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VOICES
Introducing

Elizabeth Min,
New Artistic Director
A Conversation with Holly Near
Elizabeth Min has joined Redwood Cultural Work as Artistic
Director. Min comes to Redwood from her position as
Executive Artistic Director of Oakland Youth Chorus, where
she built one of the most innovative and diverse arts companies for young singers in the U.S. She founded the Bay Area
Women's Philharmonic, and was its music director and
conductor for the orchestra's first four seasons. Min is
interviewed by Redwood founder, artist, board member and
outgoing Artistic Director Holly Near.
HN: I'd like you to talk about some doors that you have
passed through to get to where you are today. What are
your family traditions, your root connections? What got you
into music-thinking the way you think-living where you
live?
EM: (Laughing) I've spent thousands of dollars in therapy
on those subjects.
HN: Were you raised in California?
EM: No, I was raised in Colorado-born in Minneapolis. I
was adopted-a fact I found out just a little more than a
year ago-so at the moment, I am engaged in a birth
parent search. I've located my birth mother and she's about
to become a real person to me at any moment.

In this Issue
T

Close Up with Altazor

T

Exciting Spring Events
and Artists on Tour

ELIZABETH MIN

HN: Do you know her heritage, where she comes from?
EM: She's of English, French and German descent. My
father is Javanese and an Indonesian citizen. She's from
the U.S. but he's never been here. They met in Europe
after WWII when she worked with the Quakers and he
was a student. He eventually returned to Indonesia to
work in agriculture. I have one letter from her where she
chronicles their relationship, describing how they were
very much in love, but when she found herself pregnant in
Europe in 1953-1 was born in 1954-she said it was such
Continued on next page

T

New Redwood Music
from Marcel Khalife and
Guardabarranco

T

Our First Children's
Release

PUBLISHED BY REDWOOD CULTURAL WORK T

T

More than Music from
Holly Near

... and more.

VOL 1, NUMBER 3 T

SPRING 1992

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a heady experience, traveling and working in different

Varied Voices

Redwood Cuttural Work

11~,
1
m

places in post-war Europe, that she just had to go home
and get grounded. She couldn't deal with going to live in
Indonesia right after the revolution. He really wanted to
get married but she just couldn't do it. At the time, she was
24 and he was 32 and he didn't speak much Engltsh so
they communicated mainly in German.

Varied Voices has a history in the documentation of culture.
Varied Voices of Black Women was the title of the first national
tour of black women's music, organized by Roadwork, Inc., in
1978. Through this journal of art and politics, we want to
follow in this tradition, bringing you the voices of women and
men who are carriers of culture, toward the development of a
richer, multicultural society.

HN: And then you were adopted by people over here who
lived in Minneapolis?
EM: No, they lived in Colorado. My adopted father was
Hawaiian and Korean and my adopted mother is Caucasian. They were looking for mixed-race children to adopt.

The mission of Redwood Cultural Work is to produce
performing arts which promote international peace and human
understanding for all people by presenting artists, primarily
women, who represent a wide spectrum of cultures and artistic
traditions.

HN: That's a lot of new information to take in. You have to
tell me how much of this you don't want printed because it's
so new. It means so much to so many people.

We carry out our mission by

EM: Yes, I've thought about this and decided it's something personal that I would like to share. Not just the
whole search for my own identity, which is another story
for another time, but the whole mixed race thing, which
for me personally is a really big issue. The more I delve
into this whole adoption thing, the more I find especially
people of color discovering their blended heritages. With
one foot in one culture and the other in another-where
do we fit? What does this mean about being an American?

T Presenting an annual season of concerts, and by
recording and distributing music of significant
national and international composers and
performers whose work illuminates cultural and
social issues of our time

T Commissioning and presenting collaborative
new works involving artists of diverse cultural
perspectives

T By undertaking cultural advocacy work locally
and nationally

HN: Do you think there's something strange about living in
America that actually makes for both confusion of identity
but also an acceptance of mixed identity, as opposed to if
you lived in a very identifiable culture and you were the
outcast? This country is considered such a melting pot of
cultures even though it is not an equitable one.

Redwood Cultural Work's programs are rooted in
nearly 20 years of national leadership in the field of socially
relevant and culturally diverse music. This experience reflects
the profound ways that music and culture empower, change
and enrich people's lives.
Volunteers: A very special heartfelt thank you to all of
you who so generously give your time, energy and resources to
Redwood. We couldn't do this work without you!

EM: I think it's an accepted thing for people of mixed
European ancestry. My whole life I've heard white people
say, "Well everybody's a mixture of something." But for
blended people of color, it's a matter of visibility and
acceptance in the culture.

Varied Voices is published bi-annually by Redwood
Cultural Work with the help of volunteers and friends . We're
grateful for the generous gifts of time, energy and expertise
from Peter Kiehm and Mimi Heft. Our thanks to you all.
Editors: Susan Freundlich and Joanie Shoemaker
Managing Editor: Peter Kiehm
Editorial Assistants: Jan Jue, Theresa Harlan, Bea Andrade,
'
Charmaine Curtis
Production Art & Illustration: Mimi Heft
Printing: Alonzo
Board of Directors
Dulce Arguelles
Leslie Cagan
Helen Cohen
Charmaine Curtis
Jo Durand

Lisa Honig
Angela Johnson
Holly Near
Gus Newport
Robbie Osman

Staff Members
Bea Andrade
Judy Evans
Cynthia Frenz
Susan Freundlich
Development
Director

Theresa Harlan
Susan Sage
Karen Hester
Kathleen Sullivan
Joanie Shoemaker,
Angela Johnson
Executive
JanJue
Elizabeth Min,
Director
Artistic Director

HN: What did you think you were?

EM: I always checked "other" on forms because nobody
ever told me what I was-the shame was pretty deep. All I
could really go on was how I was treated, and I knew I was
treated differently than white kids, that was very clear.
When I began playing the piano in public at about age 8,
people started telling me that I had an Asian name, or they
would say, "Are you Japanese or Chinese or what?" That
was just like a piece of information to me. "Oh. I'm Asian,
OK" So, I knew that I was different from kids around me,
although I went to a very racially mixed school system in
elementary school. .. very very diverse.

Patrice Perkins
Joanie Shoemaker
Hugh Vasquez
Jo-Lynne Worley,
President

There were a lot of Mexican kids. And AfricanAmerican kids, and Puerto Rican kids, but not any other
Asians.

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from an early age that I really didn't have time to get
deeply into other styles. I was under the influence of a very
strong teacher-which I'm thankful for-but she filled all
my time with the classical thing. But, I've always liked
everything else, and I've certainly always wanted to play a
lot of different kinds of music.

HN: So people probably assumed you were Mexican, except
for your name?
EM: Yes. That's often been the case. Even when I lived in
Mexico, until about 30 minutes into the conversation
(laughing) .

HN: How does that affect your music?

HN: Do you think that along the way you connected any
kind of expression of humanitarianism to wordless music?
What is your emotional connection to what you played? As
you developed as a person and started to have a world view
and politics, how did you connect that to being an artist, a
conductor -not only in your childhood but also as an
adult?

EM: In my work as a conductor it's been an innate thing
with me-I always want to explore the putting together of
various elements and seeing what new whole is created. I
guess it's true that in my work as a conductor, "blending"
is a major part of what I've been doing.

HN: Do you feel that because people applied an Asian
stereotype to how they saw you, that stereotyping is what
directed you towards classical music, the way black kids
sometimes feel they get pushed into sports?

EM: Since I was a musician from such a young age, music
was always an extremely emotional thing for me. It was my
personal expression-where the real power of the self
came from. Because of the restrained atmosphere in which
I grew up, I didn't express raw out-and-out emotion in
other ways. Playing the real hard-core classical repertoire
when you're 10, 11 and 12 is very, very powerful. It's very
emotional and taps into deep, deep feeling-the connections of the harmonies and melodies, the different styles
and just the absolute power and timelessness of the music
itself. It's also a very physical kind of thing. The music I've
always liked best is most grounded to dance, the more
physical, rather than the more cerebral, intellectual side of
classical music. I would express lots of emotions, the
whole range. Sometimes I would perform and people
would say, "Oh, that was so beautiful," and I'd be thinking,
God, that was total out-and-out anger. I was just tearing
the hell out of the piano, how did they miss it?

EM: No, although I remember a teacher of mine saying
"since you want to be a musician it's good you're Asianall the most famous classical musicians are either Asian or
Jewish." That kind of talk went right over my head. It
wasn't until much later that I even understood what she
was talking about.

HN: Stereotypes add so much confusion for people, because
there's often something in a stereotype one can extract
pride from, right? There's absolutely no reason why a black
kid can't feel proud about being a great basketball player or
dancer. And there's no reason why an Asian community
can't feel really proud of how many Asian musicians have
surfaced.
EM: Yes, I find that in my work with Oakland Youth
Chorus. I spend a lot of time with the group I direct
there-Vocal Motion-they're 14 to 21 years in age, all
very bright and talented, and from all different types of
backgrounds-economic, social, racial. The Asian kids and
the black kids really talk about this issue. We'll be riding
in the van to a concert somewhere, and they get deeply
into this whole discussion. It usually comes up around
school-one of the Asian kids is particularly strong in
math, and one of the black kids will say, "Why are Asian
kids so good in math?" Another Asian will say, 'Tm not,
I'm being tutored in it." They get deeply involved in trying
to figure out why these differences appear to be going on.
They haven't come up with a solution yet, though I'm
waiting. If anybody can figure it out, they can.

HN: Very few people have an easy time saying that rage is
beautiful. Maybe what they meant to say was, "I find rage,
when it's not violent, passionate." We don't have a
language for it, especially for women who let strength and
power and resistance show.
EM: In music, there's so much power in silence. I found
that in conducting the Women's Philharmonic. When a
sixty-piece orchestra takes a full half-note rest, that can be
a moment of extreme emotion and expressiveness.

HN: I love ballad singers who dare to leave space. When I
listen to contemporary pop music, it's so busy. Endless. And
if it's not the voice, it's the synthesizer, and if it's not the
synth, it's the drum. I want to scream and say, "Stop!" So
now, if you had a fantasy piece of something that you would
conduct or commission, would it be connected to a spiritual
or political idea? Pablo Casals seemed to make a connection
between his commitment to humanitarianism and playing
the cello. It is a question for some music students-"If I do
non-verbal music, how can I be part of the musical
expression for peace and justice?"

HN: You've worked a lot in classical music, both as a pianist
and as a conductor. Was there ever a point where you
questioned whether you wanted to do a different style? Has
it always been classical music that you've pursued, until
lately?
EM: I've always been interested in lots of different kinds of
music. Growing up, I was so active playing and performing

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Close Up with Altazor
by Helen Cohen

Altazor, the nation's only women's nueva
cancion ensemble, composes and performs
music based on the indigenous instruments and
melodies of Chile, the Andes, Venezuela,
Argentina, and the Caribbean. The members
of Altazor-Dulce Arguelles, Lichi Fuentes,
Jackeline Rago and Vanessa Wang-raise
their voices in opposition to social injustice
throughout South and Central America,
clearly connecting the conditions of people of
color in the United States and throughout the
world.
HC: One of the things that has always been
so moving to me about Altazor is the
blending of your different musical and
cultural influences. I'm very interested in
hearing about your backgroundsculturally, politically, socially and
musically. How do those elements feed into
your music and the work that you do together?

