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JOSEPHINE DORADO: Hi everyone.
My name is Josephine Dorado.
I am the president of the Fulbright Association's greater
New York chapter here in New York.
And I'm happy to introduce our panelists; Jennifer Wright,
the CEO of The Field, an artist service organization, and Earl
Douglas, the executive director of New York's chapter of Black
Rock Coalition, and Jeremy Xido, the director of Death Metal
Angola, which we've just finished seeing.
So I'll let you guys go ahead introduce yourself
and a bit about your organization.
Jennifer, if you could start?
JENNIFER WRIGHT: Sure, so I'm the executive director
of The Field, which is an arts service organization here
in New York.
And we work nationally with about 1,400 artists
and companies a year helping build their capacity
to make their art and grow their careers.
We have 11 national and international sites.
And actually Jeremy is part of The Field for many years now.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Yea, Field!
EARL DOUGLAS: Again, my name is Earl Douglas.
I'm the executive director for the New York
chapter of the Black Rock Coalition.
We've been around since 1985.
It was co-founded by a group of artists,
namely Vernon Reid, guitarist of Living Colour,
Greg Tate, writer, journalist, musician, Kona Mason,
she was an artist representative.
And it was started as an organization to really support
and advocate musicians of color who
we're going outside of the box.
At that particular time, it was you had to do R and B,
you had to do hip hop.
Anything in between was verboten.
And we had a small army of artists who were not doing that
and wanted to freely express themselves
and wanted to go through all the avenues afforded
to pretty much everyone else the same way.
So they started to the organization
as a partial advocacy group, and it's evolved over the years
now that you can pretty much make your own record.
You can go independent now.
So we really support independent artists.
But the focus is still supporting artists of color
who just want to openly express themselves freely and openly
and without any restrictions upon them.
JEREMY XIDO: And I'm Jeremy Xido.
I'm the director of Death Metal Angola.
My background however is as a dancer and performer.
And I'm the co-director of a performance and film
company called Cabula6, which is based in part in New York
and part in Vienna.
And we do live performance site-specific work, dance work,
and film work.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Thanks, so I also
want to add too that the New York chapter of the Fulbright
has just this year launched a new program called
the Fulbright alumnus in residence program, which
incubates alumnus projects that have to do with embodying
the mission of the Fulbright which
is towards international peace and understanding.
And we're happy to also announce that Jeremy Xido is actually
our inaugural Fulbright alumnus in residence.
[APPLAUSE]
JEREMY XIDO: Thank you.
It's awesome.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: So one of the prevailing themes
of Death Metal Angola is very much this idea of resilience,
of about communities facing great adversity, whether that's
adversity through economic or socioeconomic circumstances,
or natural disasters.
So within this sort of prevailing theme of resilience,
what sort of role do you feel like artists fulfill or can
leverage towards building community recovery
and resilience?
JEREMY XIDO: Well, I actually just
answered a question similar to this yesterday for radio
in Germany.
I can speak just in terms of what I think about the people
that I met in Angola and my experience there.
A lot of people, when they see the film,
they talk about what is the power of this particular form
of music for this particular group of people.
And a lot of times I've been answering that, well, it's
a kind of music that can withstand the stories that they
have to tell, that there is something
almost journalistic in the phantasmagoric lyrics,
et cetera, somehow are related to a lived experience
and being able to express trauma.
But I actually think, in retrospect, I've
been thinking that it's just the fact of having bands and just
the fact of having a joint mission.
And being able to touch truth together with other people
and to go for it and to create a safe space in order to do that
is extremely healing.
And in part because it allows you
to fight, to pick up pieces, disagree with one another,
and negotiate, which are all things
that a lot of the people in this film, at least socially,
the country has lost the ability to do over
the course of 40 years of near constant warfare.
And when I see them, it's not just
about cathartic release and screaming.
It's actually about the constructive process
of building an organization and having to stick with it, partly
through ambition, partly through concerts that come up.
And that is, essentially, for me when
I think about it, the main purpose of art,
as a social phenomenon.
EARL DOUGLAS: I saw the film.
And there was parts of the movie that as-- I've
been part of the BRC for 25 years.
And there were little bits of our experience in that movie.
Just getting together is the hardest thing,
the community aspects of it.
And I think that was a key part.
It was just like getting everyone together and just
having, OK, you feel this way.
