 Thank you so much for being here. My name is Maria Romani, and I'm one of the co-organizers and moderator for this wonderful panel tonight. And I am really honored to facilitate this event, which is really a unique event here to see Berkeley, and bringing these amazing artists from the Bay Area, these cultural workers, that are really leaders in the community on the Bay Area, and bringing them into conversation about this particular project. I'm going to give you a little bit of a context for it. Before introducing our speakers tonight, I want to really thank the generous departments at UC Berkeley, who sponsored this event. First of all, the Department of Anthropology, who is hosting us, that's also hosting us, and we are very grateful for this beautiful space, for creating this space for us. And then the Department of Ethnic Science, the Department of Music, and the Center for Latin American Studies. We are very grateful for your support. And then we're also grateful for to the National Endowment for the Arts, that's the main sponsor for this series, and also to La Peña Cultural Center. And tonight, I have Natalia Néra Tamal, one of the co-directors of La Peña Cultural Center with us. Thank you, Natalia, for being with us. We love La Peña. And also I want to thank Gabrielle Sanchez from the Department of Anthropology for being an amazing organizer. And I want to thank Natalia Néra Tamal for the wonderful poster design. Thank you. It's been wonderful to organize this panel, and I thank you for your time, for your expertise, and for sharing your knowledge with us tonight. Okay, so before I stop talking, I want to give a little bit of an introduction about the context of this panel. So this discussion is part of the series of timeless archetypes of women in music and dance, sponsored by the NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and La Peña Cultural Center. This panel was initially conceived by Maria Rosa, who's the series director and one of our panelists tonight. And this series has engaged more than 30 artists to conduct community workshops and live performances, calling attention to the crucial and often difficult roles that women have played across societies, cultures, and generations. The series has featured artists active in the Mexican, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, and contemporary Latino artistic traditions. And it has invited them to consider critically women's roles, how they are reflected in archetypes of femininity, and how these archetypes have evolved and are still manifested in today's society. Today we will hear from the series for artistic directors, who are amazing artists and who have been cultural leaders in the Bay Area and beyond for many years. And I want to give a short buy for each one of them, and then we'll give a report about that. So I want to say to Maria, Maria Rosa, she's the she's the series director of timeless archetypes of women in music and dance. Maria is native of San Jose, California. She's an award-winning artist, musician, educator, and curator of folkloric music programming, as well as artistic director of the San Jarocho Ensemble, Gia Pazón, which generally appears throughout the Bay Area and beyond, performing at venues such as the Oakland Museum of California, Mexican Heritage Plaza, Bay Area Museum, San Francisco Arts and Mission, among many others. Maria has been artistic director of Los Rupenos de San Jose, and with the 2014 Paz Tandango Pano project, Maria launched a year-round from Jarocho Programming at La Vena. Maria has a VA and a master's from Stanford University, and she holds a professional, clear California teaching credential. And again, she's the series director of the series. And here is Iiana. Iiana is a singer-songwriter, recording artist, and cultural worker based in the Bay Area. Over the last 20 years, she has connected her experiences working with a vast array of communities to musical and theatrical collaborations, such as the Tandango Campesino, Golden Gate Opera, Valeria La Graza, The Young Museum, Asian Culture Arts Center, Brava Women for the Arts, and La Pena, among many others. Heading from a Southern California musical-border family, she bridges her bicultural roots to the arts and social justice to music, as a language justice interpreter and linguist and voice-over artist. Liliana is also the lead singer of Oakland Bay's Cumbia d'Ambel Candelalla. Shefa is a dance instructor, choreographer, artist, and environmental justice educator. She's the co-director of the Bombay Plano Workshop at La Pena, and the artistic director and performance assistant at Guadalupe. She regularly presents at schools, universities, festivals, and events throughout California. She has performed at the San Francisco Ethnic Festival Dance, Cuba Caribe, the Bombay Dance in New York, and was featured at the West Wave Dance Festival. Most recently, just a few months ago, Shefali was one of four leaders of the ninth annual Encuentro de Ambores in Puerto Rico, representing and performing with diaspora delegation. An incident that Shefali has been my teacher for 10 years. Finally, Gabriela Shiroma. Gabriela is a pioneer of African-American dance movement in the Bay Area. She's a choreographer, producer, dancer, teacher, and cultural activist who has been teaching and producing African-American dance and musical events in the Bay Area for over 30 years. Gabriela has done field trips and has researched in Ghana, Nogochi, and Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, among many other countries, and she has stopped and coordinated workshops in African-American music and dance at University and Cultural Centers International. Thank you, Gabriela. But we do have an exceptional class. So my role is just to be a facilitator of this conversation. So I'm going to start with a couple of questions, but then feel I really want to encourage you to just raise your hands and feel free to participate in the conversation, because we really want to share this work with the whole community. So my first question, it would be if you could describe for our audience tonight the concept behind the concert that you, for this series. So the concert that you will perform, that you will direct, or that you have directed in the past months. And I would like to stop with Marielle as the series director, if you could give the audience a sense of the series and of the concert. So yes, thank you, Marina, for being here and doing this. A woman in the arts, and in folk arts in particular, that we end up taking and wearing a lot of hats. And it's not very often that I can stop and breathe and just focus on this. And that was my greatest dream about doing this particular project. So having someone like you taking on such a panel and not having to worry about that is amazing. So thank you. What I would expect that many of us have that same experience. Again, especially