THE MEMBERS OFALTAZOR:JACKELINE RAGO, LICHI FUENTES, VANESSA WANG,
AND DULCE ARGUELLES.

Lichi: Yes, when I was five, one of my sisters was studying
guitar and I wanted to play guitar, so I started watching
her. I learned the first chords just by watching her. I never
really studied guitar. Later, I took some lessons. I do my
best. I really like the instrument so I practice a lot. I have
been playing guitar since I was five years old; I always did
something musical in school. I formed a group with three
girls and two boys in high school. And like San Fernando
and the little towns around it, all the schools had festivals
every year. So we went school to school, participating in
the festivals-and we won all of them.

Lichi: I come from a family that is very musical. We
weren't professional musicians in my family, but we always
sang and played instruments. Music was the basic, the
point where everyone was united. It's still like that today.

I was born in Chile and grew up in a town called San
Fernando. We spent our summers in the countryside
singing around a fire with friends, participating in festivals
that we created with the people who were on vacation. It
was sort of like the tradition of my town and the little
towns around it. In Chile it happens a lot on the beach or
the countryside, people who go there to spend the summer
prepare activities-singing is one of the things that is very
common.

HC: That's great/ Was the music that you played and sang
then an important influence on the music you're doing with
Altazor?
Lichi: Not really. I used to sing songs by the Spanish
singer Rafael-and a lot of music from Spain. And then
my taste changed when I discovered Juan Manuel Serrat
from Spain. His music was sort of like popular music but
with a different concept because it included social issues.
This was when I was 11 and I started to know about
Violetta Parra-she was already a popular singer, yet I
wasn't familiar with her. The political situation in Chile
was kind of intense, I was aware of the different political
parties. I had a brother who belonged to a party of the left,
so I began to identify more with the social issues they were
raising. As a result, my taste in music changed a lot.

HC: Folk music, mostly?
Lichi: Folk music, popular music. It depends-whoever is

there sings what they want. In my family we used to sing a
lot of popular music from Argentina. My sisters like samba
a lot. We used to sing samba with lots of harmony because
we were so many brothers and sisters. That's how I got
used to doing that.
HC: Argentinean samba is different from Brazilian samba,
which is what we are more familiar with, right?
Lichi: Argentinean sambas are sort of romantic songslove songs. They talk about the countryside. The rhythm
is totally different from the Brazilian samba.

Jackie: In my case I started playing music when I was 12
years old. Like Lichi described in Chile, in Venezuela the
same thing happened. Every school had what was called
an estudiantina. An estudiantina is a group of students

HC: Did you learn to play instruments then?

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cuatro and mandolin. Then I studied classical, and that
who play folkloric instruments. From primary school on
was the first time I went away from the total folkloric
-thing. Because these other musicians were trained in jazz, I
learned a lot from them. Playing in Altazor is the first time
I got involved with political and social themes in music. I
wasn't exposed to political music in the same way as Lichi
because the political situation in Venezuela w~ different.
In Venezuela, my generation was living in a free democratic political situation and not exposed to political
change at that time. Venezuela has been a democracy for a
long time. We don't have the same political problems; we
have political problems, but not as extreme or recent, so
my generation didn't get so involved politically.

to today I've been studying the cuatro, the mandolin and
percussion. When I was 12, I studied with a group with
kids of all ages from 9 to 13. I played percussion and
cuatro.
HC: This was a group you started?
Jackie: I started it with a friend of mine, Roberto. We

grew up together from kindergarten and always played
music together. He's also a professional musician now.
Roberto and I worked together for a long time. We had a
theater group; we wrote the pieces, we made the costumes, we performed in theaters. Only comedy; of
course-we were the clowns! We did this until we went to
high school. Then we went to separate high schools, but
still kept playing mandolin and cuatro in the studio.

This style with Altazor is good for me. What I do
with Altazor is bring what I know of Venezuelan music.
Dulce: I grew up listening to Cuban music at home. As
far as playing music, I started taking lessons at age 10 or
11. I studied classical guitar, and performed as a soloist
and in duets. After college I explored electronic music and
composition. When I moved out to the Bay Area, I came
in contact with musicians who played Latin American
music and music from other parts of the world. That was
very exciting to me-I started to realize the power that
music has to move, to teach and to make people feel good.
I had been affected by other people's music and I wanted
to be involved in music that carried a message.

Then I graduated high school and studied at the
Conservatory of Music in Caracas. I studied classical
mandolin for two years. I also studied background music
for theater, but I never abandoned the music, never. One
of the reasons that helped me not to abandon music was
that in a country like Venezuela, everywhere you go there
is music. You ride public transportation and the driver has
music playing full volume. So you are always singing.
You walk downtown and all the stores have their own
music-it's crazy. They have stereos and they put the
speakers out on the streets.

Vanessa: It's kind of a funny question for me because I am

HC: Is the music that you hear on the streets and buses
popular, contemporary music? I'm curious-what brought
you back to folk music or folk traditions?

from the United States and I was born here. My parents
were born here and I don't come from a Latin background,
and I'm playing Latin music. I mean people seem to liave a
problem associating me with being from the United States.
I always get people asking the typical question, "Where are
you from?" And I say, "I'm from here." "Yeah, but really,
you know." "Yeah, I'm from here. I am really from here."
And people react with comments like, "'Oh, you speak
English so well?" "Well, yeah, I'm from here." And so
culturally maybe it needs a little more explanation of why
I'm doing this.

Jackie: You know what, I never "decided" to be a musi-

cian. My family always asked me what I wanted to study,
and I would look at them like they were silly. What are
. you asking me-music! They always supported me and
gave me the instruments I needed. But they never put me
in a private music class. I asked my dad, please, I want to
get registered in music school, and I don't want to go to
high school. And he told me I was crazy. "If you want to
be a professional musician, first you go to high school, and
then you study music." So I studied music at night and
attended high school during the day.

I've played music ever since I was pretty young. I
started playing piano when I was seven. I played classical
music, popular music and all the stuff that was going on in
the the late '60s and '70s. You know, everybody had their
steel-stringed guitars and played Joni Mitchell songs. It
wasn't until ,ater that I got into Latin music.

I always had that one focus of being committed to
music without knowing why. Then I decided to come here
and learn English and go to music school. Because in
Venezuela ten years ago you could go to the conservatory,
but you didn't have a major faculty to get a B.A. in music.
The only_place to concentrate on music was here or
Europe. I don't know, maybe in Africa or other countries,
too. So I decided to come here, and I went to Holy Names
College to study English and then study the Koday
program. I didn't like it. It wasn't what I was looking for. I
always dreamed of being in a group of folk musicians. You
know, first I studied folkloric music and I always played

I left the music program at UC Berkeley and wanted
to do something less formal, not so uptight, and with more
social relevance. I started playing music with a couple of
friends who played Irish and English traditional music,
which was fun. We didn't read music, just learned
everything by ear. It was very social music, and there was
always dancing. It was a very different experience for me,
Continued on next page

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.........................................................................................,
HC: Can you give an example of that?

musically, to play socially instead of being in a little box
where you are playing by yourself. So that was one stepgoing into playing traditional music.

Vanessa: Well, some of it has been communicated to us
from the outside about the feeling that our performances
have. One example was when we did a split concert with
the group Illapu from Chile. People told us about how
different the energy on stage was and that there was a very
clear kind of gender split, they being an all-male group and
we being an all-female group. There is a different kind of
approach. We work collectively in the group. There isn't
anybody who has to be the leader or someone saying, "I
get to do all the solos. " We share that kind of stuff.

Later, I started to take a voice class in jazz, but it
didn't move me. The lyrics to the songs that we were
learning didn't do anything for me. I didn't feel inspired
by them or like I could identify with what they were
saying. I really wanted to look for some music that Ifelt
something about. That's when a friend of mine invited me
to join the La Pena Community Chorus, which was my
exposure to Nueva Candon in a more tangible way than
before. And so that's how I got interested. And I felt like it
was music that I could feel and that had meaning for me.
From there I started learning instruments from Latin
America at La Pena and hanging around with people who
play this kind of stuff. Along with that I was becoming
more politically involved as well and getting more and
more interested in things that were going on in Latin
America-specifically in Chile.

HC: Do you notice a clear division of labor or leadership?
Vanessa: No, and also there isn't any competition. I have
experience in other groups where there have been big ego
problems going on or people who feel that they can't share.
I'm not saying that men can't share! It's just that there is a
different kind of dynamic. Definitely. Like Lichi was
saying, it would change our dynamic to have men in the
group .

HC: How did Altazor get started as a group?

Dulce: I didn't realize the impact we would have on
audiences until we started performing in different parts of
the country. People come up to us after concerts-women,
men and older women, to tell us that they're moved by
seeing women holding and playing instruments. I'm
impressed by the amount of girls, not boys, who ask for
our autographs. This indicates to me their hunger for
female role models in music.

Vanessa: It started from Lichi's workshop. Lichi had a
performing Nueva Candon ensemble at La Pena Cultural
Center in Berkeley. When the workshop ended, we felt we
wanted to keep going, or at least some of us did. We had
been doing this for a couple of years, it was nice, and we
wanted to keep it going. So a small group of us stayed
together to keep performing, and it evolved into this group
we have now.

Jackie: There was just one more thing I wanted to say
about the question of being a women's band: What I don't
like about the identification of a women's group is that it
makes it sound like we're just for women, which we aren't.
We're for everybody, and it kind of makes me angry
because, for example, I was in a record store the other day
in the Latin American section, and our music wasn't there.
I went over to the women's music section and there we
were. I thought, "What is this? " It really bothered me that
there was this ghettoization of music by women. Like
somehow only women are going to be interested in this
music or that it's music just for women. I don't know
what it is!

HC: How does it feel to be an all-women's group doing
Nueva Cancion? Is it part of your identity and sense of
purpose-in terms of the music you choose to perform, or
how you're perceived by other musicians?
Lichi: It wasn't the purpose of the group to be an allwomen's group at the beginning. It just happened out of
this workshop . The women felt better playing together. I
have played with other groups-it wasn't so much the fact
that in this group we were all women-we just got along
well. The group has an identity, and I think it would kill
that identity if we had a male in our group. It's not that we
don't play music with men. As a group we have a sound, a
dynamic in the group; we have sort of come to an agreement of taste. You get used to each other. Maybe someday
a guy will appear and he will fit fine . It's not like we're
exclusively an all-women band. But the way I see it now,
it would be out of place.

HC: You wouldn't find a group that was all men in the
men's section, right?
Vanessa: Right! Where's the men's music section? The
whole rest of the store is the men's music section!
HC: Or the assumption, as you just said, that you're singing
just for a women's audience.

