Joyful singing: A Voice Workshop for the whole body
This 4-week singing workshop will work with breathing and singing exercises to free and strengthen the voice. By grounding ourselves and connecting to the whole body, we will explore the vocal timbre and range, undo hindering vocal habits, and develop a loving non-judgmental singing practice.

Introduction to TaKeTiNa

TaKeTiNa is a group process that allows access to the body's innate rhythmic knowledge, conveying rhythm in a natural and organic manner. Participants are guided into the experience of rhythm archetypes - a matrix which constitutes the underlying structure of all music- through vocalization, clapping, and stepping. In other words, the students gain direct access to the rhythmic worlds of Africa, Asia, and Latin America by using the body itself as the main instrument.

Collective Improvisation: “El Canto al Gallo”
This 2-day intensive workshop will use a variety of sound games, visualization techniques, listening and channeling exercises to weave a fabric -both social and sonic- through which we can improvise collectively. We will work directly with the individual members of the group using methods borrowed from the disciplines of Drama Therapy and Sound Healing to access sub-conscious and intuitive creative sources.

Sound Awareness/Listening Meditations
Inspired by Pauline Olivero's practice of Deep Listening, we will explore our sonic environment and the nature of our relationship with it. Through consciously focusing attention upon the acts of hearing and listening, we will heighten our awareness and deepen the connection to ourselves and our environment.

Open Laboratory
Open laboratory is a time when people can drop-in, watch us work and be part of Lulacruza's creative process. We will be working on our new album and we want to share the process and collaborate with the community of artists that surround us. We invite anyone to come by and help us by participating in sound games, chanting, and noise-making activities which will be recorded. We also invite people to come by, create amulets, ask questions, or simply listen. We are happy to share our music, knowledge and to open a space for collective creation.

For more information on the workshops:
www.redpoppyarthouse.org/workshops

Film Screenings:

From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers Warning

Directed by Alan Ereira. 1991

Kogis, the message of the last men

Directed By Eric Julien. 2005

Step across the border
Directed by Nicolas Humber and Werner Penzel.1990

For more information on the film screenings:

www.redpoppyarthouse.org/film

On-going installation: EKEKO

by: Cecilia Elguero

Ekeko is a playful exploration of the relationship between the creative process and the ability to bestow an object with meaning and the power to heal. Through this process Ekeko seeks to remind and reawaken in participants that part of the self that is able to imagine and create worlds and characters with powers that transcend the limitations of reality.

Ekeko is an interactive installation where participants create an amulet with scraps of different materials. Their makers then place the amulets in a sculptural piece. The piece will house them until the end of a three-month period. A closing show for the project will mark the end of this period, at which the amulet's powers will awaken. The process of awaking the amulets' power will be realized by a video composition projected upon the sculptural piece that houses them and a live sound landscape.

Ekeko will be an ongoing installation. The centerpiece will be a web of cocoon-like structures made out of yarn and placed on a piece of plywood. The plywood could be attached to a wall or hung from the ceiling. The cocoon-like structures will make up the shape of a swan and will also house the amulets for the duration of the installation. The materials provided to the participants include, but are not limited to: scraps of paper, yarn, fabric, wood, thread, ribbons, glue, and small ceramic beads. These materials will be replaced every two weeks with ones of different colors and forms in order to create a visual representation of the connection between the forms of the amulets and when they were created during the life span of the installation.

Ekeko will welcome participants with a brief explanation of the project and a stepwise process of how to make the amulets.

Ekeko is named after an ancient Folkloric deity of the Inca empire (now known as Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina) who brings prosperity and fertility to its bearer.

Cecilia Elguero was born in Argentina, where she spent most of her formative years. As an only child, she loved creating little worlds in her backyard, out of leaves, flowers, plastic jewelry, rocks, insects and anything else she could find. She studied music from an early age and started composing in 1997. Her interest in electronically treated sounds took her to Mills College where she received her BFA in Intermedia Arts. It was there that her curiosity for video and plastic arts was cultivated.  She lives in Oakland, California with her boyfriend and collaborator Bret Winans and their cat Nico. Together they run an art space in downtown Oakland called Fake Cake Gallery where they showcase Bay Area artists.  Cecilia’s video and installation work has been featured at Soma Arts, The Illuminated Corridor, Rock Paper Scissors, Mama Buzz Café, the Luggage Store Gallery and the Lobot Gallery. In her work, she continues to explore the shaping and crafting of space and objects to create little worlds that she can share with others.

