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Six Styles of Music and Dance from Around the World In Benefit Concert for Climate Change

October 24, 2009 is
International Climate Change Awareness Day.

On Saturday, October 24, six different Boston-based performers of international music and dance will join together to draw attention to the global climate crisis.  Featured artists include: Balkan and European music by members of the internationally acclaimed ensemble Libana; contemporary Indian classical dance with the Aparna Sindhoor Dance Theater; Japanese classical music for koto and shakuhachi with Ayakano Cathleen Read & Elizabeth Reian Bennett; Hindustani classical music with Warren Senders and The Raga Ensemble; middle-Eastern music with Beth Bahia Cohen, and traditional drumming and dance of Ghana with the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society.  The music begins at 6:30 pm, at the First Congregational Church of Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA.  Tickets are $20; $15 students/seniors.  All proceeds will go to the environmental organization www.350.org.  For information, please go to www.warrensenders.com.

About the Performers:

Libana is New England’s internationally-touring women’s world music ensemble that illuminates the vision, creativity and spirit of the world’s women by performing contemporary and traditional music and dance from across the globe.

Now in its 30th season, Libana presents an exhilarating cross-cultural performance that opens windows into diverse, rarely heard, women’s musical expressions from around the world, from exquisite Balkan harmonies to the rooted pulses of Latin American rhythms, from hauntingly beautiful sounds of Hungarian Slav music to a riveting ritual exorcism dance with percussion from Egypt, all woven into a collage of shifting colors and rhythms. They perform with an array of instruments including oud, hammered dulcimer, clarinet, accordion, double bass, dumbek, riqq, and bombo.

Libana

Aparna Sindhoor Dance Theater (ASDT) has a wide repertoire of solo and group works in classical and contemporary dance and theater.  Inspired by Indian classical and folk dance forms, theater (both Western and Indian), world music, martial arts (Kalari ppayattu), aerial dance, yoga, live singing and storytelling, Sindhoor’s work is dynamic, radical, and original in style and content.  The company has been touring all over the world including USA, Canada, Germany and India.  ASDT is known for its work with themes that deal with human issues in a meaningful way that makes audiences enjoy and be touched at the same time.

Aparna Sindhoor Dance Theater

Ayakano Cathleen Read and Elizabeth Reian Bennett are among the very few non-Japanese artists to have achieved high professional status in the traditional musicians’ guilds of Japanese classical music.

Ayakano Cathleen Read began studying Yamada School koto music in 1969. On Jan. 7, 1974 she became the first non-Japanese to join the shachu (musicians guild) of Nakanoshima Kin’ichi, and given the performing name Ayakano. Ms. Read has concertized widely in the United States, Japan and West Africa.  She is adjunct professor in the Music Department of Tufts University.  The koto is a traditional Japanese instrument with a long neck and rectangular sound box. It has thirteen strings and adjustable bridges to change the pitch of various strings.

Elizabeth Reian Bennett is the first woman to play professionally as a Grand Master of the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, and stands out as one of only a handful of western players trained in traditional Japanese music. She has studied and performed with Living National Treasure Aoki Reibo, recognized as Japan’s foremost shakuhachi instrumentalist, for 30 years.

Elizabeth Reian Bennett

Ayakano Cathleen Reade

Warren Senders and The Raga Ensemble present “khyal,” the richly ornamented improvisational artsong of North India.  Accompanied by the harmonium of Dr. George Ruckert, the tabla of Akshay Navaladi, and the tamboura and supporting vocals of Vijaya Sundaram, Warren Senders weaves a hypnotic tapestry of sound in his rendition of traditional ragas.  Acclaimed as the foremost non-Indian performer of this beautiful idiom, Senders lived in India for many years, learning the khyal style from master teacher Pt. S.G. Devasthali.  He has performed  throughout the world, enrapturing audiences and critics with a unique combination of authenticity and originality.

Warren Senders

Beth Bahia Cohen is of Syrian Jewish and Russian Jewish descent and has spent many years exploring the ways the violin and other bowed string instruments are played in Greece, Turkey, Hungary, and the Middle East. She plays several Greek lyras, the Turkish bowed tanbur and kabak kemane, the Egyptian rababa, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, and more.  She was a Radcliffe Bunting Fellow and has been the recipient of many travel and research grants, including an NEA/Artists International grant to study the classical music of Turkey.

In addition to performing throughout the U.S., she teaches workshops and ensembles on Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Greek and Turkish music in conservatories and universities throughout the U.S as well as teaching privately in her studio in Watertown.  She performs solo concerts of traditional and original music on various bowed string instruments from many countries (The Art of the Bow), as well as concerts exploring traditional Jewish music from all over the world.

Beth Bahia Cohen

The Agbekor Drum and Dance Society is a group of friends who have been studying, teaching and performing the music and dance of the Ewe tribe of Ghana, West Africa for the past three decades.  Under the direction of Tufts Professor Dr. David Locke, the members of ADDS present an energetic and tightly synchronized blend of drumming, singing and dancing.  While pieces like the intricate “Adzogbo” and “Yeve” are multi-part suites of extraordinary richness and complexity, “Gahu” and “Kinka” are vibrant and kinetic dance music that gets listeners up and moving.

The Agbekor Drum and Dance Society

About www.350.org and the number 350:

Co-founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, 350.org is the hub of a worldwide network of over two hundred environmental organizations, all with a common target: persuading the world’s countries to unite in an effort to reduce global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million or less.  Climatologist Dr. James Hansen says, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” (Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue.)  Activists involved in the 350 movement include Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Vandana Shiva (world-renowned environmental leader and thinker), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights), Van Jones, Bianca Jagger, Dr. James Hansen, Barbara Kingsolver and many more.

(complete list of “350 Messengers here)

About the Global Day of Climate Change Action on October 24th, 2009:

“Playing for the Planet” is just one of over a thousand actions which will be taking place all over the planet.  The organizers explain:  “We’re calling on people around the world to organize an action on October 24 incorporating the number 350 at an iconic place in their community, and then upload a photo of their event to 350.org website.  We’ll collect these images from around the world and, with your help, deliver them to the media and world leaders. Together, we can show our world and its decision-makers just how big, beautiful, and unified the climate movement really is.” The photographs of 350-themed actions will be delivered to delegates at the December Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, in order to underline both the importance of the number and the broad international support for an agreement limiting atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm.

Warren Senders is the contact person for “Playing for the Planet.”  He is one of thousands of concerned global citizens hoping to trigger positive change through social action and the arts.  He can be reached through his website at www.warrensenders.com.

Here is the action page at www.350.org

Here is a discussion of the science behind the number 350.

Here is a description of the Day of Action on October 24th.

Here is a link to JohnnyRook’s Climaticide Chronicles.

Thank you for reading this far.  If you want to come to the concert, you can purchase tickets online through a link at my website.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, please consider going to 350.org and either finding an action on October 24, or starting one yourself.

This is as important as it will ever get.