Press release:
The Philadelphia Folklore Project presents a Musicians-In-Residence concert with three amazing artists, locally-based, world-connected. . .

May 13, 2004. Philadelphia, PA.— The Philadelphia Folklore Project presents the culminating event of our musicians in residence initiative this season: a concert featuring the creativity and artistry of exceptional local musicians from South African BaPedi, flamenco, and West African traditions on Saturday, June 5, 2004, at 7:30 PM at Indre Studios, 1418 S. Darien Street, in South Philadelphia. Tickets to the program are $10. The program features three skilled musicians from neighborhoods all over the city (and just outside of it), Mogauwane Mahloele, Tito Rubio and John Wilkie, who have spent the past six months developing new work in their respective traditions, with Philadelphia Folklore Project support. These artists will be joined by nine other guest artists, who have been part of these collaborations and explorations of traditional music and dance. The Folklore Project’s artist residency programs aim to help sustain the artistic and cultural diversity of the city, and these musicians testify to the power and significance of local art forms significant in Philadelphia neighborhoods today. People often think of folk arts as old-fashioned, or of folk music as the province of singer-songwriters. Performers in PFP’s residency program are grounded in alternative and community-based traditions that may reach back generations, but that have artistic and social relevance here and now.

The first featured artist, Mogauwane Mahloele is a South African BaPedi singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist now living in Yardley, Bucks County. Following his first return to his homeland of South Africa in close to three decades, made possible by this residency, he has been working on compositions that reaffirm his artistic and social connections to the land and people he had to leave behind so long ago. His solo set at this concert will begin with a piece he created in homage to his sister who passed away last year, before he had a chance to visit with her again.

The second featured artist is North Philadelphia-born and raised John Wilkie, music director of Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble. Mr. Wilkie plays both West African and Afro-Caribbean percussion. Over the decades, he has studied drumming in Africa and Cuba, and applied what he has learned to collaboration with the dancers in his Ensemble. In preparation for this concert, he has worked intensively with drummers Ishmael Jackson, Peache Jarman, and Dorothy Wilkie, on Senegalese and Guinean music. Dorothy Wilkie, artistic director of Kulu Mele, will step away from the drums and perform as a dancer in one of the pieces.

South Philadelphia resident Hipolito (Tito) Rubio, a native of Spain, has taught and performed flamenco guitar around the world. For this residency he has been concentrating on flamenco’s relationship with Middle Eastern rhythms. He will perform alongside Armenian oud player Roger Mgrdichian, Lebanese percussionist Joe Tayoun, vocalist Antonia Arias, and dancers Anna Rubio (flamenco) and Michele Tayoun (Middle Eastern). Further developing the collaboration shared in our earlier preview concert, Rubio has expanded each piece, and has been experimenting with the intimate and intricate relationship of these rhythms to both flamenco and Middle Eastern movement and choreography.

Guest artists include Anna Rubio, Michele Tayoun, Roger Mgrdichian, Joe Tayoun, Dorothy Wilkie, Peache Jarman, Ishmael Jackson, Antonia Arias and Pasquale D’Aprile.

Three featured dancers are performing. Anna Rubio, flamenco dancer, began her flamenco career as a student of the renowned Rosa Montoya in California. She was a member of Theater Flamenco of San Francisco before returning to her native Philadelphia in 1991 where she performs and teaches. She is artistic director of Flamenco del Encuentro. Michele Tayoun has practiced Middle Eastern folk dancing since childhood. Raised in a Lebanese-American musical family, she was exposed to all forms of Middle Eastern dance and music at her family’s nightclub/restaurant, The Middle East, and performs and teaches widely. She is the dance teacher at St. Maron’s Hall, the cultural center of Philadelphia’s Lebanese community. Dorothy Wilkie, has been artistic director of Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble for close to 20 years. Having studied dance in Guinea, Senegal, and Cuba, and with a number of respected artists in the U.S., she has choreographed and re-staged many of the works in her Ensemble’s repertoire. Wilkie teaches young children at a community center, and works intensively on West African and Afro-Cuban dance with students at Philadelphia’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, through the Folklore Project’s FAME arts education program.

Guest musicians reflect the city’s musical cultures. Roger Mgrdichian specializes in the oud, an ancestor of the European lute. He is from an accomplished family of Armenian musicians: His uncle, George, went on to become one of the most famous oud players in the world. Roger performs regularly in diverse styles of Middle Eastern music, including Armenian dance music, belly dance accompaniment, classical Arab and Turkish music, Turkish folk and Arab pop, both locally and regionally with several different ensembles. Joe Tayoun started playing music at age eight, learning from local and visiting musicians who performed Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Armenian, Greek, and Israeli music at his family’s Middle East Restaurant in Philadelphia. He has played percussion professionally in clubs, restaurants, casinos, museums, theaters, and festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Tayoun and Mgrdichian are both members of Jaffna, and Atzilut ensembles. Clifford "Peache" Jarman is accomplished in both African and Afro-Cuban drumming, he has played with local Latin bands, as well as jazz, blues, rock and traditional African music groups. Formerly the music director for Arthur Hall’s African Dance Ensemble, he has performed with Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble and at the Katherine Dunham School in East St. Louis for several years. He is a member of the Spoken Hand Society. Additional musicians include percussionist Ishmael Jackson, vocalist Antonia Arias and flamenco guitarist Pasquale d’Aprile.

Musicians-in-residence is a special artist residency and development program organized by the Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP), a 17-year-old non-profit urban arts agency committed to sustaining local community-based arts. The Philadelphia Folklore Project affirms the human right to culture, and works to protect the rights of people to know and practice traditional and community-based arts. The 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.

Mogauwane Mahloele, Tito Rubio, John Wilkie and guests. Folklore Project concert of South African, flamenco, and West African music, Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 7:30 PM, Philadelphia Folklore Project at Indre Studios, 1418 S. Darien Street. Tickets, $10 each, with checks mailed to our office (735 South 50th Street, Philadelphia 19143) or with a credit card online (discontinued at capacity). For more information: 215.726.1106.

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)