Vanessa: I think being an all-women group cuts both
ways. On the one hand there are definitely gender differences in the way people work. I have worked in mixed
groups. I think there is a way that we work together that
has to do with who we are individually, but also it has to
do with being women.

Vanessa: That's the part I really dislike-to be pigeonholed in that way when nobody seems to ask men's
groups, "Well, what does it feel like to be in an all-men's
group? " It's just taken for granted, but women always get

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asked that if it happens to be an all-women group. EveryJackie: This is a dream I don't think is so impossible. I
body feels like they are trying to make some point. No,
we're not making some point, we're just doing what we
want to do .

think we have a good message, a good sound, and my
dream is to bring this to Latin America or as far as we can.
In my country, society gives you a role. You are a
woman, so you have to be married and have children. I
have seen in my country and close to me in my family a lot
of frustration. A lot of intelligent women who are very
dominated by society.

Jackie: I think it is also very important to notice that in
Latin America and I think in the United States, Europe,
everywhere in the world , but especially in Latin America
because that's the example and the experience I have, most
of the instruments we play have been male dominated.
Drums are played by men; flutes, guitars, and most of the
strong lyrics are written by men. And in terms of instrumentation, men have always been on top and have always
put the women down. I have received comments like,
"Wow, for being a woman, you play a very good bongo! "

If I could go to Latin America or my own country
and show that women can have different lives. One of the
things that I personally like about our concerts is that
everybody participates. It's great! A friend of mine went to
a concert and saw that our music moves people. At the
end of the show everybody was dancing! That's the
purpose of the music-if we touch your skin and make
you move. T

I started playing music when I was five years old. I
didn't have a consciousness of men and women, I was a
kid. I was a kid who loved music. Whether I was a man or
woman, I'm this person that I am. And I chose to play the
bongo. When I was just a kid, it didn't matter. I never
related music with gender. I think it is a big mistake to see
with that prejudice, but you cannot blame people because
they are accustomed to seeing that. For example, at the
beginning it was hard for me to open my legs and put the
bongo between them, because it was not customary. It was
very difficult. I imagined playing the cajon. It's true, there
is something about being strong to play the skin of a
drum. You can always play soft, but you can also play
strong with female energy.

Altazor's music is available on cassette and CD.
Order blank is on page 23.
Helen Cohen is chair of the Board of RCW; singer and
percussionist in Vocolot, a women's a cappella folk ensemble
based in Oakland; participant in nueva cancion workshops at
La Peiia Cultural Work since 1985, where she first met and
played music with members of Altazor; works in the field of
community economic development providing technical
assistance to community land trusts; and other nonprofit
housing development and employment projects.

So I think people have to understand that the world
is changing and women should take over a little bit more,
to balance the male energy that has been dominating not
just in music, but in everything we do. I think it's great
that Altazor is all women and presents the message and the
instrumentation for people to know that it is possible for
women to do things like this .
We are in a territory in which people are more open.
If we go down to, say, Venezuela, it is pretty open; in Chile
it is a little more difficult to be to be an all-female group.
That's what Lichi has said all the time. We are as good as
the other groups which are all male. We are not competing; we just want to do a good job.
HC: Let me just ask a fun, thought-provoking question to
wrap up. If you could put yourself out there in whatever
way, if you could just choose what you wanted to be and
there were no obstacles in terms of money, limitations on
your time, children you are raising. What would you like to
be doing ·a t this point?
Dulce: I'd like to be able to play for the youth, to reach
young people and help them become aware of more
musical options than the glossy narcissistic images that
society feeds them through MTV.

7

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• fi

Elizabeth Min

consumer at all, which makes it all the more of a challenge
for me to create experiences and events that have participation. I'm very interested in participation and building
together. I'm looking for ways for any work that is created
and generated here to have a really long life, to go through
a lot of hands and many different places and be used in a
variety of ways.

continued from pagt 3

EM: Beauty has tremendous power for transformation.
What I'm interested in doing now is work that really
explores something about culture-building within our
society. Building of culture and the idea of cultural rights
for people is very all-encompassing and takes in political,
educational and economic factors. It embraces those and
goes beyond. It is also a place where people can choose
how they are going to act, because they're working off
inspiration. I'm interested in doing work that challenges us
to act, to not be passive consumers of whatever pablum
culture is put in front of our faces, but to build ourselves-not only things we're going to feed ourselves, but what
we're going to leave. I've done a lot of work with young
people, so my heart is really tuned into what they're going
to be ... not only what they can pick up and run with, but
that there's an environment where they can be creative
together.

HN: What is your vision for Redwood? And what will your

role be in creating it?

EM: I would like to see Redwood be more of a producing
entity-to put together projects where we create and
generate new work from our home base and then take it
out to the world. I believe Redwood is in a wonderful
position as a non-profit arts company, in that there are
people all over the country who are interested in the work
that we are doing here. They find it meaningful and feel it
speaks to changes they are working on in their own
communities. They need more music that feeds them and
supports the work they are doing. They need music that
helps, that is courageous and speaks up, that makes a
contribution to the heart and gut and soul. Getting that
music to them-that's what I want to do. Also, the whole
idea of doing cross-cultural cooperative work-that's really
where I'm coming from, that's what I've been doing and
what I want to do for a long while.

HN: Please talk about the chorus and what you feel some of
the victories of that work have been. People talk about the
"lost generation," and I' m not sure I agree with that
analysis, but this is definitely a very hard time to be
growing up. In the work you have done with the chorus,
what kinds of successes and pitfalls have you encountered?

EM: I can say some truths I've learned about working with
the very next generation. The Oakland Youth Chorus is
ages 14 to 21-they're next. One thing I've learned is that
for the most part, this is an invisible group of people.
They're seen as "dangerous" and "going through a phase."
Separation and search for identity are the paramount issues
they're working on. The hardest thing for them is to
develop a sense of perspective, which I think you can only
get with experience. It's very hard for them to see the long
view. So, when doing an artistic project, for example, some
of the collaborative work I've created with them involves
working with other artists who are adult professionals.

In thinking about the twentieth anniversary year, I've
listened to all Redwood's records, read different articles
and talked to people about the past twenty years. It's really
been quite a twenty-year period, from 1972 to 1992. I
graduated from high school in 1972, and here I am the
Artistic Director of Redwood in 1992. Just thinking about
my close circle of friends and people that I know, the
transformations we've been through are amazing, from
complete and total passion for movements and causes and
social concerns to complete and total burnout, failure,
despair, addictions, recovery, children/no children,
marriages, relationships- rise and fall on the economic
and career ladder, involvement in other countries, other
cultures, all of that. We're talking about a really, actionpacked twenty years for a lot of people in the Redwood
community.

HN: Is. that need for immediate gratification directly
connected to this being an era of high technology, or has
that always been an issue for youth?

EM: I think it's specific to American culture because we're
so into consumerism. We're so passive about our culture.
An example of American culture is the mall. You can go to
the mall, instantly be entertained, get anything you want to
eat, buy anything in enormous quantities. It's such a
passive way to be.

HN: Some people are still fantasizing about the '60s.
(laughing) We are also walking proof about why working
with children is so important. If you graduated from high
school the year I started Redwood ...

EM: Yes, when I was a freshman in college, you gave an
anti-war concert where I went to college. I remember
thinking, "wow, that's really right-on." And Jeff Langley
was such a great piano player, I really clued into him. I've
thought about that a lot-that was twenty years ago!

HN: How do you see the audience as not just being passive
consumers? What are some of the ways people can keep a
musical experience alive, so that the experience doesn't stop
once we make a record and ship it out?

HN: And the generation you're working with at the

EM: That is my goal, to figure out that connection. I agree
with you, Redwood's audience is not the typical passive

Oakland Youth Chorus-these are the ones who will be the

8

.........................................................................................,
directors of our non-profits, the teachers in our schools, the
health care workers, the lawyers who are doing pro-bono
work for poor people.

ship line at alcohol company manufacturers or distributors.

HN: Let's say that there is a company that wants to
completely or partially subsidize a collaboration that
Redwood wants to do and they're wiling to sponsor
Redwood to tour it all across the country. But on the
program, the tickets, maybe a banner at the bottom of the
stage, we advertise their participation.

EM: And are they mad. Maybe they're even madder than
we were.

HN: I think they're more angry. Or maybe mad about
different things.
EM: They feel more ripped off, I think, than we did. They
feel let down.

EM: I'm certainly not closed to the idea. We have to seek
corporate support. And guess what, there are strong
progressive folks who work in corporations, too. It's not an
either/or scenario. There's no doubt that in order to
survive, a company like Redwood needs layers of different
kinds of sponsorship-that's just a reality of American life.
It's not that these sponsorships are handed to anybody on
a silver platter, you have to
work
hard for them. There are
Photo: Susan Freundlich
some places we would be
willing to go and some places
we wouldn't. In terms of their
visibility as one of our sponsors, that kind of partnership
would be carefully negotiated.
Please give me that situation to
figure out! Many big tours and
concerts have large sponsors"American Express Gold Card
presents Paul Simon" for
example. But didn't you have to
have a Gold Card to get a
ticket? I wouldn't be in favor of
Redwood doing something like
that.

HN: It's going to be an extraordinary next twenty.
EM: Yes, I'd like the twentieth to really be something that
can nurture all of us as we reflect on the last twenty and
get prepared to renew ourselves for the next twenty years,
because, let's face it, we need to keep going and we need to
keep renewing our strength. The
battle is deep and long at this point.

HN: Speaking of the twentieth
anniversary year, how do you feel
about the contradictions regarding
corporate sponsorship in this day
and age when the arts are
struggling so?

"

EM: I think corporations should
sponsor everything they possibly
can and embrace a vision of
cultural democracy and community
participation. Culture is about the
way we live, how we regard each
other, our dreams and aspirations,
our communication. It takes in so
many vital parts of the soul of our
communities. There are corporations with excellent track records in
this arena, but let's face it-we need
more help and as much involvement as possible.

HN: Actually people who didn't
have Gold Cards got tickets, but
HOLLY NEAR AND ELIZABETH MIN ON THE OAKLAND
the best seats in the house were
STEPS OF RCW.
reserved for people with Gold
Cards. I went to the concert and
sat
there
crying
in
the
dark
watching and thinking how
HN: Where do you think the line should be drawn by
those
artists
get
to
be
taken
care of while they do this
progressives when that corporate money is attached to the
of the struggles that Intibeautiful
music.
And
I
thought
corporation wanting visibility? In part I can understand the
Illimani
and
I
had
doing
our
collaboration-the
couches
view of the corporation-they're doing some good work and
that
we
slept
on,
the
buses
that
we
traveled
in,
the
cramped
they want the community to know it-after all, the
quarters,
the
lack
of
rehearsal
space,
the
limited
recording
community is demanding it-so corporations want to say
equipment, no video, and it goes on and on. I thought, yeah,
yes, we're doing it. Then there's also the reality that they're
we
were "pure" all right. And I asked myself if I would let
going to sell more product by being visible in this way.
an American Express Gold Card banner hang on the front
EM: We all have to realize that any dollars given to
of our stage-back then the answer would have been "no."
organizations are a write-off. There are advantages to
But I looked at the Paul Simon show and thought-this isn't
companies, absolutely clear advantages to being philanfair. American Express is going to survive whether they
thropic in the community, just in terms of their own taxes
have their banner on our stage or not. Who's not going to
and liabilities, and their own standing in the community.
survive is us. Right? Arts companies are folding all around
With the Youth Chorus, we've always drawn the sponsorus.
Continued on next page

9

························································································•◄
Elizabeth Min
Continued from previous page

EM: What did you take away from the Paul Simon show,
the sight of American Express? Is that your memory of it
now?

