Press release: The Philadelphia Folklore Project presents a Musicians-in-residence free open rehearsal with three amazing artists, locally-based, world-connected. . .

February 1, 2004. Philadelphia, PA.— The Philadelphia Folklore Project presents a special one-time-only FREE event celebrating the creativity and artistry of musicians working in South African BaPedi, flamenco, and West African and Afro-Cuban traditions on Friday, March 5, 2004, at 7:30 PM at Indre Recording Studios, 1418 S. Darien Street, in South Philadelphia. The program, part of the Philadelphia Folklore Project’s Musicians-in-Residence initiative, features Mogauwane Mahloele, South African singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, flamenco guitarist Tito Rubio, and West African/Afro-Cuban percussionist John Wilkie. The Musicians-in-Residence project aims to create opportunities for significant local folk and traditional musicians to develop new work in their respective traditions. Come hear their works-in-progress and, during a post-performance discussion, learn from the artists and from ethnomusicologist Dr. Barbara Hampton about the processes of creating and playing music in new geographical and cultural surroundings.

Mogauwane Mahloele, son of a South African traditional dancer, traces his feel for music and rhythm to his mother’s dancing while she was pregnant with him! He grew up under the apartheid system and worked, through music and otherwise, to dismantle it. He makes and plays a number of traditional instruments, including drums, mouth harps, flutes, and gourd and bowed instruments. He has toured Africa, Europe, and the U.S., and recorded two solo CDs. In 2000, Mogauwane received a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts. During the evening's performance, he will speak of the musical inspiration he experienced on his first trip back to South Africa in 27 years. Intending to learn from the matwetwe (knowledgeable elders/storytellers) when over there, he had no idea that they would anoint him ready to work towards taking on that same title. The compositions he now creates will be geared to gaining and presenting even deeper knowledge of the stories, melodies, and instrumental possibilities of BaPedi music and song. Since returning here in late January, he has been working on a new composition that takes as a unifying force the sounds (languages, voices, instruments) of people selling their food and wares in the market places of South Africa. The languages include Se Pedi, Xhosa, Ba Venda and Zulu, all but the last being tonal. The instruments include a jaws harp and the long curved horn of the tholo, an animal found only in South Africa.

Hipolito (Tito) Rubio has studied flamenco guitar with some of the tradition’s greatest musicians, including Juan Maya “Marote,” Merengue de Cordoba, David Serva, Pascual de Lorca, and so on, and has performed and toured with renowned dancers throughout Spain, the Middle East, Asia, and the U.S. Significantly, Tito falls between two generations of flamencos – an older generation which tended to apprentice with a single master and had a broader knowledge of regional flamenco styles in Spain, and a younger generation who may be technical virtuosi, yet often have a repertoire that is more generic and limited. Tito is engaged in an ongoing process of bridging these possibilities. He was recently awarded a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. On March 5th, Mr. Rubio will be exploring Middle and Near Eastern and North African elements of flamenco. (Flamenco is an art that came into being through adaptation and incorporation of diverse influences from South India through North Africa and the Middle East.) Collaborating with Armenian oud player Roger Mgrdichian, Egyptian violinist Adeeb Rafela, and Lebanese percussionist Joe Tayoun, Mr. Rubio will present two “compositions-in-progress.” The first is a bulerias, a 12-beat flamenco rhythm that the musicians are intertwining with a 10-beat Arabic rhythm known as semai. (Semai can be traced back to the court music of the Ottoman Empire.) The second piece begins with tarantos, a slower 4-beat pattern that engages easily with Middle and Near Eastern rhythms, and moves into tangos.

John Wilkie is the music director of the Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble. Kulu Mele specializes in the music and dance of the African diaspora. John inherited the leadership of the group from septuagenarian Robert “Baba” Crowder, the organization’s founder, and Mr. Wilkie has expanded Kulu Mele’s repertoire in ways traditional to diasporic cultures that have experienced forced migration. He has shared musical ideas with other communities settled after forced migration, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti; he has learned music that is part of transnational processes, including pieces from Nigerian musicians, those in the National Dance Company of Senegal, and members of the Ballet de Guineé while in both Philadelphia and Conakry; and he has acquired skills transmitted by other African Americans who were inspired by diasporean forms, such as the Dunham Technique.

At the PFP's March 5th event, he will perform a suite of compositions representing the African American experience. The movements of the suite are: Kakilambe, a ritual invocation learned from the Baga people of Boke Prefecture, Guinea-Conakry who perform it septiennially; Liberté, whose meaning is shaped by shifting contexts through the diaspora, taught to Mr. Wilkie by the National Dance Company of Senegal; and Dunuba from Guinea. This will be followed by a medley of Orisha (deity) rhythms used to invoke Elegba, god who opens and closes doors/ceremonies, and guides one’s path, Yemaya, the nurturing mother goddess associated with water, and Shango, son of Yemaya and the calm, rational god of thunder, lightning and fire. While the roots of the religion to which these orishas are attached lie in present-day Yoruba culture in Nigeria and Benin, very strong and vibrant practices continue in Cuba, where Mr. Wilkie learned it, and in Brazil. Mr. Wilkie will be joined by Ishmael Jackson, Greg “Peachie” Jarman and Dorothy Wilkie for this performance. One instrumentalist will play an improvising line and the others will each perform a distinct, unvarying, repeated rhythmic pattern as accompaniment. Some passages will also be sung.

This special preview performance is a prelude to the Musicians-in-Residence final concert performance scheduled for Saturday, June 5, 2004, at 7:30 PM at Indre Recording Studios, 1418 S. Darien Street. Tickets for that show, $10 each, are available through the Philadelphia Folklore Project website or by check to the PFP office, 735 South 50th Street, Phila., PA 19143.

Musicians-in-Residence is a special artist residency and development program organized by the Philadelphia Folklore Project, a 17-year-old non-profit public interest folklife agency committed to sustaining local community-based arts. The Philadelphia Folklore Project affirms the human right to cultural expression and works to protect the rights of people to know and practice traditional and community-based arts. PFP offers public education in the folk arts, develops community projects and documentary resources, and organizes around issues of concern in the field of folk and traditional arts.

A preview performance of South African, flamenco, West African and Afro-Cuban music, Friday, March 5. 2004, at 7:30 PM, at Indre Recording Studios, 1418 S. Darien Street. This program is FREE and open to the public. For more information, call the Philadelphia Folklore Project at 215.726.1106, or visit our website at www.folkloreproject.org.

The Musicians-In-Residence project is made possible by support from the Philadelphia Music Project (funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Settlement Music School), by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and by Philadelphia Folklore Project members.

(Listen here to audio selections of Mr. Mahloele, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Wilkie.)

(Photos courtesy Harvey Finkle)