 Hi, I'm Perry Young. Welcome to this improvisation. Shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake. Thank you so much, Perry Young. So I see that you're uptown in your apartment with your family. Can you just tell us a little bit about what this performance was, how you made it, and who was involved? Yeah, yeah, we are uptown. I want to introduce you to my company, yes, come on over here. This is my youngest, staying safe right now. So what's amazing about this moment is he actually just learned how to play the guitar, like literally yesterday. So we took this special moment of being, you know, like almost in shelter in place to as an opportunity to do things we normally don't do. So he wanted to learn how to play guitar and I just saw him strumming on the guitar and I would, hey, this is amazing. Let's use this in this variety show, which you guys just actually asked me to do two days ago. So it's like, you know, it's actually quite exciting. Thank you for inviting us here, you know, part of Culture Clubs Downtown Variety, Culture Clubs Downtown Variety. So it's pretty amazing and exciting. Yeah. Awesome. And can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself as an artist? Yes, actually I want to introduce my collaborators. Keep going. Okay, anyway, anyway, they just left the room a little bit more about myself. Well, I'm a LaMama baby, just like this guy. This guy's actually LaMama baby too. We've both, he's been performing a LaMama since almost the day he was born. I've been performing a LaMama since 1993 with the Great Toss Rep. When I happened to be walking by a theater rehearsal with Ellen Stewart and she decided that we'd say, hey, you, do you sword fight? And, you know, of course, if Ellen Stewart asked you to be sword fight, you're going to be like, yes, I do. So that's how I've been working with Ellen since 1993. I've been in probably over 10 great film productions. And it's been an amazing ride. I mean, it's changed my life. And I don't know if I lost you there, Maddie, but like you're talking about me. Yeah. So, and I've known Billy, the director at Culture Hub since 1993 when we were rehearsing edifice with director by Ellen. And we were traveling all over the Balkans, hanging at the back of the bus. You know, quite an amazing experience. You know, we're driving through war-torn former Yugoslavia, Bosnia in 1995. Mr. Bombing, you know, people were asking us, the UN at the borders were asking us, what are you guys doing here? This bus load of people who are like, you know, a carnival, a volvival show. You know, we had people who had passports from 10 different countries on that bus from La Mava. So since that time, I learned how to play Schrock O'Hauti. Thanks to Ellen Stewart, she saw me playing the flute once. I think it was in Egypt. Can you see me? And I was in the marketplace with Ellen and Ellen saw me playing this nae. And she said, why don't you go learn to play the flute? I want you to learn how to play the flute. And because of Genji Ito, Yuko Tsuji, who are resident musicians at La Mava, they went and they, you know, showed me basically some simple things on how to play the flute. And next, you know, I'm in Japan, studying with a mastery maker and player, Kingya Sogawa. Thanks to Ellen and Ralph Sanderson who introduced me to Kingya. So all that led to me here and the talk I can make here in action. Beautiful. OK, thanks so much, Perry, Jet, Sasa, Mora, Sasa and Mora. I know you all were behind the scenes. Shout out. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. A pleasure. To our live stream audience. Wait, hold on. Let me, I just have to go check something backstage one second. Oh, no, it's OK. OK, I'll set. OK, so this is downtown variety La Mava and Culture Hubs first online performance series. I'm going to be honest. We are a little rough and tumble right now. We wanted to get something out to you this week because we feel like it's important to keep being a home for artists to share their work, share their voices. And we're kind of doing that by any means necessary right now. I'm in Brooklyn. I am in my bedroom and I'm connecting to all these artists via Live Lab, which is a technology. Wait, I keep on saying, I'm Maddie Barbara Boppelman, Maddie Beebe. I'm the programs and projects manager at Culture Hub. Culture Hub is a global art and technology community founded by the Soul Institute of the Arts and La Mama. And we've been working since the founding of Culture Hub in 2009 to figure out how to use the Internet as a vehicle for cultural exchange and creation and artistic collaboration. We've had to do that in the past with our international collaborators. La Mama has a vast, deep international network. And so we originally started developing Live Lab, which is how this whole thing is happening to facilitate international collaboration. Now that we're all stuck in our homes, it's a little more important to be connecting and finding ways to connect. So this is our, this is, we're just trying this. There, a lot of people say like, oh, this is going to be bumpy, but I think this is really going to be bumpy. And we so appreciate you being here. And just like in a live performance space, we feel you and or at least we'll try to feel you. So let's see how we can do that together. So I think without further ado, I'm going to introduce our next performance performer, Teri Kananu-Rook, who is currently a resident artist at Culture Hub. And she will be performing, excuse me, while I look at my telephone microphone check, a live sound performance using live microphone feedback and custom programming. She's going to read Brandon LaBelle's rehearsal for a people's microphone. On view, Teri. Earth, sky, the road, the mount. Echo, shall I tell you my name? Shall I speak about the city? Shall I sing a song? Check. One, two, three, check. I'm tired of the proper and the powerful words of the empire in this mount. I need to see all this language, press my lips. It blocks my throat. I can't breathe. I can't speak the line to provide the agreement, to call the president, to agitate the message. Henry, Angela, Jane, me, you, they, them. We don't have much time. They are coming to take us away, to grab the tongue, to disrupt the cow, to capture this flag, to break the wings of the phegrants and the fadjai. Invisible body, the possible city, to double y, to echo the y, between, to bow, and bop, hip and hop, flip, dip, shout a beat. Shall we speak about politics? Should we declare or decree? Should we write a new constitution? It's not a crucifix. It's a system. Let's do the city, drive according to the river, to the other side, on the run. Easy rider, over the border, the dock, earth, sunray, echo body, social hub, settlement, in the square, in the bar, with Hank, the classroom, sharing the voice, passing it around with the machine, culture point narrative, the imaginary republic, sense of nonsense. No, yes, stranger language, a dreaming nation, shadow speed. For the coming crowd, the sun pours from this machine, this