Nona Hendryx balances soul, conscience

July 8, 2012 By

Boston Globe, July 8, 2012

NEW YORK— Let’s say you formed your first band as a Trenton, N.J., teen in the ’50s. You helped invent funk in a trio, LaBelle, that found cult status in the ’70s. You pioneered sci-fi themes before George Clinton. Later, you forged ahead as a solo artist and in collaborations with everyone from Yoko Ono to the Talking Heads.

You might be forgiven, at 67, for resting on your laurels. But that isn’t the Nona Hendryx way.

“Rust never sleeps,” says Hendryx. “I enjoy using my energy. What else are you going to do on this planet?”

In the cool of her midtown Manhattan studio, the singer strikes a naturally edgy elegance, clad in a form-fitting gray ensemble accessorized with silver jewelry. Gold records and industry memorabilia adorn the wall.

To the world at large, Hendryx is known as one-third of LaBelle, the band with the 1974 hit “Lady Marmalade.” (The one with the saucy French chorus, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”) But here in New York, she’s appreciated for all she’s done since, as a songwriter, creator, mentor, and activist.

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For singer-songwriter Morley, it’s all about connections

May 11, 2012 By

Boston Globe, May 11, 2012

NEW YORK — There are lots of birds in the lyrics of Morley, the singer-songwriter who’s found an original place for herself at the intersection of the jazz, folk, funk, and world-music scenes here, and who flits between these worlds with the grace and ease of the winged creatures that her songs often describe.

The brand-new “Undivided” — her fourth album, and the first she’s made entirely independently, financing and producing it herself, with a lavish roster of top-flight New York musicians participating — has birds passing overhead early and often.

On the first track, “On My Way,” a love song both contemplative and swelling with energy, “silver birds fly into the sun/ while one man grabs a paintbrush, the other grabs a gun.” “To Begin Again,” a meditation on death and renewal, addresses a “little bird on high/ you are wise.”

Morley imagines herself as the bird in flight on “Wild Bird.” “Thought by now I’d have found a safe place to land,” she sings. A stunning video accompanies the song. Filmed in Morocco by Damani Baker, who made the documentary “Still Bill,” it shows Morley playing guitar in a verdant valley, ascending dunes, disappearing into a rugged landscape aboard a decrepit flatbed truck.

Much of Morley’s lyrical imagery is naturalistic; her themes are confessional and concerned for humanity; her energy is personal, earnest. Over breakfast at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village, she reminds one of the folk singers of the 1960s who once thrived on Bleecker Street and in Washington Square Park, just blocks away.

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Nimbaya! beats the odds — and the drums

February 10, 2012 By

Boston Globe, February 10, 2012

The tremendous swirl of color and rhythm; the rich layering of djembe drums with the kora lute and marimba-like balafon; storytelling theater that starts as gentle conversation and escalates into a dance party that pulls the audience out of their seats: Nimbaya!, the dance and drumming troupe from Guinea, delivers all you expect from a top-notch African dance event.

Plus something more.

In an unusual departure from tradition, Nimbaya! consists of only women – not just the dancers, but also the musicians. The troupe’s very existence stands as a rebuke to the ancient custom that reserves drumming for men, and regards a woman on djembe as nearly taboo.

Founded in 1998, the troupe takes its name from the Nimba mask of Guinea’s Baga people – a symbol of fertility, beauty, and female power. The troupe’s own power is manifest in the school it runs in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, where around 50 young women at a time are training as professional dancers and musicians.
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MC Ras Ceylon: One love from Sri Lanka to Jamaica

June 6, 2011 By

MTV Desi, June 6, 2011

“The Gideon Force was the regiment that kicked the fascists out of Ethiopia,” explains Oakland-based MC Ras Ceylon. The force, he says, resisted the Italian incursion against the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie, the emperor sacred to Rastafarians. It inspired the title of the latest mixtape from the reggae and hip hop MC, Gideon.Force Volume 1, with its array of “conscious” guests including stic.man from the militant duo dead prez.