in the folk arts. This particular concept is now of, it's not quite 10 years old for me, and it's always been around the, the, the, the net. And it occurred to me as the, this, this powerful image of a woman that with her voice could affect people. Okay, particularly men. And what it came back to is that, what it came down to is that people would blame the beauty of a woman's voice or her beauty for their downfall. You know, and that sort of, you know, I was like, well that's kind of interesting. Well, I realized that not only is this being sung about over and over and over again, it goes back thousands of years, you know, to the sirens of Greek mythology, that particular image. So that was the, the, the crux or the thought that came to mind. Especially because in Mexico, the song de la Petanera is, there's at least four or five of them that can be in different parts of the country. They're all related but they're different musically and different, you know, so it's something that's shared. And when I realized that it was connected back to the sirens, sorry, what I meant to say is that this project started almost two years ago. I don't know if I said that already. I'm tired. It was, I realized that not only was it, it was connected here, but I had seen a piece that Gaby's group did, the Rupira I did. It was like a dress, you know, years ago. And so when I started thinking about this project, that I couldn't click back in. And it was the same sort of theme. It wasn't the same image, but it was the same theme about the woman being, the downfall of the man. And there were images that I had picked up on as well, and so forth. It's not, you know, I haven't ever really spoken about these, but you see that they occur all over. And I realized that when I started thinking about this is, this is an architect. This is something that we share throughout the world. Every culture probably has some representation of the Bevenera. And so that's what I wanted to build my project around. And at the time it was just a concert and we had gone a couple of times for a different, a couple of different grants. And I got pretty close, really close, to some big ones. And ironically enough, and you know, there's politics around it. This is, it was part of the struggle in this whole thing was there were panels that kind of shut the door, you know. And, you know, I can't say for nuts, because I wasn't there in the room, but, you know, there's always this sense of, okay, why, you know. Anyway, so there was that little struggle going along. So when, but La Penhan was the one that was helping me over the years. We kept a couple of times, several times, you know. And when the NEA one came up, originally in my project I had wanted to invite the rest of my colleagues here to do a piece in that show. But when La Penha approached me and said, hey, we want to do the NEA, we want to pick up your Betaneras project. But we want to, can you do something that's a four-concert series? Because we want to approach it as a four-concert series. And by that time I had studied that with Eiko and Shifali and Gabriela and I had worked together together for years on different projects as well. But I realized that each one of us had got material for our concert. And that there was these archetypes that I was seeing, not just at the NETA, but other archetypes within the Mexican folklore exist as well and other folklore and other culture. And so that's how that's where I went with that. And it made sense because I mean I was, I've been working with La Penha now for since about 2011 or 2004 to voice the big nexus project. And in that whole transition piece I was kind of met about focusing on the people who were at La Penha that have grown these communities and since these people are here. And they've been there for years and they've been there and they have huge communities there. I was the newest kid on the block, you know. But and so it totally just made sense to put that together as a four-concert series. And then with a lot of the contemporary voice and Miliana and I happened to work on a top secret project that we have signed up last week to say that we will, we never tell anybody what this project was. Maybe in a few, huh? Maybe in a few. No, we didn't record it. And I know the family, I know it's a work of place and so I was just saying it makes sense, it just makes sense to invite her to work on the contemporary piece. So that's where it's at. Thank you. Shefa, would you like to talk about the Puerto Rican concept of the series? Good evening everyone. I'm so honored to be here and I want to kind of thank you for being here and incorporating me as one of the co-directors and artistic directors of Jocantare. And Héctor Lujo, another one of my mentors, he wasn't able to be here tonight but we worked together in creating the concept Jocantare. And Jocantare speaks to the stories of Puerto Rican women, not only from Puerto Rico but also in the diaspora through song. And all of the pieces had original aspects to them. And the way that we envisioned the Jocantare installation or project or presentation was through the voices and the creativity of our students of the Bay Area home of that workshop. So we invited students like Marina, we invited, you know, other practitioners of the bomba Alea de la Maia, those like Románito Carriño, percussionists like Javier Navarrete, Mariluna and all of these folks contributed their voices through the different pieces that we had created. And so Jocantare questions the representation of women, of Puerto Rican women, whether it's colonial representations, whether it's present day representations that are still based on our colonial struggles and realities. And one of the most beautiful things for me in seeing how the students were able, how the participants were able to create through Jocantare was that, you know, whether it was poetry, whether it was through playing the marina, whether it's, you know, through rap, whether it was through singing bolero, which Marina will hopefully talk a little bit about, they were able to give their voice and share their voice and their experiences of either being Puerto Rican living in the diaspora or being connected to Puerto Rican cult music and culture, because many of the participants of our workshop, some of the participants that are in our workshop are not Puerto Rican, but they've been connected to bomba music and dance, they've been connected to plana music and dance, and that connection definitely also contributed to the flourishing of what happened. And so some of the examples of what you weren't able to see if you weren't there. Oh, by the way, this is my son, I'm Ladi Rashad. And he helps define me and who I am and my voice as a woman today and teaches me so much. So some of the examples of the magic that happened included a song that I borrowed from a colleague from Puerto Rico, Mariano