SAVVYZΛΛR meets RADIO ALHARA

Fellow listeners, Mondays are becoming even more beautiful: Every first Monday of the month, our two radios join energies to imagine, make, fill and offer a space for counterhistories, popular musics, rhythms and echoes, inviting a variety of voices and sonic perspectives:
 

One the first Monday in January, we share Ay Ae Sankofa Ay Ae Sankofa, by which we continue to honor an entire weekend spent jamming with the kaleidescopic group of musicians from Mar, Río, y Cordillera in Venice at Oscars Murillo’s exhibition “A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise”. This constellation of about 20 singers, musicians, and percussionists from the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia bring us traditional music from the Colombian Pacific, which is a home and connector for and to African Diasporas. Their instruments are the Colombian marimba, which resembles the African balafon; guasá, typically made from bamboo and filled with light seeds or rice; as well as maracas, drums, and wind instruments. Their repertoire covers the rich knowledges, beats, and vibrations circulating within the Bullerengue sentado, Bullerengue Chalupa, Bullerengue Fandango, Peregoyo, Puya, Currulao, Bambuco, Cumbia, Gaita corrida, Puya, and Merengue.

On the first Monday in February, we will feature Endometrio, a mix by Malu. Like a rose in the desert, Malu is a woman of contrasts who likes to explore the shade between light and darkness, considering femininity as an interplay between soft and hardcore. She takes us on musical excursions often alternating between spoken and sung scenes, operatic and popular songs, noises, maracas, reverberations, and suspicious harmonies, that narrate stories as diverse as music itself. 

On the first Monday in March, SAVVYZΛΛR meets Radio Alhara راديو الحارة  by returning to the Cosmoaudiciónes which we were honoured to collaborate with last year. „El tiempo ritmo“ is a musical lecture-performance which circulates around notions of non-linear time and is part of "Cosmoaudiciónes" – an artistic project by Miguel Buenrostro with the participation of Laura Robles, Trigo Santana, Fabiano Luna, Robby Geerken, Tom Kessler and Banda Hodi. Musicians of the diasporas have been invited to reflect on the movement of migration through musical improvisation. „El tiempo ritmo“ is a crossover of musical entities that exist in complementarity, hosting each other in rhythm. The presentation touches on questions of time and timelessness, rhythm and the rhythmlessness. Through improvising with the listening materials of the archive, the hope is to restore notions of time that exist through musical memory.

The performance acknowledges music which has been static and enclosed in ethnographic collections. Through a process of listening to materials from the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv, the Cosmoaudiciones artists have re-embodied rhythms by improvising and hosting them around notions of non-linear time, synchronicity and aural travel. The sonic presentation imagines musical travel through water flow, waves, currents, oleajes which made possible encounter and exchange. Through music improvisation we recognize the legacies that have brought worlds of meaning in and out of the Atlantic. The recording you can hear today was presented at Errant Sound, Berlin, in October 2022, hosted by Brandon LaBelle.

On the first Monday in April,  we air an archive activation and radio session by Dang A Dang Radio within our current exhibition LAKBAYAN: Voices of Resistance from the Philippines. Together, we move through the sonic landscape of protest music and sonic expressions of dissent and socio-political struggles in the Philippines. It is an echo of the activation that took place at SAVVY Contemporary on 18.03.2023.

On the first Monday in May, we let the Champeta whisper and sing to you with this hour comprised of four mixes by cultural worker, feminist, and Pickotera Mily Iriarte. She centers women’s* rights through and with the musical genre of Champeta, as a tool of empowerment and visibility for the Colombian Caribbean, where these sounds were birthed from Afro-Colombian roots.

Pickotera Mily Iriarte comes from the communities of Turbana and Rocha in Colombia. She works across the fields of art and culture and is a student of history and heritage, and also researched for a chapter in the book “Champeta Music is Memory, Identity and Heritage”, published within the XXXI FESTIVAL OF DRUMS AND CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS OF PALENQUE, 2017. She is an active member of the Mesa del Movimiento Social de Mujeres de Cartagena, having led as the first female Pickotera Feminista. Mily is the founder of the EMPERADORAS, also the first Champeta musical band formed by women. She is a Pickotera of one of the oldest and most emblematic Picós of Champeta culture, the Gran Platino de la Casa Rosada de Olaya, and is the primary head of the Espeluque Champeta initiative.

// Pickotera Mily Iriarte, Su verdadero nombre es Miliceth Martinez Iriarte, es de ascendencia del Municipio de Turbana y de Rocha con más de 10 años de vivir en Cartagena y desarrollar trabajos artísticos, investigativos y de gestión cultural. Administradora de Empresas de profesión, estudiante de Historia y Patrimonio,  con experiencia en administración y gestión de museos, investigadora del “Papel De Las Mujeres en la Cultura Champeta” artículo publicado en el libro “La Música Champeta es Memoria, Identidad y Patrimonio” en el marco del XXXI FESTIVAL DE TAMBORES Y EXPRESIONES CULTURALES DE PALENQUE 2017. Integrante activa de la Mesa del Movimiento Social de Mujeres de Cartagena, con su liderazgo como la primera mujer Pickotera Feminista, donde utiliza la champeta como una herramienta de visibilización de los derechos de las mujeres. Fundadora de las EMPERADORAS la primera banda musical conformada por mujeres en la champeta. Mily Iriarte es pickotera de uno de los Picós más antiguos y emblemáticos de la cultura picotera, como es el Gran Platino de la Casa Rosada de Olaya, y también es la principal líder de la iniciativa Espeluque Champeta.

On the first Monday in June, vinyl DJs Mandel and Mokeyanju present an immersive experience of MARKK’s vinyl collection: rhythms, chants, and melodies from West Africa, Eastern Europe, and East Africa, also uncovering Raï and other hidden folk music gems. „Resurrecting the Sonic Archive“ is a wake, an unforeseen combination of selections from the broad vinyl collection of Hamburg’s Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt, spanning 50+ years.