double mouth, minor tongue, speaking of lost objects, that open space, that self-government, the barricades, the girthloose, the festival, civil machine, shipwreck, pirate Iceland, to count as uncountable, to drop in, out, between, to feel the void, the square, get in. Let's us travel across the country, in search of friend, shadow bodies, stranger nation, to cast the world for each other, one, two, three. For the unknown, the horizontal of possibility, the soft night of the unknown, darkest dark, between thought, thinking, more, imaginary, to make public life, prompting, significant, of flight, and grassroots, weeds, try of the crop, the politics of relation, night birds, shadow language, crowd lips, ocean tongue, v, g, z, migratant dream, crowding the mouth, double the body, throw the void, to slip through the order of the power and the powerful, to begin. One, two, three. Yeah, hi, hi. Yeah, so first of all, I was going to say thank you so much for our culture hub and La Mama team to make this possible. So as far as I kind of have like a frustrating like, oh, maybe the show cannot happen. But then with all the team and everyone and hardworking, I think it's still make it possible. And with the life lab and the software that from the culture hub may help me to make it possible for the show. And what is, what are you experimenting with in the show? What are the, yeah, what's it about? Yeah, so the show is, let me take out my notes. So this is a good point of work from home. So you can have your note in the screen. Maybe let me show you how I set up. Actually, this is my room. This is just, oh, this is my partner, Sebastian. So for the show, the name of the show is you are 99% likely to come to this show. And it came from the idea of our automate of like life right now. It's like, we allow the algorithm to let you choose like to decide or you may like this with confidence and compare it to the human confidence. We have really high confidence, but we will decide to do it to take the chance to take a risk. So I want to compare to machine and human confidence and make a possibility of the improvisation between the confidence of human and the machine. I'm going to take off the speech real quick. But yeah, this is the show where the show is going to be. And it's funny that it's called, can you hear me right now, Thierry? Yes. Okay. It's funny that it's called you are 99% likely to come to this show because maybe people, what do you make of that? That it can't be, what do you make of it? Yeah. So I also wrote this name with a really little confidence as a human. I just think that it was funny to see this name and at the end of the day, people cannot come anymore. But you can still do it or come to see my show online. So I guess it's the same. Beautiful. Okay. Thank you, Thierry. Thank you so much. Yeah. I think right now we are going to take what they do in live television, a commercial break. We don't have any sponsored content yet, but anybody who wants to hit us up to come sponsor us, we're just going to take a break here. Consider it an intermission of sorts. So yeah, we'll be back in three minutes. Thank you. Oh, welcome back. Well, I'll welcome myself back. Thank you for allowing us that break. We are, yeah, we're working it out. Welcome back to Downtown Variety. This is our new weekly online live performance series, live streaming from various corners of New York City and beyond. This is bringing, it's going to feature, it's a variety show rooted in the Downtown Performing Arts scene in New York City. We're bringing, we're going to bring, we plan to bring dance, music, theater, new media, AV performance, comedy and more. We're sort of going back to the roots of La Mama, which started in 1961 in a coffeehouse style. Ellen Stewart had some friends who needed to put on plays and she gave them a space and they put on mini plays and all sorts of different stuff. And they just grew and grew and grew into what, what La Mama is now. So we're trying to bring that spirit into a virtual online platform. Again, I'm Maddie. I work with Culture Hub, which was founded by La Mama and the Soul Institute of the Arts in 2009 to figure out what we can do with the internet and emerging technologies to use them for connection creation and cultural and artistic exchange. So next up in our performance, we have John King, who is a dear, dear friend of Culture Hub in La Mama and a veteran of the Performing Arts, not just the downtown scene, but that's where I think he would consider his home might be. John King is a composer, guitarist and violist. To you, John. We just lost John. But he'll be back in a moment. First, should we go to Kate or... Okay, let's go to Kate Rigg, who is ready. Just one moment while I introduce Kate Rigg to you all. Okay, Kate Rigg is an actor and stand-up comedian and also the front person for this punk-spoken-word comedy band Slanty-eyed Mama. Her last show, Zombie Asian Moms, premiered at La Mama, some of you may have seen it, and is now being made into an indie concert film. Check her out at KateRigg.com. To you, Kate. You guys can hear me out there. I was still drinking my ginger. I was counting my rolls of toilet paper. I thought I had 10 more minutes before I went on, but I'm ready for you now. Look at this. This is a poster from the Australian La Mama, where I performed when I was just a week in 1993 when I was in Australia. No, it was 1992. I was in my college, my college years. I was 18 years old. And this is a poster. I kept it. It's the first professional theater that I ever worked in. So I love you La Mama. I love you. All right. So normally when we're not in quarantine freaking out, I would be performing with my very favorite musician and fellow Juilliard graduate, Lyrus Hung, with whom I have a band called Planteide Mama. We would do a song for you and we would freestyle and get crazy. Well, I have one audience member in a face mask who's monitoring the live feed and I have a dog watching me. Get the dog. We'll show them the dog. And that's it. So we're going to do something a little different today. I went on the internet. First, we're going to show you my dog. This is Mr. Pickles. So when you see me performing this rap, dogs can't get the coronavirus tickles. You're going to be fine. Dogs can't talk. Pick them back. Okay. There he goes. All right. So what we're going to do since I don't have any musician with me, I went on the internet and I downloaded random drum beat. There's one that sounds like chickens. I know it's so crazy, right? There's one that's just a regular drum beat. I'll play some of them for you before. So I'm just going to kind of play any of the drum beat. But what we're going to do is an old-fashioned freestyle. So for those of you who are watching on Facebook or wherever right now, you know the little comments down there. The way I like to do a freestyle is I take five words from the audience. Any word, anything you're thinking of. I don't care. Could be a compound word. Use a preposition. You're at