Herlopes, she wrote a song called Mujer Boricua. And so La Mujer Puerto Ricania, La Mujer Boricua, she is redefining through this song, through the performance of this song, she redefines what it is to be a Puerto Rican woman, whether it's a leader and activist, women who are helping rebuild the island even way before mania, through whether it's agriculture, whether it's teaching generations of bomba practitioners. And if you don't know what bomba is, I'll maybe talk a little bit about it. Right now, bomba is a music and dance from Puerto Rico. It originates over 300 years ago in the sugar cane plantations of the island, where folks were forced to work under horrendous and even beyond conditions that were not really necessarily where connected with because it happened way back then. But we try to tell those stories through song and through the passing down of oral history. And so bomba was used to create solidarity to resist and was one of the ways that the abolition of slavery was achieved was an example of how powerful bomba music was to be contributing to the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. And so Maria Torres speaks to what is La Mujer Boricua. And La Mujer Boricua is a leader, she's a mother, she's a builder. There's so many different things that define who is a Puerto Rican woman. And I'm still learning that today. My personal inspiration, which Maria also talks about in this song, is two women that I visited almost in 1999 in the Dublin women's prison, and they're now freed and they contributed to my really strong desire to help future generations, current and future generations learn what bomba music is, what bomba dancing is. Without knowing who we are as Puerto Ricans, we will not be free, we will not be liberated from systems of colonial oppression. So they, both of them visiting them, they were locked up for seditious conspiracy to free Puerto Rico. And all of their work helped me understand why it's important to continue to practice bomba and teach to teach the youth that currently take our classes in the bomba and live in a workshop. And so they taught me about Puerto Rican history, they taught me about how their work contributed to elevating the definition and redefining what Puerto Rican, what it is to be Puerto Rican today, and also back in the day and how those are connected. So and then up, can I speak about one more piece? So another piece that I I'm directly connected with because I wrote one of the songs and I I co-created this, the joining of this actual piece with one of the youth in our, in our barrio, and she wrote Una, and the song talks about being mothered, so the experience of a child and how it is for her, being being mothered. And so she speaks to the lyrics, talk about talking about and comparing how the ocean, how the ocean is powerful as her mother, you know, mothered her and just ways her to sleep and, you know, the stars guide her and she compares how the stars are like her mother. And so I related so much to her piece, you know, because I'm, he's my son and I'm really technically a first-time mom and understanding a little bit more about what he might be feeling as my son. And then her piece, Una, came together with the piece that I wrote, Sola, and the lyrics of Sola say Sola, Sola me voy, Sola, Sola me voy, Sola, Sola me voy. So in being able to travel alone, there's something that there's guidance. So I'm able to walk alone in life because I have the guidance of my mother and I have the guidance of my teachers, of my ancestors. And so that, that, that connection closed the evening and it was very, very powerful. So I'm, estoy sola. I'm alone, but I'm alone because I'm, estoy acompañada because I have the strength of the women that have guided me and also from Lyrus's perspective, the strength of the women or her mother that has guided her and continued to guide her. So that was, that was powerful and Lyrus played the guitar and then we had a traditional loma part in, in, in this piece, which was also a play in, in, in Loma, combined with her skills with the guitar. And so all of the, the, the power in the relationship and culminating with all of the women on stage supporting and accompanying this, this young girl who was moving into the loma part. Thank you, chef. Come here. Would you like to talk about the women's step-through? Can I have a translator? Yes. Do we have somebody to translate? Can, can you translate for us, please? I think I'm much stressed out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gabriela was born in, in federal when I approached her to, to do this, what she thought about was the fact that, you know, how do I possibly answer that question about, you know, what is a, a leading woman because, first of all, she was born in Peru. She lived 20 years, or 20 or some years before she moved here and she's American now. And, but her grandparents are Japanese and are, which is, I mean, there's a large population of Japanese in Peru and, but she's Peruvian. And then at the same time, there's people from different parts of her, her, her upbringing and her location is the Criollo art, which is towards the coast. But there's also the Altiplano, there's also different parts of Peru where you're going to find all different cultures and all different, actually how people speak as well. And so, but the role of this woman is her co-director and also with, you know, when they read up in the street and they're both speaking the same language but they're all looking and looking at each other. And this is very obviously, but that's what shows the actual root of Peru and how does this all come to be when there's, there's different cultures in in language, in race, gender, religion. And that's about who I think I am. So you asked Gabriela to answer the question. It's all right. So when I try to, I'm going to try to speak. Whatever you prefer. Whatever you prefer. When I try to put the front together, so I thought about four or five different stories that can tell the stories of Peruvian women that are unknown. So, so I chose five different types of examples of women that have never been seen, like La Mujer de Cabo, which she was a government woman in the fifth century and before, she was the first government woman. So then I chose other women from Puno, which is the Altiplano, where the Altiplano is really poor, but there is this woman who is very rich. She is the wife of the Mineros that work in the mines of Potosí, which is the biggest mine of silver in the world, all the silver mine, all the way with the royalty of Peru, all the way to China and came back many times bringing all the ceramics and mountainous manila and silk and everything and so there's a really high class in the Altiplano and this woman belongs there and she's very elegant but all the other women in Puno are very poor. So then there is a woman in Púzco, which is the most, Peru is no more