Remembering Peter

HN: No, I took away an extraordinary collaboration of
cared-for musicians.

For the past three years, Peter Babcock was the
gifted graphic artist, activist and editor who
worked behind the scenes on many of the pieces
you may have received in the mail from Redwood.
Peter died on October 1, 1991, of AIDS. He was a
treasured friend, and his passing is a tremendous
loss to us.

EM: We have to get real here. Redwood has wonderful
support now, and we need a lot more, and more different
kinds of support. There are some people who are able to
give organizations like Redwood lots of money and some
people who can give organizations like Redwood $10 a
year. We need both. We need corporations to sponsor us.
We need foundation and government support. That's the
only way we're going to survive. Sales of our records and
concert tickets alone cannot support our operation. If that
were the case, we would either sell in the millions or the
cost of each record or ticket would be so high, we couldn't
possibly be in business. Instead, we have to look this in the
face, realize that we are a non-profit, believe that our work
is important, that it provides a vital force in our community, and make a conscious decision about going after all
kinds of funding-including the corporate sector.

Shortly before Peter's death, Redwood
Cultural Work, OUT/LOOK and Mal Warwick
and Associates joined hands to honor Peter for his
Outstanding Contributions to Social Change.
We created an award to be given annually to
someone who embodies the spirit of Peter's work
and vision-someone who brings creativity in art
and design to the service of communication and
fundraising for social change.
In honor and celebration of Peter's life, we
wanted to share the text of that award with you.

HN: The reason I asked this question is that Ifeel I've
really learned a lot about that and changed my mind a lot
about it. And I wanted to hear your perspective on it
because I still don't know how to articulate it as clearly as
you just did.

For brilliance in communicating the essence
of the message, in images and words;
For excellence in the field of fundraising
for social change, using the tools of visual
design and editorial insight; For inspirational
vision in publishing and communications,
launching creative new ventures that enhance
social justice, community and the environment;
For energy, passion and the persistent desire
to make a better world, we honor Peter
for setting new standards of excellence in all
these pursuits.

EM: Anybody who wants to support Redwood should step
right up. You are needed, and please bring a friend. I used
to say that to people with the Youth Chorus. Conductors
would say to me, "They're so fabulous, I wish that I could
conduct them." I said, "Corne on, come to a rehearsal and
conduct them. The kids need to see as many adult professional musicians who are into their art as possible. You
want to work with them, come on. You're needed." Well,
the same is true for Redwood. We need lots of different
kinds of supporters out there. So step right up. We'll be
thrilled to have you. And I mean it! •

Friends and colleagues who would like to remember
Peter may send contributions to the BABCOCK
AWARD clo Redwood Cultural Work. •

Holly Near is the founder of Redwood. For over twenty years
she has worked as an outspoken singer, songwriter, actor and
recently , author. Holly continues to tour. Her concerts are
considered both artistic achievements as well as rejuvenating
community gatherings.

10

.........................................................................................,
toured Lebanon, playing in Tyre, Nabatia, Tripoli and
Beirut.
Marcel Khalife's music has always shown the
influence of his years of study at the National Conservatory of Music in Beirut, where he both studied and taught.
Through his twenty years of singing folk-based songs he
has also produced several works for symphony orchestra.
The most widely known piece of this nature is the 90minute oratorio, Ahmad al Arabi, a setting of the epic poem
by Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Al-Mayadeen has
always had several western instrumentalists in the band
with violins and flutes prominent in Khalife's composing
style.
For Summer Night's Dream, which is an adaptation of
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Khalife calls
upon a 28-piece version of Al-Mayadeen. This double-size
group features some who have been part of it for may years
like Micahel Keiralla and Antoin Khalife (Khalife's
brother) on violin and Bassam Saba playing flute. But
added are more violins, electric bass, saxophones, viola,
cello, piano, kanoun and accordion.

MARCEL KHALIFic

Marcel Khalife:
Summer Night's Dream

The music is as full as the instrumentation. Khalife's
gift for melody is deepened by rich harmonies and culturally hybrid polyrhythms. While Khalife does contribute
some excellent oud playing, our experience is of Khalife
the composer, whose style is very romantic with a solid
Middle Eastern foundation.

by Russ Jennings

Since 1972 Marcel Khalife has been performing inspiring
songs that were born in Arab culture, raised in the struggle
for democracy in Lebanon and educated by the national
aspirations of the Palestinians. He and his band, AlMayadeen, have performed all over Europe, North America
and Australia as well as their native Lebanon. In 1986 they
drew fifty thousand in a concert in Beirut, but most people
have listened to his music on treasured, and often illegal,
cassettes.

Two soloists stand out on the album. Antoin Deib
plays a magnificent accordion on 'Tango for My Lover's
Eyes," a darkly passionate piece in the middle of the
recording. On the final piece, "Salute," Aboud Al-Saadi is
featured in a blistering fast-fingered bebop jazz guitar solo
worthy of Charlie Christian. Summer Night's Dream was
premiered in the summer of 1991 at the Picadilly Theatre
in Beirut. In the program notes the piece's creators say
that, "It reflects the diversities in the structure of the
Shakespearean Subject, with its unbounded imagination,
in a Middle Eastern vision where the climates are purely
Middle Eastern." The climate on this album is very
commodious, and hopefully this album will make
Marcel Khalife a regular part of our North American
environment. T

This new recording on the Redwood label, Summer
Night's Dream, marks his first North American release
since 1983. This all-instrumental opus is the culmination
of several threads in Khalife's career. The music was
composed for a production by the Caracalla Dance Theatre
of Beirut. This collaboration with choreographer Abdul
Halim Caracalla is the first time Khalife has been able to
play a role in the Beirut arts scene since he was forced to
leave his country in the early days of the civil war. Beirut's
. status as a major arts city, reminiscent of Paris in the
'twenties, is only now beginning to reemerge.

Russ Jennings is a programmer on KPFA-FM, a freelance
writer, and an independent concert producer.

Last year, Khalife returned to perform in his native
town of Amsheet after being banned for 16 years. At his
opening concert, which was broadcast live on television,
the welcome from his old friends was tumultuous. The
town's fences and buildings were covered with pictures of
Khalife, replacing the graffiti, and the people clamored his
most radical songs. After Amsheet, he and Al-Mayadeen

Cassettes and CDs make great
premiums for organizations to use for
fundraising. Call (510) 835-1445 and
talk with Cynthia.
11

························································································•◄
WRITERS IN CONVERSATION:
Prese,ving Culture through Art
Annual Redwood Benefit
Oakland Museum Theatre and Restaurant
March 22

An Evening of Readings and Dialog with four of today's
most provocative women writers-Sara Levi Calderon,
Susan Griffin, Joy Harjo and Cherrie Moraga-moderated
by Holly Near.
Sara Levi Calderon is the author of the best-selling
Mexican novel, Two Mujeres, which is one of only three
openly lesbian and Mexican works in existence. The novel
explores the romance between divorced Jewish-Mexican
women and the constraints of family and society.
Calderon has taught Latin American Studies, studied acting
and screenplay writing, and is the mother of two sons. She
currently makes her home in the Bay Area.

WOMEN ONSTAGE
Rhodessa Jones in
Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women and
Marga Gomez is
Pretty, Witty and Gay
Scottish Rite Temple
154 7 Lakeside Dr. at 14th St, 1st Floor, Oakland
Friday, April 3, 8pm
Tickets: General admission $12

Susan Griffm, poet, playwright and author has
written, among others, the acclaimed Woman and Nature:
The Roaring Inside Her and Pornography and Silence:
Culture's Revenge Against Nature. Her many awards include
an Emmy and a MacArthur Foundation Grant for Peace
and International Cooperation. She narrated, scripted and
was interviewed in the film Berkeley in the Sixties. Her
newest work, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War,
will be published this year.

Known for bringing the unmentionable, controversial and
wild to center stage, actor Rhodessa Jones portrays the
experiences of jailed women as harrowing, dangerous and
profoundly touching. " ... She transcends art to create
some unforgettable moments of spiritual healing."-Los
Angeles Times
On the eve of her appearance on a television talk
show, Marga rewrites the Bible, battles extortionists, and
reads from the "lost" journals of Anais Nin.

Joy Harjo has published four books of poetry and is
at work on a fifth collection of poetic prose, The Field of
Miracles, and an anthology of Native women's writing,
Reinventing the Enemy's Language. She is a professor in
Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. She
makes her home in Albuquerque, where she plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice.

HOLLY NEAR PERFORMS
A WORK IN PROGRESS
Preservation Park Theater
April 15 and 20

Cherrie Moraga, poet, essayist, playwright and
political organizer, is the author of The Shadow of A Man
and Giving Up the Ghost, both full-length theater works.
Her most recent play, Heroes and Saints, a work commissioned by the Los Angeles Theater Center, is scheduled for
production in San Francisco this year. Moraga is currently
an instructor of Writing and Theatre in Chicano Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley.

On the heels of her successful autobiography, Fire in the
Rain ... Singer in the Storm, Holly and her sister/director
Timothy Near, have created a musical docudrama adapted
from the book for the stage. Unique in its form and
content, this riveting theater piece premiered at the San
Jose Repertory Theater last May. The play is scheduled to
open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles for an 8week run in August and September 1992. This spring, in
preparation for the LA production, Holly and Timothy will
be doing additional work on the play, giving it time to
grow and improve. Enjoy this rare opportunity to help
fine-tune the show-dose up! Redwood Cultural Work
will present Holly doing two readings of the work in
progress, with John Bucchino on piano, at the Preservation
Park Theater in Oakland, April 15th and 20th.

12

t

J

························································································•◄
Conjunto Cespedes is one of the leading Afro-Cuban
music and dance ensembles in the western United States.
Altazor is a leading American practitioner of Nueva
Cancion, combining the folkloric traditions of Cuba, Chile
and Venezuela, mixing them with modern harmonies and
lyrics addressing social concerns.
Guillen's vast body of work chronicles Cuba's social,
economic and political struggles. He believed that a poet
must create revolution while at the same time creating art.
To date, over 200 works by Guillen have been set to music
in a wide range of musical styles. Guillen poetry is rooted
in the structures of the son and the rumba, the two most
typical idioms of popular Cuban music.

