Festival on the Green 2023: The Garifuna Collective (2nd Set)

 

The band consists of the best musicians in the fertile Garifuna music scene. They bring together the deep cultural roots of Garifuna music, mixed with modern grooves, arrangements, and instruments like the unique hand drums, the “primera” and “segunda”, turtle shells and jawbones, guitars and bass. The musicians create a powerful energy on stage, building hypnotizing rhythms that form the backbone for the haunting melodies and powerful vocals that characterize the project. ​
The Garifuna are the Afro-Amerindians of Central America, the descendants of a group of West African slaves who were shipwrecked off the coast of St. Vincent in the 1600s. They live in small communities in places like Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, along the Caribbean coast. And their music is an extraordinary blend that layers soulful indigenous and African rhythms with sweet, lyrical melodies.
Singing in Garifuna – an endangered language that blends indigenous Arawak and Carib with French, English and Spanish – they take on a political and social issue that extends far beyond the Garifuna community in “Ubou.”

“The complex rhythms demand attention and quickly resolve themselves into a completely irresistible groove. When the melodies kick in on top of them, the lushness is overwhelming.”— The Wall Street Journal

“Full of surging seaside rhythms and yearning, soulful melodies that hang in the memory,”— BBC Music

 


​Recorded 7/12/23.

For more info on the band, visit

https://www.garifunacollective.com/

Producer: MCTV

Festival on the Green 2023: The Garifuna Collective (1st Set)

 

The band consists of the best musicians in the fertile Garifuna music scene. They bring together the deep cultural roots of Garifuna music, mixed with modern grooves, arrangements, and instruments like the unique hand drums, the “primera” and “segunda”, turtle shells and jawbones, guitars and bass. The musicians create a powerful energy on stage, building hypnotizing rhythms that form the backbone for the haunting melodies and powerful vocals that characterize the project. ​
The Garifuna are the Afro-Amerindians of Central America, the descendants of a group of West African slaves who were shipwrecked off the coast of St. Vincent in the 1600s. They live in small communities in places like Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, along the Caribbean coast. And their music is an extraordinary blend that layers soulful indigenous and African rhythms with sweet, lyrical melodies.
Singing in Garifuna – an endangered language that blends indigenous Arawak and Carib with French, English and Spanish – they take on a political and social issue that extends far beyond the Garifuna community in “Ubou.”

“The complex rhythms demand attention and quickly resolve themselves into a completely irresistible groove. When the melodies kick in on top of them, the lushness is overwhelming.”— The Wall Street Journal

“Full of surging seaside rhythms and yearning, soulful melodies that hang in the memory,”— BBC Music

 


​Recorded 7/12/22.

For more info on the band, visit

https://www.garifunacollective.com/

Producer: MCTV

Festival on the Green 2023: Bombajazzeando

 

Bombajazzeando is corazón y alma, heart and soul: the joyous bomba drumming and dancing of Puerto Rico, plus the soulfullness of jazz. Three dancers, four drummers, and five jazz musicians create a big sound that bursts through stylistic boundaries. The band is lively and interactive, teaching the audience song choruses and traditional bomba dance moves.

Based in the large Puerto Rican community of northwestern Massachusetts, Bombajazzeando is led by dancer Brendalíz Cepeda, drummer Saúl Peñalosa and composer/arranger Julian Gerstin. Brendalíz is the granddaughter of Rafael Cepeda, the most important bomba musician of the late 20th century; she started dancing with him at the age of 5, and has herself held hundreds of workshops teaching her island’s heritage.

For the Puerto Rican and North American members of the group alike, it’s all about connection: tradition and creativity, island and mainland, musicians and audience.


​Recorded 7/10/22.