from Altiplano and the Andes and there is women that are that are used for celebrations of fertility of the Vachamama, which is the celebration for the earth. Finally I chose a woman from Lima and when I came to Lima or this is where I come from, which is the capital of Peru, I used the image of unidones, which is a bus, and all the women that were coming in the bus will be one representative of what today the Peruvian women you can see on the streets. So she can be like somebody who begs for money or somebody who goes to school or an important politician or a mother or a street vendor or so. The story goes around with music and theater and dance and that's how I'm portrayed. I try to portray Peruvian women. Thank you. What about the contemporary side Well the contemporary side I also want to mention how important it is to have multi-language spaces and we see clearly how important it is and how we need to talk about colonization. That's one of the things I think we can all do together is to break those patterns of English dominance in every single space that we're in because the world has made up many languages, many cultures and which takes me to what inspired me to, and I'm still doing research on this, on my show Guadalina and Guadalinas Swango. So the archetype really that was in that prevailed in my show was this Swango, this Guadalina sort of traveling through California and talking about the stories that are often not told in our history books. I'm a California native, I don't know how many people are native Californians. Have you heard of the Gold Rush? Have you heard of the Spanish missions? So the Guadalina, this Swango kind of, the story takes us on as very poetic storytelling, a little bit of monoloss, but primarily really dispels the myth that resistance was not part of the original inhabitants of California, that they passively accepted colonization and the violence and the rupture that colonization continues to bring, right? Continues to divide humanity and so I wanted to talk about these stories through the perspective of this bird, that's the Swango that's migrating because we value and we celebrate migration when we think about it in a mystical way like the Swangos of Capiceno and you guys sort of those, the, so the Guadalina is sort of like the opinion that the Swango of Capiceno that flies from Argentina to Southern California, the O.C. and how people gather, since the 1930s they've been gathering and like, wow, here they come, you know, migration and it just, it just really deserves to be how we see human beings as invaders and we see birds as these majestic, you know, natural spiritual migratory pattern, you know, of beings, right? That he openly and freely migrate and they don't need visas or passports or green cars for discussing presidents, coming down to me. And so I really wanted to talk about these stories and my research, I found all these incredible stories and journeys of people that I had never heard of in my life and I thought, wow, you know, I'm a Californian and I have never heard these stories and all these stories. So it's sort of like a story within stories and songs and in fact, this is now going to be, part of my work is going to be incorporated in an animated film that's just embarking on this project called Eureka. And I will be reprising the show in the Bravo Theater in Texas this time. So yeah, I really focused a lot on, I had worked with some incredible musicians. We were a small cohort of people that we really put out and the soundscape itself was very beautiful and I'm very, very pleased with that. And so, you know, you kind of brought together, you know, this tapestry of people and stories and voices that I had never heard before. Primarily there was one archetype that really struck me and her name was Spokalina and she was one of the first, if not maybe the only that was considered, very young, she was 24 years old and she led a rebellion in the Sangha Band of Missions in L.A., the Adelaide Basin. And this was in the late 1700s and she was one of the many resistors of the Missions. You know, the Missions were very, very brutal on Indigenous people and it's sort of the Holocaust, right, being with our feet that we never talked about in California was, you know, it was a very diverse, linguistically diverse place. We spoke over 100 languages. They, as far as like the wildfires, I just saw a book out there about the wildfires, they always happened in California. However, Indigenous groups knew how to contain the fires, they would set fires in small areas and then continue the fires. So they knew to help this knowledge, all this wisdom, from thousands of years back and when the colonizers came, they pretty much said, no, you're done, you're going to be our slaves and if you don't like it, you will torture you, rape you, and burn you, and burn crosses on your head, you know, for a head. And so there's all this very, you know, majestic story about California, but underneath it there's a lot of brutality. And so I was trying to find a way to talk about honestly, but very, very transparent about this brutality that we never talk about in a way that we can celebrate the resistance and the resilience of people that came before us. And I really feel that the solutions of our problems in the world and in our nation is really, we need to go back to our Indigenous roots because all of us here have Indigenous roots. It's just some of us are more closer connected to it than others. But trust me, we all have an Indigenous root. And that was, I think, what I felt most passionate about in this project. And, like, what on Dina is also what my mother always called me, I like what on Dina, like, when are you going to have to settle down, right? So I brought in some story to my mother and my father and kind of personalized it and bring some humor, even though I'm a very serious person. But, yeah, so I wanted to bring in as also the musical influences, right, that I grew up with that we can all connect to. And I want to say just witnessing Miliana's concert, it was the most beautiful history lesson. And it's true that it was about all these, like, very painful stories, but the resistance and the resilience part were highlighted. And so it felt very empowering even with the tragic stories from, you know, Indigenous, you know, Holocaust to gentrification, because you also talk about gentrification in one of Dina's blues songs, she had blues as well. I thought the money raises. I gave a lot of questions, but I would actually like to ask our audience, if there's any questions, if you have to ask any of our panelists. And I can start, but I would really hope because, you know, we don't know a lot of the time. So is there anybody who would like to ask any questions to our panelists? Yes. Let's work to the general battle. I was just curious to maybe ask how the conversations are here in California at