Meklit Hadero

Singer & Songwriter

Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-born, US -raised vocalist, whose jazz and Ethiopian roots deeply inform her present style. Having performed in various configurations, she tends toward spare arrangements (acoustic bass and voice), and singing acapella, as a way of communicating a bareness and intimacy between audience and performer. She is a recipient of a 2005 Young Musicians Scholarship from Blue Bear School of American Music and this year she was selected and interviewed by the SF Chronicle, who described her simply as, "Stunning."

Meklit is a vocalist, musician, arts organizer and co-director of the Red Poppy Art House. In 2002, she received her BA in Political Science from Yale University, with an informal focus on social movements. During her Yale years, she received university funding to run a bi-weekly multidisciplinary performance series, which she collaboratively directed for nearly a year. Additionally, she acted as Operations Coordinator and Research Assistant at the Yale Health Emotions and Behavior Lab, helping to implement a large study focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention in urban communities.

After graduating, she moved to Seattle, where she gained experience in the nonprofit sector, working as the Temporary Manager of Programs for the Urban Enterprise Center, an organization working towards economic and community development in Seattle's urban center. In 2004, she relocated to the Bay Area and spent nearly two years learning about the foundation world as part of the staff of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

Todd T. Brown

Visual Artist

Todd T. Brown is a visual artist, musician, and community arts organizer. He has been painting for over 19 years. Over the past four years Todd has dedicated himself to developing an interdisciplinary, intercultural, creative center for the visual and performing arts known as the Red Poppy Art House, located in the mission district of San Francisco. He is also one of the founders of the MAPP: Mission Arts & Performance Project, a bi-monthly grass roots arts festival that features more than 60 visual artists, musicians, poets and performers, that perform simultaneously in over 10 improvised locations all set within a residential community.

“I seldom plan a painting. I paint as images and textures occur to me. Most of the time I don't know what lies ahead in the work. It's a conversation with myself, a process of discovering riddles and then interpreting them. I learn about myself in this way, and, for me, that is the most valuable aspect of the work. Of course it's not just about me however. I think, if I go deep enough in that process, I eventually strike something universal, and that's what gives the possibility of the work being meaningful to others"    ~ Todd T. Brown

"The One and Only", 60x64,                                           With "Blue in Lima", University of  media on mixed canvas, 2007                                                                                                                            San Marcos, Lima, Peru. 2006 

VidyA - Carnatic Jazz Ensemble

“…the idea behind the music is this: basically, the music I write and perform with VidyA is music that I have already been hearing in my head, just naturally... as a practitioner, student, performer etc. of carnatic music and jazz, and culturally as an Indo-American living in the U.S., having studied the music of my roots… both of them. The music of VidyA is what seeps into my brain in my sleep. It’s just the natural music I hear… Even further, there are many Asian-Americans and just Americans in our generation, and others, who deeply relate to our experience -- it really represents what is happening right now. In that way it really is American music, because all of us in the group were born and brought up in the states and we are in many ways representative of the ‘American’ experience.”  ~ Prasant Radhakrishnan

Pioneering a new and innovative sound that merges South Indian Carnatic music with Jazz, VidyA is the very first collective group of artists to participate as a resident music ensemble at the Red Poppy Art House.  Since their debut concert that sold out at the opening of the Poppy's 2006 concert series, VidyA has staged exceptional performances winning the praise of audiences and fellow musicians alike. As part of their residency, VidyA developed interdisciplinary performances and collaborations with poets, painters, filmmakers, and dance/choreographers as well as combining Q & A sessions to provide audiences with the opportunity to dialogue about the creative process behind VidyA’s development.

"VidyA’s music breathes at the very center of a cultural crossroads between the North American jazz idiom and the Carnatic music of South India. With all members having direct family/cultural ties to India and/or South Asia in general, the result is not so much a conceptual "fusion" of different traditions as it is a new vein of American music.  It’s sound is not exotic, but quite the opposite; it is a local development – present tense, present location, new culture in the making. In terms of the Art House residency, it is precisely this activity of reinterpreting, and artistically translating, the cultural developments in the world around us that make VidyA’s sound so compelling. Like a blade, it cuts through outdated cultural myths to expose a new identity that lies at the intersection of the complex world we all live. VidyA is an outstanding example of the art of innovation in musical composition, with improvisation at its helm."

~ T. Brown

For more info and VidyA's upcoming concert schedule, go to:

www.vidyamusic.com

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM

Contact: info@redpoppyarthouse.org

Mail: Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom St., San Francisco, 94110.