home. Kids, you're studying. You should be, you know, learning your E.B. Strong, E.B. White, all of the E.B.'s. Pick a word, start a random beat, and we'll see what the fuck happens. Are they, are they beeping me back there in the control booth at La Mama? This is a downtown comedy show. I should be able to curse and say, Motherfuck this virus and Motherfuck racism. My band is called Slanty-eyed Mama and I don't have time to get into the deconstruction of racial stereotypes. But I will say it is fucking offensive to call it the Chinese virus and you all should stop it if you're doing it. And if you're not, you should, you should bitch-lap anyone you hear who says anything like that, okay? We don't need that nonsense. Not this year. All right, so I'm going to start collecting words. My friend in the mask, do we see any words? Not yet. Not yet. That's a good one. Ha ha. Yes. Can it. Confirm. Confirm. That is a very poetic and intellectual word for this time. Not what I expected from you. Confirm. Confirm people. If the word isn't in English, it's okay too. You know, when La Mama called me, they said, will you do some comedy? And I said, um, Donald Trump is the president and the whole country is shut down. There is literally nothing to talk about. Okay, what else you got for me? I got shopping. Shopping. And toilet. And toilet. Look at all that. Toilet. Toilet. We're taking words from all backgrounds. Ooh, something's wrong with me. Okay, so here are the words for this freestyle. Hold on. I hear someone talk to the background. I'm very surprised. Shut your face. Shut your face. Shut your face. Okay, everyone's face is now shut. All right, you see this? Not yet. Panic. Confirm. Shopping. Toilet. I'll just leave it here. Not yet was in a word. That was just me saying that. You've got another word for me. What other word for me? I didn't mind that. Why you got to blow up my. This is an old fashioned freestyle. Could be terrible. Could be great. This is what you get when you call someone with 12 hours notice to do a whole new show. I would like to also, before I start, point out the decoration that I put up for you. You're welcome, America. You're welcome. I will give you the opportunity to preview the glasses here. Let's start the beat point and thing. Can you guys hear that? It's pretty funky. I guess I should just start. Everybody's like, just fucking start. Just fucking start. Here I go. Nope. Time for words is over. Too slow, Facebook. Too slow. Get your shit together. I know your stock prices dropping, but you got to make that shit fast because we are artists. We are downtown. It is happening now. I got to get back to counting my rolls of toilet paper to make sure I'm going to be okay. But here we go. We're going to do a little freestyle. I hope you can hear this. I'm changing to the freestyle glasses. So crazy. Here we go. All right. A little pandemic beat for you all in the background. I like it nice and loud, but don't worry. I'll shout the fuck over it. Not yet. Panic. Confirm. Shopping. Toilet. Lockdown. Here we go. It's a lockdown on my upper west side. Lockdown. I can't stand the rain outside thinking about the droplets of your spittle getting inside my body. What am I going to do to get through this pandemic? It's an epidemic of the greatest proportion. I can't stand the idea that I might have to portion off my toilet paper. Is that one of the words? No, it's not, but I'm panicking. I'm in a full blown corona panic. I'm in a full blown leave me alone at home panic. I'm looking at my dog saying, oh my God, you're so fucking lucky. You can't catch this shit. What? Everybody's around on the street with a mask. Everybody's too afraid to ask you to shake their hand or understand that they might want that six feet of distance. Let's end. I said, not yet. Don't get close to me yet. I'm walking in the park, which soon is going to be over in this epidemic, pandemic, this panic. Not yet. I'm not ready to leave the house. I'm just hiding in here and I'm sort of underneath the table like a mouse or the droplet's going to fall on me. Are they going to fall? Am I going to have to stay on lockdown? How do I confirm the numbers of cases in this town? I can't. So I'm on lockdown behind my mask. Don't even try to ask anyone in the elevator. How's your day? They're like, fuck you. Stay away. Six feet of distance. It's the resistance. You can't even understand this new existence. We are all in together. This curse. Don't eat anything from Italy. Not even a bologna. Panic. Grown is canceling the tax and the rent in France. Panic this epidemic. Listen, I can't confirm that we're all going to be okay. No way. I can't. So go shopping and get your mask. Don't ask for permission to stay in this panic condition. That's my advice. I know it's not nice. But let's not try to pretend that this is just going to end the way the orange fucking idiot went on the TV today to say, hey, it's all under control. Let's just build a wall against the immigrants. They're the real problem here. No. Suck my dick with that veneer of comfort. It's not going to help. Look, I'm changing my glasses. I can't believe that all these asses, these white guys on my TV telling me not to panic. I'm panicking. It's in case you come through the internet to pollute me. No. I'll tell you what. The red, white and blue is here for you if you're a corporation or you're part of the nation of bankers and people who are rich in Amazon.com not paying their taxes. I'm not supposed to. Don't ask me that till you can confirm the number of cases in my beloved city. This is shitty. Hello kitty. If Obama was here, it would be a whole different situation. I wouldn't have to appear at my TV and change to every station with the same propagandistic message of hope. What hope? This was hope. Do you remember? Now we got an orange dope telling us what to do. Listen, I love you, New York. I love being an artist and I know that this year is going to probably be my hardest ever. I just lost two jobs. I'm in my apartment doing a rap. What is this crap? Yeah. I'm going to panic that I'm going to count my toilet paper and count my blessings and understand that it will be over soon and that we all have each other and it actually is going to be okay. But don't tell me not to panic. Thank you so much for joining us on such short notice and throwing the F down. That was stunning and exciting and liberating and I was dancing. What can we expect from you next? I saw that it says it's a concert version of the show. Is that legit? Is that happening soon? That is not happening soon because I'm too depressed to actually do the work. However it is happening. And you know what? I lie. I am on lockdown. So we are editing the live footage that we shot at La Mama last year. We shot the show and we're figuring out what to do because we interviewed a bunch of Asian moms about, you know, this is a really weird time to be Asian. I got to tell you in the United States. So I don't, I'm not sure when we're going to release it or how, but I do know that the