 Good evening, good evening, good evening everybody, hello. My name is Chris Gruen, I'm the director of WGDR, Goddard College Community Radio. Thank you for getting us through another successful fundraising season. We are about to launch a new mission at WGDR that has social justice and the stewardship of the natural world central in that mission. It's going to be a very focused effort for us and I imagine that it's a good time for such a thing. So, look and listen for a new team effort over here at WGDR. December 9th, yes Meg, December 9th, we have Sessions Americana, a favorite for this area, if you haven't seen them, be sure to be here for that show, it's going to be fantastic, let your friends know that's a party night for sure. Those guys bring the house down. This night of music is such an incredible treat and in some senses you could say it's unfortunate that it flew under the radar but you're all here, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very fortunate for us that we're in the house right now. Our opener is no less an incredible, amazing artist that's bringing something very unique and special compared to our headliner and I'll talk a little bit about the headliner after I introduce Derek but in general the music of Mali is become a bit of a fetish for modern pop in places like Brooklyn, New York and Nashville and Los Angeles. This, you know, bands like Dirty Projectors and St. Vincent and all kind of shown the way by a David Byrne, the music of the Desert Blues of Mali have become a real leading force without trying to be for us over here and there's a reason for that. There's something transfixing and transcendent about the lines in the Desert Blues coming out of Mali. Musicians like Ali Farkatore and the very famous Griot and his collaborator Tumani Di Abate on the Chora, these guys are leading names in the world of Mali music and the artists tonight are all connected to them directly. Our first performer Derek Ripper has been said to have cracked it. He's a South African guitarist that brings the magic of those other instruments and the influences of Ali Farkatore on stage as a solo performer. He's absolutely exhausted. He drove nine hours to get here to play for you and he's playing Carnegie Hall the day after tomorrow so put your hands together for Derek Ripper. Wow, thanks for that. How are you all doing? You know you guys are really, really, really far away. It's unbelievable and nobody's told that to the GPS. I have it on a very good authority that it takes nine hours to drive here from Long Island, not six. So it's kind of a miracle that I made it, especially because the whole way I was driving here, everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road and nobody listened. You could hoot, flash your lights, nothing. That was a piece originally for two chorors that was recorded by one of the very great choror prayers, Tumani Diabatte and his son Siddiqi. I made an arrangement of that. I started off making an arrangement for two guitars, a gig to do with a young, up-and-coming guitarist from Australia called John Williams. You should check him out. He's recorded about a million albums and he's been doing this for about 60 years or so. Anyway, I started off transcribing it for two guitars because it made sense to have two chorors, two guitars. But then I realised that it made a very nice solo piece so I had to kick him out. That was a little song I wrote about a girlfriend of mine. I went up to Canada for the first time now and I was hoping to see her. It's been quite a long time. She was a Canadian singer and we had a little thing where we would go on long drives together and she would sing to me. Anyway, it was impossible to get in touch with her. She's a wonderful singer. She'd check her stuff out. Her name is Joanie Mitchell. She said it was an age thing, but kind of conservative, the Canadians. I'd like to play you a piece by one of the world's greatest guitarists in my view. It's a master of simplicity. His name is Ali Farkature. This is like a mix of different things. There's even a bit of a tumani in the middle. Is that ours to destination or the actual time? So this is my very favourite. You know this idea of world music is fairly new because England and America got all the music and then when they discovered that other people also made music that had to be world music, which is fine. But actually, one of my favourite world music musicians was writing and playing and recording albums back in the 1760s. He was integrating a lot of interesting stuff because he was playing, he was German. Maybe just the DI, not the mic as much. The sound guy you need to actually give a round of applause to because he did like a three and a half second sound check and you can actually hear my guitar. It's kind of a miracle. He did it while I was on the road as well, so that's even better. So yeah, this guy, he put together a whole lot of things, a fiddle player. He put together Spanish. This next piece is a very good example, Spanish dance mixed with German compositional techniques. And then all these improvisations which he got actually from Koro musicians and early West African musicians. And then there's parts in the middle which if you know the Koro is an area in Southern Africa, it's a very flat, very stark place and you can only make this type of music if you've been in the Koro. So a lot of historians don't know this, but he was writing a lot of his music while taking summer holidays in this area. And you can actually tell because he used to record his music. I think recording was in its infancy then. So he was recording his music with a quill pen and an ink, but these very Koro parts he did, it's very hard to find good quill pens in Southern Africa, so you can actually see he's made it with porcupine quill. So I've been trying to reconstruct his music with this in mind that this is really where he was coming from. And so I'd like to finish off before you hear these incredible musicians, Tria Decali. I'd like to finish off with one of these pieces and you can check him out, a lot of his albums online, his name is J.S. Bach. And if we could get another round of applause for Derek Gripper please. That really did something to bring me into a heart space, which has been kind of hard to do over the past few days. Also I want to thank sponsors tonight Down Home Kitchen, who are out in the foyer there, Mary Alice, and that sound guy Bennett Shapiro and Mad Tech, who always does an amazing job for us here. These are really partners of ours in that they're not just sponsors, but they come and participate and collaborate and meet you and serve you and love this, so that's partnership. And I also want to recognize the youngsters down in the foyer, one of them is my daughter, and they are 11 and 12 year olds from Doty Elementary School who are young activists and trying to raise money for endangered species in the area. Tonight it's the Northern Brown Bat. And I thought it was really fitting tonight to have them here and participate in this opening of arms to what we've been hearing our leadership talk about as time to be afraid and time to close doors while we open up the barn palace doors here in central Vermont. And without railing against what we don't love, we open up our hearts and enjoy music like Derek Rippers. And we listen to those tones and those songs and be attentive to them and open up to them as our action of saying that we won't stop loving the whole world. And that this is who we are here in central Vermont and who we're going to be around the country and around the world they're watching. So really congratulations to you to do this tonight. Thank you for helping us do that with these beautiful people. Please, a big round of applause for Trio De Cali. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.