I feel this way.
You feel this way.
Let's get together and just turn whatever pain we have,
whatever issues we have, whatever we have,
just turn it into art and coordinating it.
And I think that's what the arts is about
is just putting that all together and making
something remarkable out of it.
And it always starts with the arts.
The civil rights movement started
within the arts community.
The turning points came from the artists.
So I always thought the arts were essential.
And this movie definitely reinforced that whole idea
that the arts can still be a healing force
and definitely bring people together.
Again, I love this movie.
I absolutely love the film.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: I'll just tag on that, that I completely
agree.
And I was thinking about that on my way over about civil rights,
in particular in Vietnam, and all
the different social movements that have really
built from the arts and how this film takes
a humongous step forward.
And I just really loved it.
So thank you.
And then the other side, for me, is also the less direct ways
that we see arts impact.
Like the other work that you make,
Jeremy, and the work that you're involved with
and a lot of the work that we're involved with might be deemed
art for art's sake.
And sometimes that's a real critique
in that that's not good enough, particularly
in a really competitive funding environment.
And so how do we grapple with letting art hold all of that?
Some of it is really direct in the way these kids are impacted
or the way the artists are impacted,
the way a country is impacted.
And then the other ways that art impacts our civic dialogues
in maybe less a political way or social justice way.
And how do we hold both of those in our cultural participation,
I guess.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Great, thank you.
I know that each of our communities
very much addresses marginalization in each way.
The artists in The Field community, and the artists
in the BRC, and the artists in Angola
are very much addressing this kind of marginalization.
What kinds of specific artists or projects
can you think of that have dealt with adversity
particularly well, whether it's through Sandy, or through 9/11,
or specific other cases?
JENNIFER WRIGHT: I'll dive in on that.
For instance, Miguel Gutierrez has a dance theater music
company called Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People.
And it might be deemed, particularly his work,
more art for art's sake in that way.
But it is grappling with issues, particularly
in *** culture, that are really assertive, and really
vibrant, and really provocative.
And his work, from my point of view,
it's not attacking a specific thing
like AIDS, culture, or gay marriage.
It's not political outrightly.
But through his art making and through his performance,
you are called to respond.
You are called as a human being to feel something
and then potentially do something with that.
Or someone like Mike Daisey, who's
more overt in terms of his monologue work with Apple
and that work and sort of pushing those boundaries.
I feel like we probably each have hundreds of examples.
Those are just two that were off the top of my head.
EARL DOUGLAS: We've done a bunch of-- I hate the word tribute.
We've always done retrospectives.
We've always targeted a specific artist's work.
We did the civil rights song book of Curtis Mayfield.
And in doing that, you kind of address issues
that are very universal.
He had a song called "This is My Country."
And when we did that show, it took
on this whole other different context,
because we had the immigration debate going on in the country.
We've taken shows overseas and done
salute to women songwriters, who in general, especially
in rock 'n roll been very marginalized and downplayed.
And then you realize, their catalogs is as strong
as anybody's.
Vernon Reid, he did a suite.
He called it the 9/11 suite.
And it didn't address 9/11 directly.
But it kind of addressed the aftermath of it.
I saw him do a couple performances of it
with Living Colour also as a solo artist.
And it was very, very powerful.
I think that's kind of where you can approach an issue
or problem without actually just making it a grand theme
and having certain songs, take them into an entirely
different level and using it as a totally different context.
So I think, with us, that's always been a challenge as far
as, how do we present or direct an issue
without really politicizing it at all?
We've done two, we might do a third,
we call it the Million Man Mosh.
And it kind of addresses how young black men
are treated in the criminal justice system.
But it's not direct.
One of our longtime members, his son
is kind of going through the criminal justice system.
And we were doing it as benefits for him.
And it just took on this whole other universal theme.
We didn't even realize it.
And I think that's how you do it.
That's how you attack a problem.
You kind of, OK, we're putting the same picture
in a different frame.
And I think that's how you can approach it.
And that's how the arts really can work.
JEREMY XIDO: I mean, I think these are phenomenon examples.
I think there are lots and lots and lots
of artists that are out there working in this way.
There's a whole genre of art that I'm particularly fond of.
And it just happens.
It's urban graffiti art, which I actually
don't know who does it other than-- I know people by tags.