Asian American kids out there need to feel validated in their American-ness at every turn. And so this movie hopefully will help them feel some community at a time that I think it's going to be really crucial. I'll take off this jacket. Too hot in here. It's probably Esther. My mother taught me better. Incredible. Thank you very much for having me. And I hope to see you. I hope to freestyle for you again next time. We are blessed to have you, Kate. I want to send a little shout out to my asylum seekers in Los Angeles, Julio and Fredis. Te quieren. I'm sponsoring two beautiful LGBT asylum seekers who are here and terrified because they were in a fucking pandemic. I love you. We haven't forgotten about you. It's all going to be okay. And I love the rest of you too. Facebook page, fundraiser. Oh yeah. And if you go to my Facebook page, which is Kate Rigg and you want to read the story of how I met two beautiful LGBT asylum seekers in a detention center. Yes, everybody had detention center. I went in one last summer and it's everything you heard about it more. We popped two guys out of their armband and we're helping them get a fair trial. That's it. A fair trial and a fair chance. Can't eat nice food and be people and love each other like we all deserve. So if you want to take a look or just read the story because there's nothing the fuck to do, please go to my Facebook page and be my friend. Hell yeah. So that is Kate Rigg.com to tune into that story and maybe give a little cash. That's awesome. Be my friend on Instagram. Yeah, be Kate's friend on Instagram. We have more friends right now. And you know what? Face tape. That's for old people. All right, Kate. Thank you so much. We're headed next to, I think, Westport, Connecticut. We're going to Westport, Connecticut. Oh, I don't know. It's somewhere. He'll tell us. Jerome Ellis. Jerome Ellis is a disfluent composer, performer, and writer living in New York City. His recent work investigates time, silence, disability, and divinity in the black Atlantic. His work has been presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, La Mama, Lincoln Center, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies. To you, Jerome. Hi, Maddie. Thank you. And yes, I'm in Westport, Westport, Westport, Connecticut. And hello to everyone who's watching. I wanted to say thank you for having me. I feel honored. And I think I'm just going to read something that I wrote recently, or an excerpt of something I wrote recently. That's an essay. And the essay is about many things, but one of the things that's about is time. And I, in this time we're all in, I've been thinking a lot about time. And I find myself with a lot of time right now, because I'm safe, but also time feels much more, much more, much more, much more, that technology like this, like the phone or streaming that, the way my stutter manifests is that I have a glottal block, which is similar to a glottal stop. Like in English, when we say uh-oh, at the end of the up, we make a glottal stop and there's a part of the throat that closes. And when I stutter, it's like that part of the throat closes, but I don't have any control over it. But it's funny when I interact with technologies like this, because sometimes when you stream things, the connection will freeze or buffer, which may have already happened in my performance, but also in moments where it seems like something is buffering, it's just me stuttering. So the stutter is kind of like a buffer that my body goes through. But I will just read a bit of this essay here. The essay is called The Clearing, Blackness Music Disfluency and the Redress of Temporal Violence. And I'll say before I start that the word disfluency is another word for stuttering. My thesis is that blackness music and disfluency are forces that are structured by and that rearrange time. They enact temporal refusal, temporal escape, temporal descent. They are forces of perpetual fugitivity. But because thesis also refers to a downbeat in music, my thesis must move, must metamorphose like music. Sound is vibration, a wavering band of energy, endless restlessness. For us to perceive it, the sound waves emitting from the source must make our eardrums vibrate. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois begins each chapter with lyrics and a few bars of musical notation from spirituals. With this gesture, he makes the page vibrate. He contraposes the vibratory nature of music with the essentially lapidary nature of writing. As the cover flap to a collection of Juan José Areola's works reads La escritura fue originalmente cincelada en piedra mediante la mano es una incisión del espíritu. Writing was originally chiseled into stone, a spiritual incision moving through the hand. So the beat goes on and new theses arise with each laying down a foot to ground. For thesis also refers to the stress syllable of a foot in verse. My thesis is that black loops in black music are always black loop holes of retreat. That black music, like black escape, is a never-ending activity and never an achievement. And that when the black stutterer loops a phoneme, m-m-m-m-m-m-murder, this too is a black loop, black music, black activity. My thesis is that if speech separates humans from other animals, then black disfluency and flesh is the paradox of black humanity. Are blacks humans? The jury is still out on that. And who is on the jury? Further, if speech is a property of the living, then black disfluency and flesh is the paradox of black life itself. Do black lives matter? If so, why does the phrase need to be repeated and recited incessantly? We live within the veil and the veil is ever-waving. I think I'll stop there. Beautiful Jerome. Thank you Maddie. So what is this piece? Is this your writer? Is this something that's going into something else? Or is this just musings and what's up with you currently? So I'm a composer and a musician, primarily saxophonist and piano player. But I also write and it's a constant corridor between my music and my writing. And this is part of an essay that is going to be published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies you mentioned at the beginning. And the essay, so the journal, it's more of an academic journal and they had a call for papers about stuttering. And I had been working on these ideas for a while and so I submitted an abstract and they accepted it. So then I wrote this paper. And as you can maybe even hear, it kind of moved in between more academic prose and lyrical prose. But yeah, that's the first paragraph and it's like, I'm trying to see how long it is. It's like 11 pages long or something like that. Or 16 pages long, something like that. How many pages is this? Yeah, 18 pages. So it's much longer than that. But what I find interesting is that when I write, when I read what I've written, like when I read it silently, it doesn't take nearly as long as when I read it out loud because I don't stutter when I read silently. The writing itself doesn't stutter. So I find that interesting. Like if I were to read the whole paper, I don't know how long it would take. Yeah. I started wanting to be set up next to a fireplace, laying on a rug with a blanket and just listen to that for two hours. It started to feel pretty meditative and it makes you maybe listen differently. Thank you. Yeah. I'm happy to do another time. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Cool. Okay. Thank you so much, Jerome. Thank you, Maddie. We are going to do another one of our resets. We are pushing our technology Live Lab, which is the distance collaboration software that we're using to do all of this. You all know what it is like Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype. We basically built our own to facilitate artistic collaboration. And we've never done something where all of our technicians and all of our performers are distributed. None of us are together. So we're really pushing it to the max. So we need to reset. We're going to take just a few minutes once again and we'll be right back. Thank you. Go backstage now. Back, everybody. No, that's, that's too weird. I can't, I can't do that. Yeah. So we're trying, this is downtown variety. I'm Maddie. I work for Culture Hub, which is an art and technology community founded by Seoul Institute of the Arts and La Mama. And we are bringing to you live presently a variety show curated by both Culture Hub and La Mama and our team and family there. Next up, we just came back from a quick pause because we're using our new technology live lab to make this happen. And it's something it's we're really pushing it. So let's keep pushing it. I'm going to introduce John King, who I did introduce earlier, but then we lost him. He is a wonderful collaborator of Culture Hubs. And most recently he's composed for our projects left out. Marzipanze, plenty of more to say, but I will let his work go first. He's a composer, guitarist, violist. John King, to you. Thank you, Maddie. The day is joyful. The day is joyful. The day is joyful. How could this be so? A miracle of time and result made clear. The day is stunning, stunning, stunning, stunning. The day is stunning, stunning, stunning. The day is stunning, stunning, stunning. Asking how this is possible. Contemplation of time. And the result is evolving clarity. The day is exquisite. The way is made clear. A deep understanding of time. The clarity has no end, no beginning. The clarity has no end, no beginning. The clarity has no end, no beginning. The clarity has no end, no beginning. The clarity has no beginning. Beauty beyond boundless. Beauty beyond boundless stars. Beauty beyond boundless stars in the night sky. Stars in, stars in the night sky. Stars in, stars in the night sky. Stars in, stars in the night sky. Stars in, stars in the night sky. Beauty, beauty beyond boundless stars in the night sky. Beauty, beauty beyond boundless stars In the night sky, beauty In our cold deserts The stars on skitters, not waves Trees pass The coastline Lightly falls, damped down, streamed past Through the fresh air, cohabitants Locked in a tangled diagonal of tongue cages Wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, in our cold deserts Wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy, in our cold deserts Thank you Thank you, Nuddy Thank you, Fet, Sung and flowers For you They smell delicious Yeah, fresh, fresh plastic Johnny, what is this like? What do you think? What is it like to collaborate using Live Lab and collaborate over distance? I know that you're doing it right now and maybe you can share a little bit about what it feels like right this second and maybe also you could share a little bit about, yeah, some of your other collaborations because I know you've done this before. Yeah, well, I think it's really interesting time because it's a challenge as we've discovered but it's also very inspiring. I mean, things get put together very quickly, something comes into your mind, you try to do it and then you see what happens when you're in a situation like this. I mean, today I had a jam session with a guy in Buenos Aires. Two days ago I was doing the same thing with a guy in Brooklyn, kind of the same thing, you know? And so, and some other longer term collaborations that have come up, just this idea of, this is what we have, this is what we've got to work with and like I say, it's a challenge but it's also really inspiring. It brings new ideas to the front of one's mind and you start delving into those waters and it's exciting. I agree, I'm wondering, because you're a composer and so I think you're frequently working maybe in front of a computer and with a microphone and so I'm just wondering, what do you feel like your relationship to a live audience is in this moment because we know that they are there and though we cannot see you, I think for me it's interesting because I can imagine certain people and I start to imagine their reactions at certain things and in a live performance space that would inform me and make me act a little differently. So I'm just wondering, what's it like for you, the idea of an audience? Well, I think it frees up the creator and the performer to get some new ideas and I think it also frees up the listener in new ways. I mean, they're experiencing, if you wanna be engaged as a listener, as I've done with previous performances tonight, you have to really be there, you have to really be present in a kind of a different way than you would be in a chair, seat and come theater. It's a different experience, it's both more kind of distant but also in a way more intimate, I felt as an audience member earlier tonight. Yeah, I feel it too. I mean, I definitely get the sense that we are in people's living rooms and bedrooms and that's pretty special. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, Maddie. Yeah. I'm with the show, thank you so much. Oh, I'm gonna take this moment just to say, yeah, a lot of people are struggling right now and a lot of, this is affecting everyone in different ways and it is also affecting LaMama. LaMama is closed to all shows for some level of future and we need your support to remain a home for artists to share their creativity, express themselves and to keep their voices alive during this period. I think everybody on LaMama and Culture Hub feel like it is urgent and vital to keep hearing artists and keep seeing artists and yeah, keep learning from them. So if you feel so inclined, if you are able or if you know someone who is able, please send them to LaMama.org where you can potentially donate. It'll go directly to supporting artists and bringing their work to you in this time and I hope you feel like that is valuable to you too. Okay, that's that portion. Next, we are going to Neil Merguy who is the artistic director of Brooklyn Raga Massive. Thank you. Thank you, Maddie. Thank you, Neil. Hang it in there, hang it in there. My four-month-old daughter, Leela, her smiles and her new sounds that she's making every day are keeping us sane through all of this. So we're just home taking care of