QUEEN LATIFAH IN CONCERT

This concert brings together African and Latino
traditions, both of which have made, and continue to
make, distinct contributions to American culture.

MC Dominique DiPrima
Opening Act: Petite and Elite
Calvin Simmons Theatre
10 Tenth St. at Fallon, Oakland
Saturday, April 18th, 8pm
Tickets : Reserved Seating $22, $19.50, $15

REDWOOD MUSIC FESTIVAL '92
Calvin Simmons Theatre
May 29, 30

Don't miss the reigning queen of rap music in her solo
Oakland debut! Explosive, soulful and provocative,
Queen Latifah's music carries a message of love, empowerment, and the strength of women. Integrating singing and
rapping with an an occasional touch of R&B, jazz, reggae,
and soul, the queen is an experience not-to-be-missed.

Redwood's Festival is moving to Calvin Simmons and
expanding to two days! Participate in workshops and
master classes during the day and hear great music in
concert at night. Come be part of this celebration of
community!

"She put on the show of our lives and made all
things right between us and around us."-Danyel Smith,
Bay Guardian

For many years, the Greek Theatre and Estuary Park
have provided beautiful settings for potential sun worshipers and those who enjoy listening to good music while
scoping the lovely view. The Redwood Music Festival is
predictably fun as evidenced by regularly good crowds.
But because of the unpredictability of the weather, this year
we're taking the Festival indoors. The Festival's new
location allows us to create a new, improved format that
will provide more opportunity for audience participation.

NEW AMERICAN WORKS SERIES:
TODD MEZCLADO
Calvin Simmons Theatre
April 25

Featured artists this year include Holly Near and
Ronnie Gilbert Together Again, Odetta, Guardabarranco ,
Toshi Reagon, Geraldine Barney, Dia ta Dia ta, and
Romanovsky &: Phillips.

Sizzling Afro-Cuban music by Conjunto Cespedes and
lilting Latin American New Song rhythms by Altazor
interpret the poetry of Cuban laureate Nicolas Guillen in
this world premiere of new songs commissioned by
Redwood. Inspired by Guillen's dedication to mulatez, the
concept of an interracial cultural identity, Todo Mezclado
is a feast of color, theater, dance and exuberant music.
• And don't worry if you don't speak Spanish-the show is
translated.

INVEST IN ASOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE
ORGANIZATION
Redwood Cultural Work is seeking loans ($3,000
minimum) for two years. We offer competitive
interest rates. Redwood has capitalized our
projects with the loan program since 1973.
Please contact Cynthia Frenz at RCW if you are
interested. Call (510) 835-1445. "Y

In the second year of this series, Redwood presents a
concert-l~ngth collaborative multi-media performance
featuring Conjunto Cespedes and Altazor. Todo Mezclado
is a commissioned collaboration of Afro-Cuban music and
dance and Nueva Cancion Latinoamericana (Latin American
New Song) centered around musical adaptations of poetry
by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen (1902-1969).

13

························································································•◄
open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in August of

More than Music from
Holly Near

by Mollie Katzen

this year.
If you can't get to LA to see the play, try her new
audio autobiography, Singer in the Storm ... The Life and
Music of Holly Near. This is a 2-cassette package, containing two hours of Holly chatting and reading pass~ges from
her writing, interspersed with cuts of many songs. You
might also enjoy her videotape, Singingfor Our Lives,
replete with footage of Holly in concert and cavorting in
the snow, spliced with nicely shot closeups of her reading
from the book. As is true for most progressive and independent artists, these works are produced with small
budgets. Still, the video is quite visually
compelling, and will keep even her
Photo: Chris Fesler
most diehard fans rejuvenated between
live concerts.

Several years ago, with the approach of her fortieth
birthday, Holly Near began to document her life and work
with a series of autobiographical projects. At the center of
this multifaceted undertaking is her 290-page book, Fire in
the Rain .. .Singer in the Storm (Morrow 1990). The narrative moves back and forth in time, from rich scenes of
Holly's rural childhood with her large, loving family to
vignettes about her budding political
awareness as a college student during the
Vietnam War to stories of her journey to
self-discovery. The reader is party to Holly's
Some might raise their eyebrows
numerous voyages-both through the
at the idea of a 40-year-old woman
world itself and through her responses to
writing the story of her own life. Yet
the world. Interspersed is a selection of
Holly's self-documentation is more a
lyrics to some of Holly's songs which, even
personal
stock-taking than a summary
though familiar, take on enhanced meaning
of
a
life.
It is a mid-career pause to look
when presented as poetry within the
backward and forward at the same time:
context of her narrative. For young people
a mirrored way station. These are
of the post-Vietnam War generation, Holly's
reflections of the early years in the life
book provides a chance to get some vivid
of
a gifted and passionate late 20th
impression of that important era beyond the
century
white North American woman
currently popular oversimplified '60s
striving
to engage meaningfully and
"nostalgia. " Holly's story continues into the
compassionately with a difficult world.
'70s and '80s, through the Reagan years and
As Holly publicly probes her memories
a dizzying period of global change. Her
and motivations, we are offered a
personal life and professional challenges
privileged
view into her personal
and choices are just about as dizzying. She
LAUGHING AT HER OWN
HOMOPHOBIA
IN
THIS
SCENE
struggles
and
triumphs, her self-love
lapses a bit too far into name-dropping and
FROM THE PLAY, HOLLY TELLS
and
self-hate,
her doubt and her clarity.
STORIES OF HER EARLY DAYS
self-aggrandizement, but at the same time,
IN WOMEN'S MUSIC.
I
look
forward
to the next installment,
invokes universal themes that ring true and
maybe 20 or so years down the line. It would be good to
resonate for many of us. Even with some unevenness (and
see Holly go even deeper into her material; at first glance
one may feel tired by Holly's pace!), Fire in the
Fire in the Rain ... Singer in the Storm feels like a mere
Rain . .. Singer in the Storm makes for a real page-turner.
introduction-a mid-life pause. Taken in the context of
In her musical docudrama of the same title, adapted
history, it honors a time and movement that many of us
from the book and developed for the stage by Holly and
were part of, enabling us to identify and to remember the
her sister, director Timothy Near, Holly expands some of
excitement of being there. Unstated, but implied at the end
her best anecdotal material into an engaging piece of
of both the book and the play is the message: "To be
theater. The stage is clearly Holly's home. Once again, her
continued ... " T
many journeys-inner and outer-come to life, this time
with Holly right in front of you. Her performance is strong
and fast-paced-so typical of her style. One feels satisfied
These recent products by Holly can be ordered on page 23.
by the end-entertained and inspired. It's commonplace to
Mollie Katzen is the author/illustrator of a popular trilogy
view an actor portraying the life of another character on
of vegetarian cookbooks: Moosewood Cookbook, The
stage. But to witness a woman telling the story of her own
Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and Still Life with Menu. She
life-the conflicts of a child artist as she discovers her
lives with her husband, son and daughter near Berkeley,
voice, teenage love with all its anticipation and disappointCalif
omia, and does a variety of cultural projects involving
ment, falling in love with a woman, falling in love with the
art,
writing,
music and progressive politics.
world-is a rare and powerful experience. The play will

14

"

.........................................................................................,

Meet Theresa Harlan

same tribe-my
enrollment
number easily
corrects these
false ideas. In the
context of individuals who fall
into the trap of
believing romantic
stereotypes of
Native Americans
and search for a
distant Native
ancestor to
THERESA HARIAN
provide them with
Native ancestry-my enrollment number easily separates
me from those who want to be Native. Yet in the context of
Native American history, my enrollment number is
nothing more than an arm of the United States policy
toward Native Americans. Many Native people have been
denied federal recognition for the want of easier access to
natural resources and land. Many California Native people
are not federally recognized. Many Native people are not
federally recognized through no fault of their own, but by
the hand of the government or consequences of its policies. In this context, my enrollment number is not a badge
of pride, but a painful reminder of Native people who have
been denied their right to be recognized as a sovereign
people and in general Native American and United States
history.

An inte,view with Elizabeth Min
Theresa Harlan has joined Redwood's staff as Assistant to
Susan Freundlich, Development Director. She is also a
freelance curator of contemporary Native American art and
will guest curate for the Boston Photographic Resource Center
and Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael in the fall of this
year. Harlan is the farmer Director of Exhibitions of the
American Indian Contemporary Arts gallery in San Francisco
and recently completed a fellowship at the California Arts
Council, where she compiled comprehensive information
about art and cultural activities taking place in California's
Native American communities. Theresa is an enrolled
member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo of New Mexico.
EM: What are some of the major themes that Native
American artists are dealing with now?

TH: Right now the hot issue is the 1990 Indian Arts &
Crafts law, which states that unless you meet the criteria,
you cannot call or market yourself as a Native artist or you
can be punished with a fine and jail. The criteria is you
must be a member of a federally recognized tribe, or be
listed on a state census as American Indian, or request
your tribe to give you the special designation of "Indian
artist."
EM: Can you explain more about this? What do you
mean?

TH: As federally recognized Native Americans, we each
have a number, a census number, that is connected to our
blood quantum. We are the only race in the U.S. that has
to keep track of our fractional blood quantum. This means
that on paper, I am half Santa Domingo Pueblo; but I need
to keep track of the fact that I am also one-quarter Laguna
Pueblo and one-quarter Jemez Pueblo. If I have children,
they will have to keep track-it's something that's passed
down. To be a federally recognized Indian means you have
to be at least one-quarter of one tribe recognized by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Statistically it will work
out that eventually there won't be any Native people left
on the BIA rolls, because there's so much intermarriage.
We now have inter-tribal children that are six tribes;
they're full blood, yet they aren't eligible for federal
recognition. It's a very bizarre practice.

EM: How is this controversy about the Indian Arts and
Crafts Law, the question of self-identity, the right of selfdetennination, expressed through art?

TH: Native artists are responding to it in their work. My
friend, photographer Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, has done a
whole series called "Creative Native." She's made a
portrait of herself with her census number across her
mouth so it looks like she's tattooed and censored. She's
written text that accompanies the portrait. Hulleah poses
the question-if she had lived in earlier days, would she
have been like the Nighthawk or Snake Society which
refused to cooperate with the government, or would she
have been a mixed blood, leading the government to the
full bloods? She's focused her recent work on challenging
this law.

EM: This whole question of blood and blending of blood is
such an American issue. To see how regulated it is for
Native Americans is shocking.

EM: As a curator, how do you approach the artist?

TH: I am truly in awe of artists-of their ideas, and the
courage and ability to create ideas of color and vision, and
that their creations will stand on their own, with or
without the artist. I really believe that art, once it is
created, has a life of its own. I don't try to dictate the
work. I just try to gather the people together and let them
continued on page 17
speak their messages.