this day and age. Some of that maybe go back to the countries that you've come from, or the culture that you've come from, and that sort of, I guess, what is that context of it happening here versus happening there? And what is that conversation like that's going through general? For me, that's a very important part of this. My concert hasn't happened yet. June 29th, but in the building of it. I had picked up many years ago, as I was developing this project, the cooperation, the partnership with Hapriso Ida. He's been agreeing to be my musical director and partner on this for a long time. He's specifically working just on the music, not the overall concept, but of course we have Hapriso and Hapriso. And he's in without root. You know, he is a manastro like, you know, I am more than privileged to be working with him. And this, by the way, I have another story that we get to hear from, these are my master's teachers and so forth. But part of that conversation came from, and part of what I'm doing here came from, that it is dominated by men, but that's the men that have come here. And there are women back in the home country that are doing, you know, and so having, we've worked in both places. I was just there in January with Anne, and we were setting out the program and going through, sorting through all the things that I do and how I'm going to do this. And it's interesting to see with a, you know, with conversation music, but I had a very open conversation with him at the beginning saying, I know where I'm coming from, I know where you're coming from. And the reason I brought him on the project is to keep me true, you know, to, you know, not be making stories up, you know. But part of what's happening is also that this is an interpretation of our experience, because it does go back there, you know. And over the years, at least a 40-year process that's been going on, there's an interchange that's been happening, and so there's an influence of that tradition and music coming here, influencing who we are, but they have also vocally expressed, and I'm saying they and the maestros and our projects, how much we've influenced them and changed how they do things. And that was one of the reasons why I focused on working on this project, because one of the things that had come up from more than a lot of my maestros is the number of women in the Bay Area who are leading groups and who are doing things here that doesn't happen over there. It is happening and it's starting to happen more and more, but they're like the ratio and the number of people, you know, I can name several people and several of those people, not all of them, are involved in my concert, you know, and that was one of the reasons to invite them to the concert to honor that, but the Bay Area in this genre, they're starting to be known for that, there's a lot of women that are taking those places, so they are, and they're, you know, they're supporting that. I mean, it's not like they've given us permission, you know, it's not that it's more that there's been a real collaboration and it's tough, you know, it's not an easy, it's definitely not an easy conversation, but they're ready and we're ready, you know, to move forward. So I hope that answers your question. I was thinking in terms of like regarding this question, I was thinking about what we did for the Diolcantarae concert, that we, you know, we studied the Prochloric tradition, but we reinterpreted it coming from all different experiences, you know, always with respect and, you know, studying the tradition first. So Shefali and I told you, our teachers, Romani, Diolcani, they really give us a solid foundation about the history, especially for us who are you know, like me as a white person coming from Italy, being here as a Romani staff, like, you know, so kind of being in between space as well. We don't make priviledge, I mean, with my story, but also like learning from this community and I have to say our teachers encourage us to have a dialogue with the tradition. So not impose our view, but have our dialogue with the tradition. And Shefali, I don't have these resonates with what you're trying to do with us, but this is what I'm learning from you all. Yeah, I mean, I think that it is important what you're learning the tradition to do your best to honor what your teachers have taught you, and that goes not only for, you know, our students to honor what we're teaching, but for us to be responsible educators and students as well in the tradition. And so we really want our students to have, like you said, and, you know, the participants, our collaborators, a critical relationship with the art form, but also to be creative and to create based on the structures that, you know, that they have learned and to have their own interpretations because bomba, for instance, is a personal experience. So you learn, for example, I focus on the dance, you learn the basic step, you learn basic structures of, you know, how a bomba or a bomba jam, a bomba doke operates, but then you have a conversation with it and you're able to create, like Marina, she wrote. In the workshop, students not only learn bomba, but they also learn about fulena, which is a younger musical tradition, musical tradition from Puerto Rico, and they also are able to come in contact and self-form with musicas, and different mountains and other instruments, like the guaco and how it's played in Puerto Rico. So Marina was able to write a beautiful bolero, honoring two Puerto Rican art types that have influenced many other songwriters and practitioners, and so that, you know, Marina has written, you know, a few songs, and I know that her experience is spoken through these songs. And some of the other students wrote, participants wrote songs about the migratory experience, Puerto Rico continues to be redefined through the migration experience historically, and even more so after Hurricane Maria, there's been an exodus, and so many people have left the island, but for me, the true inspiration, and specifically speaking of women and women role models that I've had is all the women who have decided to stay in Puerto Rico, they say, what's the definition for fahacel? Stayed and built their workshops. I just spoke with one woman who has done work out here for her work out here, picked up with this, and she had to close her workshop, and then she with faith and community support, she reopened, and I think she said over 150 students, but it's just been an uphill battle, and so those are examples of, for that inspire me to do the work that I have over here, the examples of women doing the work in Puerto Rico, and it's really hard, way harder, and so in honor of those women, and in honor of our teachers, and the fact that whole lot of music and banana music is flourishing in Puerto Rico, and also as a form of resistance and self-determination, I continue to do the work