her. We stocked up and we've already been home pretty much for the last week and a half and we're ready to stay here and ready to share more music as much as possible in this way and really happy that you had me on today. Thank you. Oh yeah. Can you share with us a little bit about the instrument you were playing and the, yeah, your artistic director of Brooklyn Raga Massive, what is that? And I've already asked this question but what is that object behind you? Cause I think it's a very intriguing object. All right, we'll start with that first. This is a light sculpture by my wife, Sima Pandia. She makes lots of sculptures like this. We're using wood and different shapes cut out of the middle and having a light on it. She also makes art out of used tabla heads that have been the backdrops for many Brooklyn Raga Massive concerts. Brooklyn Raga Massive, collective of musicians who were rooted in Indian classical music and we've had a weekly concert series for seven years now and currently on hiatus, but we're looking to partner with you guys at Culture Hub and other ways of resuming our weekly concerts from people's, from artists' homes and education sessions as well. So please check on our website, BrooklynRagaMassive.org for more details about that cause we're really excited to bring some more music to y'all because we need to share right now. I just had my first lesson today, teaching I do a lot of music for kids with my group Raga Kids where we write songs based in Indian classical ragas but made for kids and we started that today with Zoom for the first time today. It's working out good. You can get in touch with me if you're sitting at home with some kids and you've got time on your hands you're looking for something to do and I'm answering your questions in reverse order and this is the sitar, not just cause you sit when you play it, it's actually a tar mean string. So there's many instruments all around the world like guitar, sitar, ektar, one string, dotar, two strings. Sitar has 20 strings. There's that lower layer of sympathetic strings that ring resonantly, sympathetically when you play the corresponding note on the main string. Maybe you can hear. You can hear that resonance coming from the lower strings and right here, this part, this bridge here is actually called jawari. Jawari means to give life to the sound. So it gives it that kind of that that buzzing quality that makes it so different from a guitar. It's kind of that bumblebee sound in there. That's what I tell the kids anyway. Awesome. Neil, thank you so much. Thank you, Maddie. Look forward to doing this again anytime. Yes. And I hope you and your wife and your baby are happy and safe as much as possible. Thank you, cheers. Everybody out there stays safe. Cool. All right, y'all. We have one more performance coming your way. First, I wanna shout out just, yeah, we're using Live Lab to make this show happen. Live Lab was created by Culture Hub starting maybe five or so years ago and we've been developing it over time. Olivia Jack is one of the main coders who's been involved over the years and we also have Tong Wu who's now working on it. And as I've said before, we are pushing this technology super hard and also we're pushing our team super hard. And so we just really appreciate you guys being here. And yeah, to all the artists and to all the audience who are coming together right now, we're learning so much and we are also going to get a lot better at this as we go. And hopefully we can start to share it with you all. So other organizations, other artists can use it too. And we're about to go live to another artist who has started using it. So let's go. We're going live to our last performer of the night, Baba Israel and Grace Galu. Woo. All right, peace everybody. Can you hear us, Maddie? Yeah, we can hear you. Beautiful, all right. Well, we're, you know, things are crazy in the world right now. So as you can see, we've relocated to infinite space. We just felt like we can't, you know, we just have to leave. We found a portal to another dimension. We are hoping to make it back, but for now we're going to hang out here because we found this portal that's taken us to this, just a place beyond time and space. So we're going to send love to you from this place that we are, create some, let's create some music. Let's just do it. Shout out to Culture Hub. Shout out to Neil. Neil is my friend for over two decades. My old roommate, congratulations on your beautiful daughter. I'm so happy to hear that she's making these wonderful sounds and keeping us feeling inspired, right? Just like your wife's art. Shout out to Sneema, a true dreamer. Here we go. More action, just got to have the passion. I'm gonna pass it to Grace to add the melody, giving me the rhythm so I can feel it with the energy. I'm just hanging out, vibing with Grace Kahlu. Live in our studio, sending energy to you. Feeling the spirit when I rock through the screen. This is live and direct, it's actually not a dream. Let me know what the sound to get on down. New York City rocking in wherever in your town. That's what Maddie's having a drink with some olives. I've been to a place when I do it because you know I keep it honest. I'm modest, but I'm nasty with the mic. I'm kind of feeling all right, but I'm shining bright. I'm hanging out with Grace, we give it you the taste of the melody, the energy, and give it you the recipe. So with the feeling stressed, we can stress together. Feel some pleasure, how we gonna last forever. Isolated in our own rooms, feeling like everything's gonna go to do, but we gonna bring that soul and realize some things in life you can't control. But that's why you gotta hang tight, but not too tight because I don't wanna exchange anything, all right. Yo, we just hanging in the rooms, hanging in the vibes and we rocking it not too soon. Giving the rhythm achieving the giving the sound. I'm rocking the rhythm when I'm rocking in the town. So I'ma pass the mic to Grace and see what she wants to do. We go rock, she'll pass it back to me, it's true. I'm gonna be free, I'm gonna keep the time because it's wrong if I spend my juice, even in me. These things that makes me feel all right, like how we gonna get through this, we gotta stay connected. So thanks to Coach Huff, you know I got that right vibe. I'm in the place and I do because I'm, we're feeling sad, mad, but not because I'm live, live, I'm all connected in the place and I'm following my path. To keep creative, I'm a native of the city. I'm looking outside, it's really not so pretty. Actually it's kinda pretty. There's not many people on the streets. I'm walking around and people feeling the heat. Give me six feet of space, I'm up this EBS. Getting too close, man, you're making me feel stressed. It's not normal time, it's not time to stand right behind me when we're waiting online. Man, I'm about to cough, but it's a wet one so you can relax, it's off. No one off the rhythm can see it's not dry. I'm rocking in the place that I'm feeling so