TH: Yes, it can be very unsettling. Our enrollment
numbers and federal recognition can be a benefit to us on
one level and be harmful on another. It all depends on the
context. For instance, in the context of misconceptions
and stereotypes that Native people are extinct or of the

15

·······················································································•·◄
DIAS DE AMAR-

GUARDABARRANCC

GUARDABARRANCO
CONCERT AND NEW
ALBUM REVIEW
by Larry Kelp

Their whole world has changed in the four years between
Nicaraguan singing duo Guardabarranco's debut album, Si
Buscabas, and their just-issued second recording, Dias de
Amar (Days to Love), and accompanying U.S. tour.
The brother-sister group, Katia and Salvador
Cardenal, began performing together in the cultural
outpouring that followed the 1979 Sandinista revolution in
their homeland. Like their Nueva Candon counterparts in
other Latin American countries, Guardab~rranco used
acoustic instruments and folk styles to express new views
and ideas about contemporary life. But what was true four
years ago has taken on a new frame of reference since the
election of President Violeta Chamorro. And what has
happened to Nueva Candon, its growing use of electric
instruments and Caribbean and other dance rhythms, may
have had an influence on Guardabarranco, but the duo has
changed little, musically, in the face of such vast political
and musical upheaval.

Their road has become harder. In July, no longer
supported by their own government, they undertook a
U.S. concert tour, singing songs from both their albums.
"We really wanted to come to the United States," Katia
told the audience of 400 at Oakland's First Presbyterian
Church on July 27, "because we know that even if the
government is not with us, the people are." The trip was
complicated by myriad visa headaches. To perform here
and in Canada, Katia said, "We've spent half our tour in
embassies."

The group, on its new album, may use darker
imagery in the lyrics, but it is still delivered with a gentle
intimacy unique in Nueva Candon, indeed in most music.
The songs are far from simple, but they are presented with
no adornment, just Katia and Salvador's voices and
Salvador's acoustic guitar for accompaniment. The lyrics
may no longer have such innocent hope as during the
Sandinista era, but they are still filled with hope, now hope
in the face of adversity.

Yet, as they harmonized so sweetly on stage, such
problems melted away. Some of their songs are purely
folk, others ride on catchy pop melodies worthy of the
Beatles. In songs about matters of the heart it felt like
eavesdropping on a confessional, it was so personal and
quiet. But when Katia opened up, and seemed to take on
the whole world and its attendant problems with just her
voice, she sang with an urgency and intensity that is rarely
captured on record. In those moments she sang without
equal, a special voice speaking for all humanity. Her vocal
range, her phrasing and the emotional depth of her
singing seemed more than equal to handling any amount
of adversity, even when set in the context of some of the
most peaceful and gentle music to come out of Nueva
Candon.

"La Libertad" ("Freedom") looks at life from behind
prison bars: "Freedom-a blind child, Freedom-a crazy
lover, Freedom-a swimmer in open sea, Freedom-in
jail, Freedom-in my mind, Freedom-a thinker against
the law." It is dedicated to Nelson Mandela. Other songs
focus on love in many forms, on nature and animals.
While Katia, 28, has a five-year-old daughter and has set
up a musical academy for children, Salvador, 31, who
writes most of the lyrics, has given up city life and now
makes his home on an island on Lake Grenada. His
closeness to nature and the values he sees there come
through in every lyric. Newer songs emphasize the facility
of nature and freedom. Yet even in their delicate melodies,
the pair's performance is filled with strength and resolve to
speak out for these causes.

The Cardenals' approach may seem to go against the
mainstream, but it is clear nothing else is needed to deliver
their vision. Rock star Jackson Browne was so taken with
the pair that he produced their first album. The new Dias
de Amar was recorded in Denmark, and then Browne and a
few bandmates added just a touch of guitar, bass and
percussion to a few of its songs. He's not alone in his

16

························································································•◄
admiration of their lives and music. Country-folk singer
Redwood Cultural Work is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. All
contributions are tax deductible to
the full extent allowable by law.

Nanci Griffith wrote one of her most heartfelt songs, 'The
Wing and the Wheel," inspired by a Canadian tour she did
with Guardabarranco.
Since then the duo has honed its unadorned music
until every line and every vocal nuance carries weight.
Children's hearts and birds serve as metaphors for their
vision of a world devoid of hunger and suffering (one song
on the new album even stabs directly at the American
government: "And if you are going to sing/Of freedom with
such pride/Then also sing that on Christmas/You sent
bombs to the children of Panama") If their lyrics often
reflect the reality of an imperfect world, their music at the
same time offers music so beautiful that it is easy to hope
that their vision is within grasp. T

Our Wish List:

Dias de Amar is new on the Redwood label, and is available on CD and cassette through the Redwood catalog on
page 23.
Lany Kelp is the Oakland Tribune's music critic, and host of
"Sing Out," the folk and political music program on Pacifica
Radio Station KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

Theresa Harlan

T

Travel (frequent flyer) coupons for artist travel
to concerts, and Redwood staff use for fundraising
and conferences. These are extremely helpful to us!

T

Printing donation for catalog, newsletter and
stationery

T

Intern/Volunteer to work on Redwood FestivalSpring '92

T

Copy machine

T

Computer chairs and desk chairs

T

An auto-reverse tape player to hook up to the
phone system, so callers will hear Redwood music

T

Videotape player (VHS)

T

A video camera and playback monitor

Continued from page 15

EM: How did you become involved with Redwood?
TH: I consider myself a lifetime non-profit person. I
believe in non-profits and find personal fulfillment in
working toward a goal that contributes to people's lives. I
left AICA because I wanted to further develop my nonprofit management skills and also make time to write
about Native American contemporary art. The growth and
development of an organization can be extremely tenuous
if not carefully managed. I was very attracted to Redwood
because Redwood seemed so adept at handling these
troublesome areas. I was especially interested in working
in development, since the environment of fundraising is
increasingly shifting away from large government and
foundation cash awards. I was impressed with Redwood
because it has such a broad and diverse base of support.
I was also impressed by Redwood because it is able to
carry out its vision with a positive and careful hand. I
really like working with Susan and the "Redwood Gang."
I am learning a lot. Susan is so eager to share with me. T

Donations of goods and services
to Redwood Cultural Work are
tax-deductible at their current
market value.

17

························································································•◄

Notes from an Artist's
Journal-Holly Near

I receive countless letters bemoaning the fact that I haven't
had the success I deserve, that I have not gotten famous
enough: "Why don't they play you on the radio? ... Why
aren't you on the major night-time talk shows?" Makes me
smile. I love my audience, keeping my best interests (and
theirs) at heart.
However, there is a danger in believing that mainstream success is an appropriate barometer. I search for
the balance between achieving mainstream visibility (i.e.,
wanting my music to be accessible to anyone who might
enjoy it, need it) and maintaining a critical analysis of the
failures of popular media. I do not want to fall prey to
their agenda of bigger is better. My fans and I see that the
dominant music industry is culturally and ideologically
narrow, economically motivated, often socially insensitive,
and offensive. We perceive that the industry lacks vision
and leadership, and has created a void. Yet popular media
reaches the largest number of people. This is disturbing,
given the power and influence of music in our lives.

MISSING HER FRIEND AND MOTHER, ANN, HOLLY
SINGS "ICICLE BLUE."

tives: some jazz, some classical, some folk, some Nueva
Cancion, some world music. But having the time and the
resources to look are hard to come by. Those of us who
have looked and found can pass this music on, and one by
one our discoveries become widespread.
The fact that independent culture has survived and
influenced the lives of millions of people must not be
forgotten in the face of the standards set by commercial
institutions. Just as we mustn't judge every political
gathering by comparing it to a million gathered in Washington or in Central Park, we must not fall prey to
thinking that if an artist does not play stadiums or sell
over a million CDs, they have failed . Precious and unique
communication takes place in small arenas. We lose an
essential part of ourselves if we let someone else decide
what is important.

I have written songs, with no hope of them being
heard, and years later I find that people who were detained
in a Latin American prison heard one of my songs, sung in
a whisper by a fellow prisoner who had learned it from a
solidarity worker. And what of the women who have
heard lesbian love songs around a campfire after the
potential critics have turned in, sung by one brave camp
counselor who knows she is not alone ... and once again,
lives and souls are reassured. What if I had decided not to
write the song because it would not get major radio play?

It is debilitating to think that the world is changed
by large numbers of people. I believe a relatively small
group of people can effect monumental change and not
even know what they have done until quite some time
later. True, large numbers of people give an idea
validity .. . but large numbers of people may not have been
the first to put it forth. At a sporting event, look how few
people start "the wave" until finally most participate. If
we fail to believe this, and then fail to remember it when
the going is tough, we miss a political and creative
opportunity in our lives.

That solidarity worker, that lesbian camp counselor
... they are our radio. They and you have been my radio
and the radio for other progressive artists. You have been
our billboards when you teach one of our songs to your
students at school. You have been our TV specials when
you include one of our songs in your Seder, church
service, wedding, funeral or birth ceremonies. You have
hosted our appearances on late-night TV when you sing
our songs as lullabies to your children, when you play our
records while you make love to your beloved. And you
put us on the charts when you buy our tapes and CDs,
videos and books, when you go to small art theaters to see
our films, when you sit in living rooms and hear our
poetry, when you watch us dance on floors dangerously
splintered, and when you support independent radio and
television stations.

Of course I want to have access to mainstream
television (with millions of people watching) for political
reasons, but also for artistic ones. It would be fun! How
exciting it was to hear Sweet Honey in the Rock sing, to
hear Linda Tillery and Rhiannon sing with Bobby
McFerrin, to see Vickie Randle play congas and sing with
Kenny Loggins-all on "The Arsenio Hall Show." And I
felt so proud of Martina Navratilova when she spoke so
articulately on "Donahue," and how great to hear TV stars
Sheila Kuehl and Dick Sargeant come out on "Geraldo."