here in collaboration with the rule and the inspiration of all the workshop participants, so Puerto Rico is not what people imagine post-herbicamp idea as devastating as it was, and it continues to be, but Puerto Rico has, there's, my interpretation is that the island has solidified in many different ways, and although there's an economy that there's a struggle to build the economy because of, because it's a colony, and the fiscal, there's a fiscal controller who controls the money that Puerto Ricans are, the economic support that schools get, the infrastructures get, et cetera, that do not know what it needs to be Puerto Rican, Puerto Ricans are not in the West Indus, so we are much more than what people might imagine post-herbicamp idea. Well, as far as like thinking about what you said about, you know, coming from another place, I feel one of the things that I also, and I'm very grateful for to hear these amazing artists keep inspiring me, I think he knows that, but the whole identity of being a Chicana, a Chiconda, he's a reality right of being, there's a song that he then says, I'm not from here, I'm not from there, where am I from, and my only personal experience growing up in this country, or the race in this country, is that when people say where are you from, I say Occupy Territory, California, and of course, you know, that it's like you're a hybrid person, I'm a hybrid person within the hybrid society, you know, and it's been a very rich experience to really delve into that Chicanismo, and kind of reclaiming my indigenous route, and knowing that in my European route, and you know, and it really, really inspires me to think of the Americas, and I was just saying when she said, I'm an American, I thought, well, of course she's from Peru, South America, she's part of the America, and sort of like working around decolonizing our mind in the sense of really bringing respect, like you're saying, respect to, you know, through music, and that also inspires me to continue to to delve into this work, this cultural work, and really bring it to the point of the issues that we're dealing with today, right, and gentrification in various, specifically as a very, very brutal reality for many people, than a violent reality for many people too, like Alex Miepo, who was killed, shot 57 times several years ago, because somebody from the now gentrified Bernal Heinz area was scared to see a big brown bag with a 49-inch jacket eating a burrito, they called the police, and they just came in and shot him, you know, 57 times, and he was a satisclinated, a practicing Buddhist, you know, very loved in the community, and this is just one of many examples of what gentrification causes and its murder, and again, I think we need to kind of connect the pieces of the past and how it's repetitive now, and find solutions, right, work together to find the solutions, and not just the observers, but actually the participants, willing participants to change the dialogue and to realize that our voices need to be heard, and sometimes songs and dance, that's how we are heard sometimes, especially as women, right, and it's a very powerful tool, a very powerful tool. I think I know, could I talk to some of you? I don't know, are we in the picture? I think I just did a sort of a relationship of the topics of the one that I just wrote here in the California context, how some of that goes back to Peru, or just what is that conversation between Peru and the work you've been doing here in California? So what we found out was like we didn't roll, So what is that we found out, it's like we didn't know, we didn't know what this was working in that room. Because I work with, I think with 30 people around, and we're all from different places, and we are doing things from different areas that we have never been there or exposed to those areas. So I think we learned a lot. I don't think there has been a problem with that. And I don't think it will be as open as I could have done it here than over there. And I think it will be beautiful to put this program and take it there. Because, yes, because even for students, they don't know, you know, it's very different and very segregated, everything class and economics and culture and everything is very different. So I think here in California, we are lucky to be able to express where we came from, who we are, you know, without being prejudged or segregated. I'm just saying something about, you know, what she just said, this is why we're connected, because this is how Gabriella operates and has always operated. All the shows she has done that have been a part of her, have always been about the diaspora and how we're all connected. And she's talking specifically about the room, but she's done programs that are, I mean, they included Mexico, they included Puerto Rico, that's why I know Etrus as well, it's doing, and then she's finally through Gabriella and these shows that she's done. And these things that are just very natural and have, you know, become very powerful forces, the woman, and one of the questions that you had prompted us with is about new archetypes. And I know we're kind of going all over the place with what an archetype is, but when I saw that question, I was like, how do you even have a new archetype? Because an archetype is about something, not a stereotype, but something that's deep-seated in your psyche, you know. And so, you know, I was like, I don't think I can answer that question that doesn't really exist. I'm kind of contrary to it. But now as I'm sitting and listening to what you just said, and listening to what all of us have been saying, it's all over the doing, to me then what archetype is strength and, you know, warrior and activist and powerful, women don't get to find that way. You know, women aren't featured that way. The feminine archetypes are things like motor, and they're things like the wise old woman, but not the warrior. The warrior is a male archetype historically, you know. And what you're seeing here, I think, is a disruption to that, those archetypes. And it's something that has proven the test of time, you know. I know she always been doing hard work for at least 20 years, probably longer. And I want you to remember and listen to how many of us continue to give credit to the people around us and to the male counterparts. You don't necessarily hear the flip of that. And that is definitely one of the tensions in putting this series out, putting my concert out. It's been very careful about that language. And it's real and it's deserved. But I recognize that it doesn't always happen on the flip side, you know. And I think those are things that are breaking the archetype and that are changing anymore and expanding these archetypes. So, many of your cultures are their matrilineal litigious. Because I just saw a film that was published called Bird Paradise from Colombia. And it was The Variety