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:
 

On the first Monday in OCTOBER 2024, we explore pressing questions about urban life, sound, and the legacies of domination that have shaped our society. We aim to unpack and challenge these legacies, exploring how they have infiltrated our everyday experiences and societal structures. By questioning and remixing these present practices, rooted in colonial legacies, we explore how individuals can reclaim their agency and identity in today’s urban and sonic landscapes. Throughout our discussion, we will critique how human-made objects, ideas, and sound structures have come to dominate our environment, creating an atmosphere of anxiety, desperation, and imbalance for many city dwellers. As we journey through this exploration, we aim not only to interrogate the colonial legacies embedded in our sonic experiences but also to actively reimagine and reshape these practices, fostering a more equitable and diverse sonic landscape for the future.

On the first Monday in SEPTEMBER 2024, we feature a mixtape made by members of SAVVY Contemporary with songs related to the topic of LABOUR, in resonance with our exhibition LABO*R: AN INVITATION TO ACTION… A BASIS FOR HOPE. From South Africa to Colombia, passing by Jamaica and the US, arriving to Brazil and going to Cameroon. Listen to different songs and rhythms that let us remember the connection of struggles in different geographies and that at the same time share with us strategies to resist and stay together in hope, in turbulent times.

On the first Monday in AUGUST 2024, Franziska Anastasia Lentes shares the mixtape "and the rainbow is met with a cohesive interference" with us: Witnessing our place in the continuities, this mixtape brings sonic offerings and poetics as tools of dissonant transmission and resonant memories. Through which we can ruminate in a generative instant that allows us to fuse our fire with joy, strength and resilience, reconfiguring our relations to land and the vibrational forces towards each other.

Franziska Anastasia Lentes is an attentive listener, researcher and cultural worker. In response to linear structures and monumental histories, she offers ephemeral encounters in sonic spaces, moving along circles of collaborative conjunctions, calling for storytelling incantations.

On the first Monday in July 2024, we go on a sound journey through the vocal landscapes with the Otucha Collective: In this episode you find original recordings from Polish and Ukrainian female singers of diverse ages, stories, poems, quotes and a simple practice to build a connection with your own voice. Otucha Collective is a Berlin based vocal ensemble of female vocal artists, activists, and educators with an immigrant background. Otucha places their interest in explorations of healing & empowering qualities of the human voice. They mainly work with vocal traditions of rural areas of Eastern Europe and somatic practices. 

On the first Monday in June 2024, we welcome artist and filmmaker Sarah Zeryab. Her mix brings together fragments of audio and sonic materials, blending elements of a requiem and a tribute. The materials complement and interact with each other beyond the act of selection. In the absence of images, which are left to our imaginations, we hear voice notes and readings from Frantz Fanon read by Lauryn Hill, June Jordan, Jean Genet, John Berger reading Ghassan Kanafani, and more. 

On the first Monday in May 2024, we welcome TRU:L, a Romanian DJ and promoter who is behind Berlin's Smoothin Groovin dances, as well as a Refuge Worldwide regular, constantly bringing joy throughout her caring and intimate sets. Smoothin Groovin dances aim to be an alternative, soulful approach on universal dancing music, focusing on bridging different, lesser-known musical directions from all around the world. For this special episode she is selecting music with a powerful and meaningful message, speaking up against injustice.

On the first Monday in APRIL 2024, Mudassir Sheikh takes us through the mythical and critical fabulations by Saraab, a Balochi Benju performance by Ustaad Noor Baksh, as well “Spectral Remains” by Omar xxx. Invoking the presence of jinns to explore the textures and toxicities of air, the sound piece “Safarnama” by Saraab activates natural and sacred worlds to pay attention to the intimacy of toxic colonialisms. Borrowing its name from, and referencing the history of travel literature produced in the Islamic world, it traces the journey of a jinn through the extractive infrastructures of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. “Spectral Remains” thinks through memory, limits and ethics of representations, silences and gaps in official archives. The work uses queer, scavenger methodologies to make visible erased lives and histories of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

On the first Monday in FEBRUARY 2024,  we listen to archives. Archives – the fragile, vulnerable ones we are addressing here – are not silent per se. They do have a voice, but one that can be silenced. They do have a voice, but one whose potent airing might not be listened to. VULNERABLE ARCHIVES is a collaboration with archives and organizations that engage in strategies of alternative history writing, dissent, self-organisation, and participation via practical solidarity. We are creating alliances to develop tools to strengthen strategies of speech and spaces of listening. This project understands vulnerability as a method, with the potential of continuous recreative sources of knowledge. You are listening to a radio edit of a public programme that took place at SAVVY in 2021.

On the first Monday in DECEMEBR 2023, we meet for an hour of Boleros selected by Coco Maria in a sonic letter she “wrote”  to her grandparents a few years ago. It embraces us with the melancholy of the latin blues that in one way or another brings warmth to our hearts.  

On the first Monday in NOVEMBER 2023, we meet through a soundscape by Amuleto Manuela. Tune in for an hour of tunes and vibrations to be carried by sounds of healing and love.

On the first Monday in OCTOBER 2023, David Riley shares a mixtape with us that provides a brief insight into Jamaica's traditional music and then highlights its musical evolution, showcasing the versatility of several core musicians, many of whom were alumni of Alpha Boy's School. They were trained in Jazz and Classics but remained at the heart of the innovation in all three genres: Ska, Rock Steady, and Reggae. A subtext of the mix is the influence of Latin music, particularly from Cuba, on Jamaica's music scene. David Riley is a Berlin based lifelong collector of music from various genres. He grew up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and later moved to London, where he worked in the music business for various record companies. On occasion, he DJs in Berlin and makes guest appearances on several radio shows. He also hosts a regular show with Tropical Timewarp on THF radio. He describes himself as “not a DJ,” but rather someone who appreciates the opportunity to share music with people.

On the first Monday in SEPTEMBER 2023, we welcome Isabel Martínez de Guzmán – a singer-songwriter, social leader, peasant, knowledgeable woman about plants, defender of her community, wise and inspiring soul among many other things. In this Radiobook commissioned by SAVVY Contemporary, Doña Isabel invites us into the world of Bullerengue, sharing with us in a generous way the rhythmicality, the epistemology and what it means being and sharing Bullerengue in Libertad, San Onofre sucre Colombia.
 

On the first Monday in July 2023, we welcome Jess2Empress for a series of sonics contributions on laments. 
Our ears will be tuned to the horn of Africa, to its lamentation and geo-political contradictions. The show is dedicated to songs of resistance and protest, mapping the anti-colonial and opening up new transnational future imaginaries. For long, Ethiopia has held a singular position in the Pan-African and anti-colonial imagination world wide, inspiring the Black Panthers, Rastafarian spirituality and various liberation movements across the globe. This translated in black and anti-colonial solidarity in various parts of the world. The stories from within the region itself however remain largely unheard. In light of agro-ecological and socio-political challenges, international solidarity with the struggle around land rights, self-organised anti-imperial struggles for self-determination needs to be meditated on and the questions of what building active networks of solidarity can sound like, addressed. Tune in with your whole being. 

On the first Monday in June 2023, 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.

On the first Monday in May 2023, we let the Champeta whisper and sing to you with this hour comprised of four mixes by cultural worker, feminist 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 April 2023,  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 March 2023, 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 February 2023, 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 January 2023, 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.