Resistance, liberation, and Rasta are integral to the music of this overtly political MC. And so is Sri Lanka, his family homeland. From Sri Lanka to Jamaica via the Bay Area, the connections are not as far-fetched as one might imagine — at least not as Ras Ceylon, who’s been making music on the underground scene for over a decade, sees it.

MTV Desi’s Siddhartha Mitter caught up with Ras Ceylon for a session on consciousness, politics, and how the Emcee realized he was part of a Desi music movement.

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Activist/MC Delhi Sultanate: “The new rich kids are ignorant, selfish and crude”

June 3, 2011 By

MTV Desi, June 3, 2011

Not long ago we featured a remarkable collaboration called the Bant Singh Project. Bant Singh is the Punjabi Dalit singer and political activist who lost several limbs after a vicious beating by upper-caste neighbors after he dared confront them for raping his daughter.

After Bant Singh refused to be silenced and continued singing and raising awareness of rural injustice, he came to the attention of Delhi Sultanate. That’s the stage name of Taru Dalmia, a Delhi-based poet and hip hop/dancehall MC who also happens to be an academic historian and social activist. Before long, Dalmia and his friends were visiting Bant Singh and making music with him—in a project they’ve also documented in a short film.

But that’s only one of the projects on Dalmia’s plate — whether through Word, Sound, and  Power, the umbrella venture for this and future collaborations with traditional musicians in rural India, or through his drum & bass, dubstep, reggae and ska projects in Delhi. MTV Desi’s Siddhartha Mitter caught up with Dalmia for a wide-ranging conversation about two subjects that go well together: music and politics.

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DJ Rekha: from the basement to the White House

April 27, 2011 By

MTV Desi, April 27, 2011

Ah, Easter in America. Chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs, kids running around the lawn — and bhangra? Yes! At the White House, no less.

New York’s own indispensable Desi producer and all-around culture maven DJ Rekha has been seen at the White House a few times since Barack Obama’s election. Fresh back from an insanely early morning gig at the White House Easter Egg Roll, she shared her impressions exclusively with MTV Desi’s Siddhartha Mitter.

You’re kind of a White House regular now, eh?

I guess so! I’ve been three times and played twice. And apparently I was on a list for the State Dinner with Manmohan Singh but didn’t make the cut.

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Festival showcases Africa in all its diversity

May 23, 2010 By

Boston Globe, May 23, 2010

With the World Cup kicking off in three weeks in Johannesburg, the eyes of the world are about to be trained on Africa.

But how many people know that 2010 marks 50 years of independence for more than half the nations on the continent? And how aware are we of its rich social and cultural diversity, and the wrenching crises it still faces?

Those questions were much on the mind of Boston activist Mireille Tushiminina, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo who helps run a nonprofit, the Shalupe Foundation, that channels support to victims of civil war in eastern Congo, especially orphans and victims of rape.

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Bed-Stuy Meadow

April 13, 2009 By

WNYC News, April 13, 2009

In a few weeks wild flowers will sprout up all over Bedford-Stuyvesant. That’s the hope of activists who sowed the flowers over the weekend on untended land in the Brooklyn neighborhood. But the environmental project also raised questions — about how to organize community action in a changing neighborhood.

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What the Left thinks of “socialism”

October 31, 2008 By

WNYC News, October 31, 2008

The last few weeks of turmoil on the financial markets and all the talk of bailouts and rescue plans has brought government intervention in the economy to the forefront of debate in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. But there are some who have been advocating alternatives to capitalism all along, and for them, this crisis is also an opportunity. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.

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On Brooklyn’s black heritage

June 18, 2008 By

WNYC News, June 18, 2008

When gentrification comes to a neighborhood it isn’t just the residents who can feel like like they’re being pushed away. It’s also the local history. So how can a community’s past contribute to its future? WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports from Bedford-Stuvesant.

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