of People. It was a matrilineal society. And actually a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to meet with some women from that community. But from the countries you come from, by their tradition, are more of the women... I thought you were actually going to talk about another film. And I have to think of... I think it's Bird of Fire or Bird of... I can't remember... I'll try to remember the name of it. But it's about The Wanda Bek. It's about the isthmus of The Wanda Bek. That's a matrilineal society in the US. In the Netherlands. Yeah, in the Netherlands. Yeah, in the Netherlands. No, in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands Peninsula or the state of Oaxaca. The Wanda Bek is in Oaxaca. And the Wanda culture is matrilineal. Right, because some of the historical work you're doing is fabulous. And touching on that is also in an instance where it can be a source of the work. In Mexico, you carry your mother's name forward with you as well. Although it's still a patriarch who dominates patriarchal society. Thank you. And you write the question, but I told them that I didn't make sense. But I think my idea was that you used the word disruption. And I think that was where I was coming from. How to disrupt these archetypes. How to expand these archetypes. There are deep seated in our psyche. How we can be living today in this specific contemporary time. How we can disrupt those archetypes. Yeah, so use them as these very kind of unconscious ideas that we have. But giving them our own shape and voice. So thank you for using that word because I think that's what you have. Thank you. I just want to give testimony about something that's what we just said, you know, what we've all been talking about. So I work at La Peña and I've had the privilege of working with three of these wonderful teaching artists and artists, Chifale Aguilera and Maria, through their classes that they teach at La Peña regularly. And I've only met Maria now when I was introduced to her by Maria to do the Guadamerina piece. I wish all of your pieces completely haven't moved me so much and I can't wait to see them. June 29th at Braga Theater. So, but what I want to give testimony to is that when they're talking about these archetypes through dance, through music, these performing arts or community jam formats, actually like influencing society through arts, I witness it every day at La Peña. Like little kids as young as Raji here, learning their traditions. Maybe one parent is Puerto Rican. Maybe their grandma is Puerto Rican. Maybe their neighbor is Puerto Rican and that's why they're in that class. And it gives a sense of identity to the kids and it gives a sense of identity to the adults. And the same thing with Gabriela's class, they are consistently teaching Afro-Peruvian cajon. You see cajon a lot in flamenco music, that is a Peruvian instrument. You get to learn that and you get a sense of identity and respect, a lot of multicultural respect. No one's going to try to say that the cajon is from La Peña, we know better. And then with Maria, she teaches San Pedro to everyone today. And that's the dance format and the harana format and song structure and all that. And you see third generation Chicano kids. You see first generation Spanish, Spanish speakers in the same class learning with each other. It's just like multi-generational, many levels of languages learned and it just unifies an identity for each community. And they're so open and warm and inviting that you can just show up and do this. So this is a testimony I want to hear about these classes with that. It is very important that arts do influence your sense of identity. When you're oppressed, you need that sense of identity to really make you not feel like you need to be assimilated and internally oppressed mentally, which I have seen a lot in Texas. I grew up in Texas, but that's a never story. So I just want to give testimony to how important the arts really are when it comes to changing society. Because the art is the people that people push this art form out. You get to hear your voice, your opinions, but you also internally do a lot of work. It's not just what you're putting out there. It's also how it makes you feel and the community to build. You guys are amazing. And if I keep talking, I'm going to cry. That's why I get sad to be here. Thank you a lot. You must not be lying on the island. We have something for one last question. Anybody else like a third question to ask? Yeah, thank you. I guess I just want to go off on that. This question was kind of the same thing from earlier. I've been starting with finding all of you who do these classes. I would love to know from you on your end, as you're teaching, how do you build in all the politics and the history that you're putting into your shows and music, how do you build that into your teaching practice? I mean, anybody could speak this as well as I did. I'll quickly say something because I know we don't have that much time, but song is a very important way for us to teach history in our classes. And so through song, like for Google and myself, we both are able to tell stories and speak to some of the history of people and how the quarter begins interact with the music and dance. The songs have helped keep part of the history related to these various folks that worked in the plantations and then post-slavery, and even today. So to keep those stories alive. So through song and stories, we're able to teach a critical part of the proliferation of past, present, and the sort of indigen arc of future and the continuation of the future generations of music. So for the song and the piano, in the second house of this interview, I will say the piano is our second home because it receives everybody. And in our classes, in our community, we receive people who have never danced or played or act or anything that they want to feel part of some days. And so I want to say that we try to make people feel that you don't have to be too early to do what we do, you know? We're all human beings and we are all sharing the same space. We're all part of the Bay Area. And we have many similarities in our cultures, in our nationalities, in our races, in where we came from. We're all different, but we are all similar in our differences. So people feel that we are very connected to drumming. There's no language, you know, through dancing. We tell the stories of Peru. Not only of Uruguay, Latin America. And we share that with many other people or cultures that come to the class. So I think it's the arts. There's no language in the arts. I don't know. There's no language in the arts. There's no language in the arts. There's no language in the arts. There's no language in the arts. And in any way, we are always connected because we are all human beings. We all have different and difficult situations in society when we don't have a