fly. Giving the rhythm, achieving the creepin' when I know cause right now, Grayson Galoo came to give a blast of soul, we're flowin' with that for one time. Let this melody happen when we rock from the rhymes. This is a freestyle recital, shout out to the person, to the person, caption it when I can do it with the person so he's getting kinda loud with the flow. Givin' you a taste of the rhythm of the flow. I reach it through the screen and I'm looking right at you. I'm trying to make connections so I can see a point of view. Yeah, I'm feelin' like I'm traveling to outer space. I went to another planet, hangin' out with Grace. Yo, you can do it when I'm sold to Floor Free. I was kinda stressed, so we hung out with Rick and Morty. And Rick took me to another dimension, but all of a sudden there wasn't any virus mentioned and from a moment I released all the tension and felt like enough of this, enough of this suspension. So watch out for Trump and his henchmen. You better do the right thing. You better send some money to all these people around this country and around the world. Share the wealth to every boy, every girl. Givin' the rhythm when I feel the vibe, when I feel high. So Grace, one more time, let him know how you feel, all right? Show your love for Grace. I wish I could see your smiles on your face and whether your reaction is what I can see, man. Yo, I'm in the place, hangin' out. My daughter was hidin' behind the curtain. Sometimes life could feel uncertain. This whole situation, it feels like a burden. But I'm gonna tell you right now, too many of us are hurtin' because we feel isolated and we feel like we're all alone. That's why Grace and I are speakin' through this microphone to reach you wherever you're sittin' inside your home. To realize we're all connected and you're definitely not alone. So connect with us and start to protect with us and feel that rhythm when we do what this rhythm we gotta trust in us, yeah. So we can be connected across the globe. This is real close, someone's talkin', feel your ear low. Brick up, I do it when I'm not then reflected within this place because I see when I start to depict it. Give me the rhythm when I got that beat. I got that heat, I got that energy. Right now, I'm not really going out on the street. Lesson is in some room for me to vibe one time. My daughter's in the place and now she's hidin' because she doesn't want to be on the screen. But that's okay, I feel free. I'm giving the rhythm when I do it, man. I wanna shine just like you've been. Shout out to my whole team. The soul inscribed and we feelin' all right. What should we do? We feelin' connected. We got time to do one more for you, Maddie. Yeah, go for it. We got one more, you want something to guitar? Okay, so we're gonna play a little song for you right now. Grace is gonna dust off the guitar right now. Live and direct from our home zone. So you gonna sing a little something for us? Something to inspire us. Okay, here we go. So I'm gonna make a little beat for Grace. We're gonna get this party started. Once again, shout out to Culture Hub. Shout out to Maddie. Shout out to everyone for making this happen. It's been a rough week. You know, it's been a rough week. A lot of us are feeling stressed. A lot of artists are rightfully worried about income and resources and all of these things. And our kids are home if you've got kids or some of us are caring for elders. And like, we've got it all of a sudden, you know, some of us are running, you know, schools out of our homes now and nursing homes out of our homes and we're doing all kinds of stuff. But we're staying creative and I have to say this has really given me a big lift today to just have a moment of creativity. So I'm gonna make a beat and Grace is gonna sing a song and then we're gonna talk to Maddie, right? And Squarrows, you wanna come in and say something? No. No, okay. That's right, you know that we can. So big up to every woman and every man and then you wonder who doesn't identify with a particular gender. I'm sending this out and my heart is tender right now because I'm feeling so concerned about my people all around the globe. But like Grace said, I know that we can if we have a plan and we can stand off around in a new way and try to find a new way to stay connected as I do it with the rhythm today. So Grace is on the guitar, Bill was on the sit-off and we can travel so far. I think John King was speaking into the mic and he was singing to a light that shined real bright and there was a woman freestyle with some words behind her. And when I rock ripped around it turns into a blur. So take all these challenges and all these discoveries and blow them in the mold and just start to stir. We need some good stew. We need the good crew. We need the good point of view and something that can remind us of who we really are. Even when we're distancing. Check it out cause I can rock and I'm listening. Shout out to my man Danny Dango. He said social distancing, but virtual listening. Rocking when I do it with the rhythm starts to swing. Let's see what happens when we do our thing. Given the rhythm I got now, got to beat when I can rock that. Given the flow with the rhythm I do when I start to see stop that. So I can and you can and we can too. Rocked it up in the place cause we came to rock for you. So thank you for this moment to connect with all of us. This is the moment where we find out who you can really trust. Some people out there sharing some strange things. You're getting muted. You're getting rebuted. Don't share some weird stuff on mine. Share some practical advice and help people have a good time. Mike Rees' friend was singing a song. How'd that song go, Danny? Remember? Remember? Everybody's having a meltdown. You are not alone. No, you're not alone. Thank you, Allie. Everybody's having a meltdown. You are not alone. Everybody's having a meltdown. No, you're not alone. That's right, you're not alone. I can hear my daughter singing back down in the back and that's okay cause she doesn't know I can hear. I hear her feet running, but that's okay. That's how it is to be the child of a young, of a performer. I was the same way. I was hanging out my parents' house, which is the same house I'm in now. That's just kind of how it is. And all of a sudden I remember my dad would try to tell me to come in and do something and I would get shy and I would run to the other room. And that's the tuition. Gotta have the intuition, the vision when I'm rocking with the rhythm, see what we can do when I'm preying. So I think we're going to do one last chorus and then we'll say hello to Maddie. You know you can't ignore this, like. Oh baby, I forgot the chorus. Oh yeah, Maddie, oh yeah. That's the end of the flow. Thank you so much, cause it's a freestyle show. Baba Israel, Grace Galoo, up in the plot, up in the spot. You can find us, make it hot. Our social media, all that stuff. Show me love, not call me any bluff. So we going to break it down all the way down. Send it energy to all my people