But the reason why I'm particularly drawn to it,
and I actually see when thinking about the film
and thinking about Okutiuka, we paid special attention
to the walls in the space.
And one of the reasons is that, they're around you everywhere.
And in the walls, there's something about history
that's inscribed in it.
So there's time.
There's decay.
There's the war.
There's bullet holes and things.
But then there's also the faded paintings that exist
and the story of Yakuza, who's a young kid who died,
who they got to draw on the walls
and get everybody else to draw on.
The thing about it is there's something
about inscribing something in space.
And at that point, you've changed the environment.
And you've established some form of history.
And so a story is then told out of that moment, which everybody
has to know, because it's where they live.
And you know the story about that.
And there's a kind of politicization
and a validation of self and a community.
And I find that graffiti art actually establishes
a broader community of people who are not necessarily artists
but are people.
And that link, at least from where I come from,
that graffiti is really big and seeing it in this space,
I would say all the graffiti artists out
in the world, most of them.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: Can I just add something to that?
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Sure.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: I was thinking about your question
about marginalization and then those kids in the film,
particularly what you said earlier
about giving opportunities, particularly for music, as such
an outlet for storytelling.
And one of things in terms of marginalized folks,
even here in the States it's quite different from Angola,
obviously, but who gets to be an artist?
Who gets those opportunities, whether that's
funding in the schools or the price of an MFA,
or equipment to try and play guitar,
or all of that stuff, who gets to do that?
And I am more and more concerned about that.
I call it the art gap, for lack of a better word.
Who is getting to do this?
And is it skewing more and more towards income
privileged folks, primarily white folks in this country,
or whatever it is?
Where is that skewing?
And who are we losing?
And all the beautiful making that we're losing,
whether it's quote unquote "professional"
or not, what you can do with that
as a human being just given the opportunity.
There's an organization called Willie Mae Girls Rock Camp.
EARL DOUGLAS: Rock camp for girls.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: Unbelievable.
And I did their Ladies Rock Camp twice.
And that's for resilience building.
It saved my life as the executive director
of a nonprofit.
But the rock camp is, it's unbelievable what they offer.
And in terms of gender issues and sexuality issues
and then music as an empowerment tool.
And more and more concerned in this country
about where are we investing.
Where are we investing, particularly
in kids and who we're going to lose.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Great, thank you.
So those were all really great jumping off points.
And so I want to sort of wrap this up and take
any questions, or feedback, or comments
that we might have from people in the audience.
So I feel like I see one hand out there.
There's that mic and that mic on that side.
So if anyone wants to jump up, Shemaine.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: Don't be afraid.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Jeremy and everybody else.
I really enjoyed the film.
And I really found the people just so amazing,
especially the people running the orphanage.
Can you tell us more about how you met them
and how you got involved in making this film?
JEREMY XIDO: Yeah, well, there's a pat story by now that I tell.
So I'll just tell it.
It was by accident.
I met them totally by accident.
I was in Angola filming a completely different movie
about Chinese construction workers that are rebuilding
the train line that cuts through the middle of Angola.
And the train line just stops in this town, Huambo.
And I had got out and I wanted a cup of coffee really badly.
And there's apparently only one place
in the entire town that serves a decent cup of coffee.
It's called Imperial.
So I went there.
And when I was there, I sat down with my coffee
and some guy across the way was like, he waved me over.
And I kind of went over.
I was like, OK.
And I brought my little coffee and stuff with him.
It's like, hey, what are you doing?
And we talked.
And he asked me what I did.
I said I was making a movie.
That's great, what do you do?
He's like, oh, I'm a musician.
That's really cool.
What do you play?
Death metal.
And I was floored.
I said, you what?
And I said, well, can you play for me?
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Listen, here.
Here's my telephone number and meet me tonight at this address
at the orphanage, which I assumed at
that point was a club.
And I invited the Chinese construction workers
that I had been filming and working with
to go see this concert out at the orphanage.
And so we drove in their SUV.
And we arrived to this neighborhood.
And it just happened to be on a night
where the generator was out.
And there was no electricity.
And so Wilker was there sort of siphoning electricity
from his neighbor to plug-in his amplifier.
And there were no lights.
There was no microphone.
And so we lit it with the lights of the SUV.
And he proceeded to play the single most
harrowing and beautiful open air concert I've ever heard.