community. And I think it's that. That offers a community that doesn't suit you. It's just that it receives you. I don't have to do too much to teach these things the same things because that's what song is. And it is about receiving, you know. And I tend to romanticize, I think, sometimes. But it reflects life and the good stuff and bad stuff. And I talk about that when I talk about it in the same way that my students have talked about them. So oftentimes I'm passing their information on their stories on. So my experiences traveling and being a part of the culture, being a part of the fundamental. And then I actually say those things. But a lot of it, like Chevali said, it's already inherent. It comes in, it comes down through the song. And so when I'm talking in class and y'all can, I have at least six students here by the way. Who can attest to the amount of talking that you know. But I get it from my mind as well. But if he tells us about the context, if he tells us about the history, he tells us about the stories. And the reason you do that is because we are sharing these experiences. This is not just us that's dealing with this stuff. Whatever trials and tribulations we're dealing with, it's common to all of us. And when we come together into space and we learn these things, I get to hear it in the songs and the verses that we sing. And specific words that I may not know what that word is, but when I teach my class what this word means is, there's a reason it means that, you know. Those are things that are being passed down through it. So that's part of what I'm passing through and what I'm doing. And the other thing I want to say about that is that they have encouraged us. And we have done that. And that's where, you know, my biggest creative project started in 2014. Where we created new songs or new compositions that we're talking about our experience here. But these same experiences are experiences that they could relate to. So it was a team of my Astros. Meche was one of them. And a team of musicians from here. We got together and created several new sonnets that I talked about. And it's in the form of song. That's what song is for. So what you listen to, what we play, what we're learning to play, and this is what attracted me so much is that they're doing the same thing. What they're talking about is their history. You know, their current contemporary issues. You know, there's a lot of stuff around the hurricane and rightly so. And that's what's happening in Swamp as well. That we're talking about corruption, and it's contemporary. That's the versus that's coming out. The fact that we're doing this, the absolute fact, just the fact that we're getting together every once in a night to sit down in the class and pull on out, that to me is resistance. I don't have to go out, I mean, I do. But I don't have to go out to a march. You know, I might have you out this, right? I might not be the person. But just the fact that I continue to do this, despite everything that's going on, you know, and I take it into the schools too. I actually teach music. And I use song. I use song. The day after the elections, I was so defeated. I was just like, I was sick. And I woke up that morning and I was like, because I had been teaching in Spanish to kids that were not Spanish speakers. And I was teaching song. And I got up that morning like, maybe I better not do this anymore. You know, and that's how bad I am. And I was like, I can't believe this. You know, I was so surprised that I had no finger on my pulse of what was going on. I was like, am I really back out of touch? You know, and I was scared. And that moment, it took me like two seconds. And I did, you know, I said, you know what? No. The opposite. I grabbed my harana. I put on my embroidered blouse. And I went back and I took a tie at Somilo Santa in Spanish. You know, I'm like, no, more than that. And that is, that's what this is of resistance. This is what happened with bomba. We talked about how this is how they brought down the slavery, right? One of the ways that they brought down slavery. You know, all you have to do is just getting that group together freaks people out. Freaks people out. That's, there's power in it. There's a lot of power in it. Well, I was going to say, thank you so much for those inspiring words. I think there is a lot of power. I think we all can benefit from connecting culturally with each other. I think that we are compelled to take action in life because human nature tells us more than what we think logically is what we feel. And until we feel something, we can connect to other people with empathy. And I think that's a key thing for us to consider and to keep taking with us. And one of the first things that I thought of when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my project was one of the first thoughts that I wrote down and thought, where do we find our roots? In the veins of our existence, if not under the foundations we lay beneath the concrete and the musk where the soil breaks forming underground byways to our past and future generations. And I think that we have, if all of us here in this room can connect to other people with what we've learned today, what we feel today, we can continue spreading this message, right? And I feel like the colonized world that we live in, it doesn't just hurt the people that are colonized. It hurts the colonizers as well. And through my work around the country as an interpreter and an artist, one of the things that I hear a lot from white folks that come up to me, I'm so pissed that I don't have a culture that I just have hot dogs and hamburgers. And I'm like, no, no, no. You have to search. You have to search because perhaps you have some connection to some incredible music life in the Appalachian regions, where they have all this very ancient Celtic music. And it's connected. It's just that, like I said before, just to reiterate, we are all, we all have an indigenous root and it's up to us to find it. And sometimes we find it through our own person right next to us. So let's keep connecting. Let's give them a round of applause. Just have to make some music if you're inspired. You're not the same Mario. There's food, there's drinks, be free to join us. Also, just when I want to say, I want to acknowledge how awesome La Peña is and how awesome these women are. And I feel so honored that I, 10 years ago when I moved to California, I had a lot of Puerto Rican friends and they introduced me to Bomba. It was like everyone said for me, like I'm not Puerto Rican, but for me La Peña is my second home. And I feel so touched by what you have created as teachers, as artists, as community leaders. It's like I've never seen that anywhere else and it is special. It is special and I thank La Peña for that. And thank you, the Department of Anthropology for hosting us tonight. This was very special. Thank you all.