For decades people have counted on the radio as a
link to the world. They have not always, if ever, gotten the
whole picture through mainstream programming. This is
tragic and frightening. Those who search can find alterna-

C ontinued ►

18

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ fi

REDWOOD ARTISTS ON THE ROAD

6/20
6/21
8/16

ALTAZOR
4/25
5/2*
5/24
5/1
8/20*

Oakland
Berkeley
Albuquerque
Saratoga
Medford

CA
CA
NM
CA
OR

Vancouver
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Santa Monica
San Diego
Davis
Lethbridge
Edmonton
Saskatoon
Winnipeg
Minneapolis
Waterloo
London
Hamilton
Kingston
Peterborough
Ottawa
Montreal
Peterborough
Portsmouth
Westboro

BC,CAN
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
ALB, CAN
ALB, CAN
SASK, CAN
MANT,CAN
MN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT,CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
CAN
NH
NH
WA

ONT, CAN
IL
AK

RONNIE GILBERT
4/3-5/17

Milwaukee

WI

INTI-ILLIMANI
3/24
3/26-27*
3/28-29,30*
4/1
4/3
4/4
4/5
4/8
4/10
4/11
4/12
4/13
4/15
4/16

FERRON
3/16
3/19-21
3/22
3/27
3/28
3/31
4/29
4/30
5/1
5/2
5/3
5/5
5/6
5/7
5/8
5/9
5/10
5/12
5/14
5/15
5/16

Toronto
Oak Park
Haines

West Lafayette
Chicago
Scottsdale
Hanover
New York
Philadelphia
Eugene
Santa Barbara
Claremont
North Hollywood
Davis
Berkeley
Berkeley

IN
IL
TX
AZ
NH
NY
PA
OR
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA

JUDY SMALL
3/15
3/18
3/20
3/22

Winnipeg
Regina
Calgary
Berkeley

MANT, CAN
SASK, CAN
ALB, CAN
CA

HOLLY NEAR
3/15
3/19
3/20
3/21
3/22
3/26
3/27
3/28
3/29-30
4/1
4/2
4/3
4/4
4/7-8
4/15 & 20
4/21 •
4/22
4/24
6/6
6/7
6/14
8/2-9/27

Holly Near
Co ntinued f rom previous page

These are great moments, and I celebrate them. But they
aren't the only moments.
I read your letters. Do not let our invisibility in the
mainstream diminish what you mean to progressive and
independent artists. It immobilizes the creative spirit to
wallow in a mood of defeat. Of course it feels different
than 20 years ago. The conditions are different. But the
music is still here. It is a disservice to our humanity to be
controlled by hopelessness. Like Toshi Reagon singing
Bernice's song, "you hold your breath for change to come,
we're gone have to carry you out"!* It will be awhile
before peace songs and lesbian love songs are commonplace on Top 40 stations. In the meanwhile, remember you
are our radio . We need you more than ever before, and I
venture to say,.you need us-for what people have ever
survived a nightmare without music? 'Y
* "How Long" by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Grand Rapids
Sarasota
Washington
Raleigh
Oakland
Spring Valley
Nashua
Cambridge
Durham
Toronto
Woodstock
Albany
Lewisburg
Seattle
Oakland
Arcata
Santa Rosa
Kingston
Elmer
Spring Valley
Saratoga
Los Angeles

MI
FL
DC
NC
CA
NY
NH
MA
NH
ONT,CAN
NY
NY
PA
WA
CA
CA
CA
RI
NJ
NY
CA
CA

*indicates tentative dates
For more information call (510) 835-1445 .

For a complete Redwood catalog, write to us at P.O. Box
10408, Oakland, CA 94610.

19

························································································•◄

Chicken Made of Rags

An Interview with Greg Landau,
producer of Redwood's first
children's release, The Story of
the Chicken Made of Rags
by Karen Hester
KH: How did you get interested in recording Chicken
Made of Rags?
GL: The story begins many years ago. My mother had an
uncle who was born in Santiago, Cuba. He used to tell her
stories to put her to sleep. He told her this story about The
Chicken Made of Rags (Chicken). So this story got recycled
and told to my sister and myself when we were kids. In
the early '70s, my mother, Nina Serrano, with Judy Binder,
wrote a play called The Chicken Made of Rags, which
played all around the Bay Area, and in many Bay Area
schools. When I returned to the Bay Area, after living for
many years in Nicaragua and working with Soul Vibrations, I talked to Nina about reviving Chicken and recording it because Soul Vibes was going to be in the United
States and they were interested in doing it. I had also
talked to other local musicians who were very excited
about recording it.

THE "CHICKEN" FAMILY, FROM L. TOR.CAMILO LANDAU, PHIL SERRANO, NLNA SERRANO, GREG
LANDAU, VALERIE LANDAU.

We asked the actors to use natural voices rather than
fake cartoony voices, maintaining their different accents,
typical regional and ethnic accents. In this way, we tried to
enrich the child's listening experience. We also used a
story that children could identify with, about something
that's going to help them in their life. It's a story about
how you get tricked all the time and you can't always trust
powerful, established authority figures, so you have to
question-you have to be careful.

So my idea was to use Chicken as a way of creating a
multi-cultural narrative that talked about the way people
live in the United States, about the different kinds of ethnic
and cultural identities, different kinds of sounds and what
they mean, the different kinds of work people do. I looked
for actors who spoke in English with different kinds of
accents. In the musical arrangements we also tried to
reflect a whole different range of styles, from country
music, rock'n'roll, to Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, rap,
jazz, blues, cumbia-all different kinds of music. We
wanted to arrange it in a way to make a children's record
that wouldn't talk down to children, but would try to be
something they would be interested in, something of
quality, something very creative, that would inspire
children to look into other cultures and try to understand
the variety of cultures surrounding them.

KH: This was really a family affair. You had your mom,
your uncle, sister and nephew all working on it. How did
you all work together?
GL: Well, basically in a low-budget operation, you have to
look at who is going to work for cheap or for free, and the
first place to start is with your family, because they can't
say no. That wasn't the only reason-they are all very
talented people. It worked out very well because the
project was close to all of us. I had the momentum of
producing the Soul Vibrations record and working with
Soul Vibes, and that they were there, so it gave us the
momentum to carry out this recording, too, which meant
hours and weeks in the studio, editing and recording,
mixing, writing arrangements, fifteen singers and musicians, chord charts.

KH: You're also a videographer and a parent and uncle.
You know the power of TV to captivate kids and also to
anesthetize their imaginations. How do we get kids to turn
off the TV and listen to music instead?
GL: I think a cassette is something that will help children a
lot in developing their creativity and imagination. The
problem with TV, because it's sound and image, is it
doesn't leave anything to the children's imagination. They
hear a voice and they see who's saying it. It's sort of

20

························································································•◄
who is really struggling for a living. At this particular
moment in American history there are a lot of ways to
interpret what all these birds do out on the street and why
they're so eager to go to the hotel for a grand banquet.
KH: Because they're homeless and need to eat something?

GL: Some kids have seen that. They see it in their own
lives and they understood clearly what's going on. It
wasn't what was intended by the authors, but as times
change, people get more and more like these birds, out
hustling on the street. People will go to great lengths to
have a nice dinner.
KH: Let's talk about the educational market and what your
and your mom's and sister's hopes are for getting Chicken
into the classroom.
GL: One thing we want to do is develop a workbook to go
along with the cassette to help teachers use it as an
educational tool. The workbook would explain some of the
things that are going on in terms of the music, the narrative, the story line that could help the teacher to make
certain points, to teach certain lessons, using Chicken as a
form of entertainment. It would be a tool to teach about
music, theater, and cooperation. There are a lot of lessons
that could be drawn from this story. T

OUR FIRST CHILDREN'S RELEASE-ON
CASSETTE FROM REDWOOD.

drawing the map and pictures for them right there and not
allowing them to develop their images and apply them to
their own experience. With a recording, the good thing is
that children hear a voice and picture in their own minds
who that person is or what they might look like. They
develop the whole stage and scenery and action in their
heads if you can give them the pieces to put together.
Even the sounds, too-you don't see the musicians, so you
just imagine these birds, singing and playing. I'm very
much in favor of radio and radio drama because I think it
helps kids to develop their creativity and imagination in
ways that TV doesn't.

The Story of the Chicken Made of Rags is available on
cassette, and can be ordered on page 23.

Karen Hester is the Publicity Director of Redwood Cultural
Work.
Greg Landau is a musician, record and video producer and
Ph.D candidate in Communications. He lived in Nicaragua
and worked with Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Mancotal for
nine years and has worked with Soul Vibrations since 1987.

KH: I have a 7-year-oldfriend Sabrina who loves this
cassette. Have you had much experience seeing how kids
are reacting to it?

Getting More Than
One Mailing?

GL: Yeah, I've given out copies to different kids and
watched them listen to it. We listen to their critiques.

Redwood is trying to keep up with our friends and
supporters-especially when you move or change
your address. If you are getting more than one
mailing or want to change your address with
Redwood, please send in the mailing label(s) and
tell us which one is correct. T

One of the characters that was kind of interesting
was the goose. The goose picks up aluminum cans and
bottles on the street. And some kids saw the goose as the
garbage collector that would push a broom like a street
cleaner-some kids saw the goose as a homeless person
walking around with a shopping cart picking up cans and
bottles. It was interesting because depending on where
kids live and what they see, they would interpret the
characters in different ways. Take the swan that dances in
the park. Some of them saw her as the elegant ballerina
and some saw her as a person who dances in the park,

21

························································································•◄

RCW Memberships

$25 Individual Membership
Includes: 5% discount on all catalog items for one year and
subscription to Varied Voices.

NEW VIDEO
AVAILABLE FROM
REDWOOD

$35 Friendship Membership
One free record/cassette or CD; 10% discount on every
item in the catalog for one year; and subscription to Varied
Voices.
$50 Contributing Membership
Two free records/cassettes or CDs; poster; 10% discount
on every item in the catalog for one year; and subscription
to Varied Voices.
$100 Supporting Membership
Four free records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
20% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$500 Sustaining Membership
Fifteen records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
25% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$1000 Redwood Benefactor
A complete library of Redwood music; Redwood T-Shirt; a
complimentary copy of every new Redwood release that
year; 25% discount on every item in the catalog; and
subscription to Varied Voices.
$2000 Redwood Presenter
As a Redwood Presenter you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice. You will also receive a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary copy of each new release
as it becomes available, along with your subscription to
Varied Voices.
$5000 Redwood Producer
As a Redwood Producer you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice, along with backstage privileges. Special recognition of your support will be made within album projects
and/or concerts you help to produce. You will also receive
a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary
copy of each new release as it becomes available, along
with your subscription to Varied Voices and other special
Redwood gifts.

Festival T-Shirts
We have beautiful commorative t-shirts from our
1991 Festival! The shirts are designed by Bay
Area artist Nancy Hom. The design represents
music of peace and hope from Redwood artists
the world over. The 3-color design (teal, red and
white) on a black t-shirt is a 100% Beefy-Tin a
roomy size XL Available from Redwood for $15.
See the order form to order. T

All memberships are tax-deductible
less the value of the free items.
22

......

♦♦......

•• •• ••• • • • • • •• •

,~~l~,~~lil lifilil l l~l ~If ...................................,
OK

M 001 111 633

I

~

1

Univllflfr11r~111i1fjjijj

Varied Voices Order Form
Sign me up to be a Redwood member so I can continue to receive Varied Voices
(Check membership type below-see preceding page for description.).
Please send me a catalog to order my free items.
Redwood Cultural Work An~ual Membership Program
_ $25. Individual
_ $500. Sustaining
_ $35. Friendship
$1000. Benefactor
_ $50. Contributing
$2000. Presenter
_ $100. Supporting
$5000. Producer

Amount$

_I am already a member. Use my additional tax-deductible gift to help
support the Challenge Campaign.
Featured Releases in this issue
Qty
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, Cass. $9.98
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, CD $14.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, Cass. $9.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, CD $14.98
_ CHICKEN MADE OF RAGS, Many, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, CD $14.98

Amount$

Music and more from Holly Near
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Hardback $19.95
Amount$
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Paperback $10.00
_ SINGER IN THE STORM, LIFE AND MUSIC, Audio 2-tape set, $15.95
_ SINGING FOR OUR LIVES, Video $29.95

_ Redwood Festival Commemorative T-Shirt, $15.00
Subtotal $ _ __
Membership#_ _ _ _ _ _ _ discount
8.25% Sales Tax (CA only) Does not apply to contributions.
Postage and Handling (see below)
TOTAL $
Method of Payment
Check enclosed
_ Bill my: __ VISA
MasterCard
Card# _ _ __
Signature _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Exp.Date _ _ _ _ __

Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ State _ _ Zip _ _ _ _ Phone(_) _ _ _ _ _ __
Postage and Handling
1st Class/UPS $3.50 for the 1st item, $0.50 each add'l item. Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Rush Service/UPS Second Day $7.00 for the 1st item, $1.00 each add'l item.
Allow up to 1 week for delivery-same for international orders sent via surface mail.
Send To
Redwood Cultural Work, P.O. Box 10408, Oakland, CA 94610 or call 1-800-888-7664.