around the town, around the world, around the vibe. And we're keeping it live. I rock with the rhythm. We do it and rock from inside. Shoot. All right, here we go. It's almost like I got a private concert, but I know that it went to everybody else who wanted to watch too. Good, I'm so glad. Baba and Grace, Baba and Grace have taught, longtime collaborators with Culture Hub and Baba and Grace have taught in our collab program, our educational program. And that's a program that'll also be coming to you online soon. Baba and Grace, what is happening? I mean, I know you just kind of broke it down for us and told us, but what is it like to perform like this? And Baba, I know that you're also doing something pretty damn cool with Live Lab and the State Department. Yes. I know you also want to talk about that, but... I'm going to let Grace speak to that first just because I don't think she's done like that many virtual performances, maybe a few. We did a few when we were actually working for the State Department in Mauritius and we did a couple in Peru, right? We did one in Peru. So I have an experience with a few virtual performances, but this is really, I think it's going to expand it quite quickly the depth of experience that I have. It's going to increase exponentially over the next couple of months. So I'm really excited that this platform has just been creative and it's been wonderful. And I totally agree and I think, to be honest, I'll say, like a lot of people out there, it's been intimidating. I mean, we have Sequoia Rose, a child in our home. We have an elder in our home. I think for a lot of us, for the most part, I think most of us are going to be okay through this process, but there are those of us who are vulnerable and that's really why we have to be so careful about physical distancing right now. And I'm glad that people have been sort of challenging the idea of social distancing and focusing more on the idea of physical distancing because it's a time where we need to feel connected. And I have to say, this is the best I've felt all week as a performer, as an artist, as a producer, as a director, as an educator, everything that I do is based in social gathering and physical gathering. Whether it's teaching classes, whether it's doing performances, whether it's directing performances, whether it's producing performances. So this is a big blow to all of us who are live artists. Thankfully, I've been, as you mentioned, working in the virtual realm for a long time and find that to be a very viable space for connection. So I'm thankful for this opportunity and looking forward to just exploring more ways of doing this. I know you also asked about State Department, so I'll quickly say something about that. Yeah, please. Yeah, if you have anything else. But Grace and I have both worked as cultural ambassadors in Peru and Mauritius and myself in a number of other countries. And we're doing a project currently called The Cypher, which is with connecting hip hop artists in the north part of Africa and Morocco, in Europe, in Brussels, in Spain, and in Belgium. Sorry, France, Spain, and Brussels, and then here with artists in New York. And basically, it's a project that's connecting hip hop artists, breakers, MCs, beatboxers, DJs, and looking at how hip hop can become a transformative force in communities and particularly communities who are at risk of violence and at risk of sort of challenges in a social space, how hip hop creates a positive opportunity for transformation. And we just did it successful. My daughter is, as you can see, doing hands behind me. It's like a puppet show. It's okay. I'm gonna accept that because I want her to feel playful and creative right now. So that's all good. Hello, my name is Hand. How are you? I'm doing good. And we were able to connect with Live Lab in Morocco in Casablanca. Two weeks ago, I was there on the ground and shout out to Deandra. And I'm sorry, what's our other technician's name? Who I am? Sangmin. Sangmin as well was very helpful. So shout out to him too. Both of them really made me feel prepared and we were able to train a bunch of the folks on Live Lab and we were able to project two dancers on two distinct screens, a breaker and a crumper, Raka James and Ken Fury. And they were able to choreograph pieces, collaborate, interact. Unfortunately, the performance we were gonna do, we were gonna share our 20 minute piece that we created at a live hip hop jam. But unfortunately, it was canceled because of the virus. So that was unfortunate, but I was glad that we were able to still make the creative connection happening. It's a project we were gonna do in our next live connection in... It's a great road. You don't have to come in early. That's your choice. You wanna come in? Hold on a second. There you go. All right, you know what? We're gonna have to do that later. We're live streaming now. Okay? So, excuse me. So just to say that where our hope now is to turn the May event that unfortunately is canceled now in Brussels to a fully Live Lab virtual event. So that's the sort of update on that. Yeah. You know, it was really cool. Is that your phone just like appeared in your hand because it was off and then somehow it turned on and that looked sort of magical. I just wanna shout out. My social media is Baba Israel at Baba Israel on any platform. And then Grace. I am Grace Face Killer on Facebook and I am Grace Face Killer on Instagram. Different spelling. I can't remember which. You'll find me there. You'll find Baba. Look out for Grace Face Killer, Baba Israel. Look out for Soul Inscribed. You know, stay in touch with us. Similar to Neil, we're gonna be offering all kinds of workshops out of our home, whether it's beatbox workshops, songwriting workshops. And we're gonna be definitely streaming some concerts and performances from our infinite space studio. And we just send lots of love. Thank you for doing this. It was definitely uplifting. I hope people enjoyed what we had to share and look forward to tuning in and participating again. Hello. I'm hearing it myself the whole time. Oh God, so awkward. I'm putting that at the ground. Am I on? Oh my God. Yes. Well, edit it out in post. Just kidding, we're live. This is all happening. We did it. We have things to work on. We have things to learn and we've learned so much and we thank you so much. This is Downtown Variety, the first of many live streams that are gonna be happening with Culture Hub and La Mama. I'm Maddie. We have an amazing team who has made this all possible. Sungmin Che, Deandra Anthony, John Garcia. Is this lame? Billy Clark. Yes. And many people at La Mama, the entire La Mama family and team and to all of our artists, Perry, Teary, Kate, Neil, Jerome, John, Baba, Grace. We feel connected and we're gonna keep on making space for connection and artistic expression. So we hope that you will join us next time. Thank you so much for all your generosity and patience so far. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, these are my curtains.