And there were these shadows of kids running around everywhere.
And I had no idea what was going on.
And these people became dear, dear friends.
And about a year later, we were going back to film
the train film.
And I called up Wilker, and by that time I had met Sonia,
and said we're coming back.
I would love to see you if your around and film.
They're like oh, my god.
That's great that you're coming, because we're organizing
the first ever national rock concert
and you're going to film it.
And that was it.
I was hired at that moment.
And that's it.
That's how it happened.
And it built over a course of a couple of years.
And it was a partnership, really, between us
and the Association for Angolan Rock as a friendship
partnership.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: A lovely happy accident.
Anyone else?
AUDIENCE: Hi, thanks again for this film.
It's really amazing.
Is it open to the public?
Where can you see this film now?
JEREMY XIDO: I'll answer that one.
Sorry, guys.
The film premiered at the beginning of the year.
And it's been on the international festival circuit.
So it's traveled around the country
to maybe 30 festivals, 30, 40 festivals worldwide,
every continent except for Antarctica.
And it is going make its New York debut on November 16
at the Doc NYC festival here in New York.
And we're currently working with the Fulbright Association
on organizing a tour of the film through the United States
that we're calling the DMA Resilience tour, which we're
looking to launch in spring 2014 to cities
around the country like Detroit, where I'm from, or New Orleans,
or a whole slew of others that have been hit hard
by economic or a natural disaster.
And we're going to have a series of screenings,
town hall conversations about resilience, and local concerts.
And so we're about to start a fund raising campaign for that
and get that off and running.
So ideally in the spring, it'll be much more widely accessible.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Great.
So just to wrap it up, I think we actually
have to get things moving.
Just a few last words on-- oh, there's one last question.
Yeah?
OK, sorry.
AUDIENCE: I had a question for Earl, actually.
I just was really struck by your feeling
familiar with the folks in the film about the early days
of the Black Rock Coalition.
And now that you're 25 years in, I
wonder if there's advice for them.
Or if there's a way that you feel
like how they're beginning to gel is really going to stick
and how you can imagine for them where the future might go.
EARL DOUGLAS: Advice is just keep going.
A, key playing.
Just that little epilogue at the end
was very encouraging as well that they
were able to do it a year later.
And it was bigger.
And it was clearly more concise and more organized.
Like the first one, the sound wasn't working.
The show started five hours late.
And this wasn't working.
And that wasn't working.
And yet, they pulled the show off.
And my advice would be just keep going,
find ways to make it better.
And just let the scene kind of go where it goes.
Don't try to shape it anyway.
Wherever it goes, let it go.
I mean, that would be my advice.
And the chief advice would be just keep going.
Just keep following the art.
It will not betray you.
JEREMY XIDO: That's great.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: Just put one foot in front of the other,
keep going.
So what are some last words that you might all
have on how we as communities can support artists
so that artists can support their communities?
JENNIFER WRIGHT: I'll be direct.
Go to shows.
I have three.
Go to shows, join a board of an organization you love,
and give them money.
So shows, boards, and money.
Sort of back to where are we going as a country,
the marketplace has gotten so competitive
and questions all the time about what kind of ROI
does art give in the world, and concerns
about new money versus old money and all of these things.
And art, I think if we commit to it as a people,
like what we believe and what we want
to see, we have to put money behind that,
and time behind that, and volunteer hours.
If you believe in it, then go do it.
EARL DOUGLAS: I'm kind of echoing her statement.
Support it with your dollars.
Support it with your presence, mainly.
Because especially here in New York,
it's tough to get-- it's weird.
And now we're in this kind of internet computer age,
it's harder and harder to get people to actually leave
their computer to go to a show.
Support the shows.
Support organizations that support artists or support
the nurturing of artists, especially with young people.
I always say, have an open mind.
I think the biggest obstacle that we've always
faced with the Black Rock Coalition has always been,
I don't like that rock thing.
It's like, have you listened to it,
like really broken down and listened to it?
And they go no.
It's like, maybe you should.
Have a better understanding of its history.
Because for me, everything connects.
Which is why I like every kind of music,
because I think it all connects in some way or another.
There's a connect between Louis Jordan and Snoop Dogg.
So educate yourself on top of everything else.
But support the arts.
Whether it's the Willie Mae Rock Camp, or it's the BRC,
whatever, you support it with presence and with your dollars.