For more info on the band, visit

https://canismusic.com/artist/e-t-e/

 

Producer: MCTV

Festival on the Green 2023: Yacouba Sissoko Trio

 

Master kora player Yacouba Sissoko devotes his musical gift to expand the awareness of West African history and culture, spread the word of peace, and empower his listeners to take charge and realize their imagined futures. His performances have a magical effect on audiences as he skillfully transforms traditional songs and stories that he learned from his forefathers into modern day messages of peace, love, and harmony.
His flexible virtuosity, which enables him to move seamlessly from one musical genre to another, has attracted the attention of an array of musicians who have sought him out as a collaborator.
All the while, Yacoba exposes new audiences to the enchanting sounds of the kora—a 21-stringed instrument that is plucked and produces a distinctive sound that is quickly associated with West Africa.

Rooted to give back to the community, Yacouba regularly performs cultural programs and benefit concerts. He works in partnership with La Maison d’Art Gallery in Harlem as a collaborator inviting other world musicians to take part in the gallery’s events. He regularly performs for the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational, and Cultural Center. He also provides workshops and presentations to primary school and university students. Recognizing his educational contributions, in 2007 he was selected as a Teaching Artist by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and Carnegie’s Musical Explorers program.

Yacouba continues to blend his virtuosity effortlessly with other musical styles, whether in Indian ragas or Appalachian tunes. Currently, Yacouba can be seen performing regularly with Regina Carter and his own band, SIYA.


​Recorded 7/11/22.

For more info on the band, visit

https://yacousiskora.com/

Producer: MCTV

Festival on the Green 2023: Kyshona

 

Kyshona has always lent her voice and music to those that feel they have been silenced or forgotten. She began her career as a music therapist, writing her first songs with her patients — the students and inmates under her care. She soon found the need to write independently and find her own voice, and endeavor which led her to the fertile ground of the Nashville creative community and songwriting culture.

​Kyshona is an artist ignited by untold stories, and the capacity of those stories to thread connection in every community. With the background of a licensed music therapist, the curiosity of a writer, the resolve of an activist, and the voice of a singer – Kyshona is unrelenting in her pursuit for the healing power of song.

Kyshona blends roots, rock, R&B, and folk with lyrical prowess. She is both a sought after collaborative vocalist working with artists like Margo Price whom she accompanied on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Adia Victoria who features Kyshona, Price and Jason Isbell in her single “You Was Born to Die”, and a burgeoning performer in her own right whose 2020 release Listen, was voted BEST PROTEST ALBUM of 2020 by Nashville Scene.

Kyshona’s non-profit organization “Your Song” offers songwriting programs for youth empowerment programs, detention, re-entry, recovery, mental health, and veterans centers and organizations.

​“…wherever she plants her feet, she does so with righteous conviction and a strong sense of her own voice.” – NPR Music

“Listen highlights Kyshona’s descriptive songwriting and soulful vocals alongside a versatile blend of folk, rock and R&B influences.” – Billboard

“One of the most compassionate and uplifting young voices in Nashville today.” – Ann Powers, NPR Music’s World Cafe


​Recorded 7/10/22.

For more info on the band, visit

http://www.kyshona.com/

Producer: MCTV

Festival on the Green 2023: The Faux Paws

 

From raging fiddle tunes, to saxophone solos and unrequited love songs, the music of The Faux Paws would be hard to pin down with standard genre descriptions.  The trio’s contagious groove, and feel-good melting pot folk music has been honed over ten years of playing together, and is the sound of three close friends (two of which happen to be brothers), who feel a musical kinship that transcends any stylistic limitations.   Now, after nearly a decade of music making, the bi-coastal trio are releasing their self-titled debut album “The Faux Paws”

“A group that can rock on the dance floor as easily as the concert hall.” – Devon Léger

“Imaginative instrumentals are interspersed among the inspiring vocal tunes, each and every one taking on a persona, and compelling the listener to stay until the end. There is nothing artificial, nothing embarrassing or tactless for miles around this music. This trio obviously loves what it’s doing, and is expert at it. The Faux Paws play fresh, fully realized, head, heart and hand-made rhythm and groove music of the highest order.”- Tahoe on Stage


​Recorded 7/10/22.

For more info on the band, visit

https://thefauxpawsmusic.com/

Producer: MCTV

Public, Educational, and Governmental Access for Middlebury, Vermont