I mean, that's the short answer.
JEREMY XIDO: It's funny.
Because what both of you are saying
is exactly what people in Angola are saying about their worlds.
It's the same issues.
The only thing I would add to it maybe is to make stuff,
is to be creatively engaged in the conversation.
And ultimately I see it as a conversation or something
about consuming, the way that people go see shows
if you have a good time or whatever.
And there's another thing about if it's
your people in some way or the people that you've committed to
or the thing that you yourself have gone out to do.
And then there's something about actually creating
a world in which you actually just do ***.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: I would add to that, too.
And this sort of goes on what Earl
was saying about having an open mind
is that having an open mind with regards to what art is
and how we as communities can support art,
so whether that's opening up different kinds of revenue
models, looking at different kinds of crowd funding
campaigns, or just being inventive in the way
that we, as artists look at our art as an entrepreneurship,
and as a business, and how we could
look at hybrid models of how to do those things.
As Jeremy mentioned before, the Fulbright New York chapter
is also helping out with doing this crowd funding
campaign of the Resilience tour, which we're launching
on RocketHub in the next few days.
So look for the Resilience Tour on RocketHub.
But very much around the whole conversation of opening up what
we envision as art and as community and community
development.
JEREMY XIDO: If I can just add to that.
I think one of the really interesting things
about the crowd funding model is the notion
that it's about democratizing funding on the one hand.
But it seems to me that it's even more so
about establishing community using the internet age
or in the place, how do you actually
get into different communities and have people invest not
just financially but invest emotionally
and creatively in a project so that they
become part of that project.
How do you become part of the Resilience Tour?
JOSEPHINE DORADO: How do we make stuff together?
JEREMY XIDO: How do you do ***?
JOSEPHINE DORADO: How do you do *** together?
EARL DOUGLAS: Yeah, just to add on to that, Fishbone,
long time BRC supporter band, their last album
was crowd funded.
And they had a great line.
It was, you are the producer of the record.
And I thought that's a pretty easy way
to make people understand what this means.
It's like, you know what, I'm producing the album of the band
that I always loved.
And I think it becomes very empowering.
And I think that's a very key part of,
I guess, with crowd funding that kind of gets lost.
You know what, you're being part of this project
that you always wanted to see.
God knows we hear enough about stuff that's out there.
And it's being consumed by the masses.
And everyone's like this sucks and how
come people are buying it?
People are buying it because people are supporting it.
Somebody's buying it.
And you could do the same thing.
It's like, OK, don't complain about it.
Do something about it.
Put your dollars behind it.
And I think, again, it has to be stressed over and over
and over again.
Whatever project you're passionate about, whatever
artists, whatever you're into, if you don't
put the time into it, if you don't nurture it,
it's not going to go to where you think you want it to go.
JENNIFER WRIGHT: Can I just tag on maybe
as a Debbie Downer for a second, just on the crowd funding?
One thing we see a lot with our 1,400 artists, the crowd
funding certain models also really
not just encourage but urge you to give away
stuff for your dollar.
So if I give $25, I'll get two tickets
to a show and a signed album and a dinner with Jeremy.
And suddenly the $25 is really worth so much more.
And it kind of speaks to the ROI thing.
What is philanthropy in this day and age?
And what do we expect?
And a lot of the artists we see are just
giving away so much stuff, in part because they don't believe
that the experiment and the art itself is sufficient.
So they're going to give you a mug, and a tote bag,
and a happy ending, everything.
They're going to give away the store in order to get your $25.
And we just really try and work with our folks
at least, just be cognizant of that.
One, can you handle it?
Can handle giving away all that stuff?
What does that mean in terms of investors, and backers,
and all of that?
What does that mean?
Are there people who really are OK with,
let me just give you some money, because philanthropically I
believe in the importance of what you're doing.
And that's awesome.
So just to be strategic about that.
And if, for instance, I give money to WNYC, and I say
I don't want this stuff.
I don't need this stuff.
I believe in WNYC.
I don't need the tote bag.
I don't need "The New Yorker," which I can't even
read because there's too many of them, despite the fact
that I love it.
But I don't need it, just take my money.
JOSEPHINE DORADO: All right, thank you all.
Thank you for your time and your feedback.
And thank you all for your time and your feedback, too.
JEREMY XIDO: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]