23

························································································•◄

To Our Special Friends:
Last fall Redwood was awarded a California Arts
Council Challenge grant of $25,000! This is our
first grant of this kind and reflects the opinion of
the Council that our work is of the highest
artistic quality and significance. This kind of
grant usually goes to well-established arts companies who have long received the support of the
state.
In order to receive the $25,000, we must
raise $50,000 over and above what we raised last
year.
We are so happy with the response we have
received so far. We send our love and heartfelt
thanks to all of our friends who have contributed
to our Challenge Campaign. We are now more
than half way toward reaching our goal, but we
still need more contributions to make the necessary match. We are asking you to consider
joining our Challenge Campaign, or to make a
second gift if you've already joined. Help us with
this special campaign now-so we can show the
state of California how important Redwood is to
its members and friends. Just check the appropriate box on the order form inside. Thanks!

Inspired by a weekend reading of Fire in
the Rain ... Singer in the Stonn, Rain Burns
was moved to lend us a super Macintosh.
Thank you Rain, computer life at Redwood will never be the same.
Many individuals have made contributions, large and small to Redwood's
work. We are very appreciative of each
gift. We'd like to especially thankHarriet Goldhor Lerner, Marion Gibson,
Maya Miller, Jo-Lynne Worley, Jean
Sutherland, Bette Shulman and Holly
Near.
And for your generous support of
our work, special thanks to the City of
Oakland-Oakland Redevelopment
Agency, California Arts Council,
Rockefeller Foundation, Alameda County
Art Commission, San Francisco Foundation Zellerbach Foundation and the
'
Columbia Foundation 'Y

Non-Profit Organization
U.S. Postage

PAID
Permit No. 489
Oakland, CA

Redwood

Ma,- i an HLi 1scy

CULTURAL WORK

11:::::7 N. l•J. ::::1st.
Oklahoma City □ 1=:: 7:3118

POST OFFICE BOX 10408
OAKLAND, CA 94610

TIME-DATED MATERIAL -

@ ·~

DO NOT DELAY



h op"'rty cf the Center

VOICES
Introducing

Elizabeth Min,
New Artistic Director
A Conversation with Holly Near
Elizabeth Min has joined Redwood Cultural Work as Artistic
Director. Min comes to Redwood from her position as
Executive Artistic Director of Oakland Youth Chorus, where
she built one of the most innovative and diverse arts companies for young singers in the U.S. She founded the Bay Area
Women's Philharmonic, and was its music director and
conductor for the orchestra's first four seasons. Min is
interviewed by Redwood founder, artist, board member and
outgoing Artistic Director Holly Near.
HN: I'd like you to talk about some doors that you have
passed through to get to where you are today. What are
your family traditions, your root connections? What got you
into music-thinking the way you think-living where you
live?
EM: (Laughing) I've spent thousands of dollars in therapy
on those subjects.
HN: Were you raised in California?
EM: No, I was raised in Colorado-born in Minneapolis. I
was adopted-a fact I found out just a little more than a
year ago-so at the moment, I am engaged in a birth
parent search. I've located my birth mother and she's about
to become a real person to me at any moment.

In this Issue
T

Close Up with Altazor

T

Exciting Spring Events
and Artists on Tour

ELIZABETH MIN

HN: Do you know her heritage, where she comes from?
EM: She's of English, French and German descent. My
father is Javanese and an Indonesian citizen. She's from
the U.S. but he's never been here. They met in Europe
after WWII when she worked with the Quakers and he
was a student. He eventually returned to Indonesia to
work in agriculture. I have one letter from her where she
chronicles their relationship, describing how they were
very much in love, but when she found herself pregnant in
Europe in 1953-1 was born in 1954-she said it was such
Continued on next page

T

New Redwood Music
from Marcel Khalife and
Guardabarranco

T

Our First Children's
Release

PUBLISHED BY REDWOOD CULTURAL WORK T

T

More than Music from
Holly Near

... and more.

VOL 1, NUMBER 3 T

SPRING 1992

························································································•◄
a heady experience, traveling and working in different

Varied Voices

Redwood Cuttural Work

11~,
1
m

places in post-war Europe, that she just had to go home
and get grounded. She couldn't deal with going to live in
Indonesia right after the revolution. He really wanted to
get married but she just couldn't do it. At the time, she was
24 and he was 32 and he didn't speak much Engltsh so
they communicated mainly in German.

Varied Voices has a history in the documentation of culture.
Varied Voices of Black Women was the title of the first national
tour of black women's music, organized by Roadwork, Inc., in
1978. Through this journal of art and politics, we want to
follow in this tradition, bringing you the voices of women and
men who are carriers of culture, toward the development of a
richer, multicultural society.

HN: And then you were adopted by people over here who
lived in Minneapolis?
EM: No, they lived in Colorado. My adopted father was
Hawaiian and Korean and my adopted mother is Caucasian. They were looking for mixed-race children to adopt.

The mission of Redwood Cultural Work is to produce
performing arts which promote international peace and human
understanding for all people by presenting artists, primarily
women, who represent a wide spectrum of cultures and artistic
traditions.

HN: That's a lot of new information to take in. You have to
tell me how much of this you don't want printed because it's
so new. It means so much to so many people.

We carry out our mission by

EM: Yes, I've thought about this and decided it's something personal that I would like to share. Not just the
whole search for my own identity, which is another story
for another time, but the whole mixed race thing, which
for me personally is a really big issue. The more I delve
into this whole adoption thing, the more I find especially
people of color discovering their blended heritages. With
one foot in one culture and the other in another-where
do we fit? What does this mean about being an American?

T Presenting an annual season of concerts, and by
recording and distributing music of significant
national and international composers and
performers whose work illuminates cultural and
social issues of our time

T Commissioning and presenting collaborative
new works involving artists of diverse cultural
perspectives

T By undertaking cultural advocacy work locally
and nationally

HN: Do you think there's something strange about living in
America that actually makes for both confusion of identity
but also an acceptance of mixed identity, as opposed to if
you lived in a very identifiable culture and you were the
outcast? This country is considered such a melting pot of
cultures even though it is not an equitable one.

Redwood Cultural Work's programs are rooted in
nearly 20 years of national leadership in the field of socially
relevant and culturally diverse music. This experience reflects
the profound ways that music and culture empower, change
and enrich people's lives.
Volunteers: A very special heartfelt thank you to all of
you who so generously give your time, energy and resources to
Redwood. We couldn't do this work without you!

EM: I think it's an accepted thing for people of mixed
European ancestry. My whole life I've heard white people
say, "Well everybody's a mixture of something." But for
blended people of color, it's a matter of visibility and
acceptance in the culture.

Varied Voices is published bi-annually by Redwood
Cultural Work with the help of volunteers and friends . We're
grateful for the generous gifts of time, energy and expertise
from Peter Kiehm and Mimi Heft. Our thanks to you all.
Editors: Susan Freundlich and Joanie Shoemaker
Managing Editor: Peter Kiehm
Editorial Assistants: Jan Jue, Theresa Harlan, Bea Andrade,
'
Charmaine Curtis
Production Art & Illustration: Mimi Heft
Printing: Alonzo
Board of Directors
Dulce Arguelles
Leslie Cagan
Helen Cohen
Charmaine Curtis
Jo Durand

Lisa Honig
Angela Johnson
Holly Near
Gus Newport
Robbie Osman

Staff Members
Bea Andrade
Judy Evans
Cynthia Frenz
Susan Freundlich
Development
Director

Theresa Harlan
Susan Sage
Karen Hester
Kathleen Sullivan
Joanie Shoemaker,
Angela Johnson
Executive
JanJue
Elizabeth Min,
Director
Artistic Director

HN: What did you think you were?

EM: I always checked "other" on forms because nobody
ever told me what I was-the shame was pretty deep. All I
could really go on was how I was treated, and I knew I was
treated differently than white kids, that was very clear.
When I began playing the piano in public at about age 8,
people started telling me that I had an Asian name, or they
would say, "Are you Japanese or Chinese or what?" That
was just like a piece of information to me. "Oh. I'm Asian,
OK" So, I knew that I was different from kids around me,
although I went to a very racially mixed school system in
elementary school. .. very very diverse.

Patrice Perkins
Joanie Shoemaker
Hugh Vasquez
Jo-Lynne Worley,
President

There were a lot of Mexican kids. And AfricanAmerican kids, and Puerto Rican kids, but not any other
Asians.

2

.......................................... ...................... .........................,
from an early age that I really didn't have time to get
deeply into other styles. I was under the influence of a very
strong teacher-which I'm thankful for-but she filled all
my time with the classical thing. But, I've always liked
everything else, and I've certainly always wanted to play a
lot of different kinds of music.

HN: So people probably assumed you were Mexican, except
for your name?
EM: Yes. That's often been the case. Even when I lived in
Mexico, until about 30 minutes into the conversation
(laughing) .

HN: How does that affect your music?

HN: Do you think that along the way you connected any
kind of expression of humanitarianism to wordless music?
What is your emotional connection to what you played? As
you developed as a person and started to have a world view
and politics, how did you connect that to being an artist, a
conductor -not only in your childhood but also as an
adult?

EM: In my work as a conductor it's been an innate thing
with me-I always want to explore the putting together of
various elements and seeing what new whole is created. I
guess it's true that in my work as a conductor, "blending"
is a major part of what I've been doing.

HN: Do you feel that because people applied an Asian
stereotype to how they saw you, that stereotyping is what
directed you towards classical music, the way black kids
sometimes feel they get pushed into sports?

EM: Since I was a musician from such a young age, music
was always an extremely emotional thing for me. It was my
personal expression-where the real power of the self
came from. Because of the restrained atmosphere in which
I grew up, I didn't express raw out-and-out emotion in
other ways. Playing the real hard-core classical repertoire
when you're 10, 11 and 12 is very, very powerful. It's very
emotional and taps into deep, deep feeling-the connections of the harmonies and melodies, the different styles
and just the absolute power and timelessness of the music
itself. It's also a very physical kind of thing. The music I've
always liked best is most grounded to dance, the more
physical, rather than the more cerebral, intellectual side of
classical music. I would express lots of emotions, the
whole range. Sometimes I would perform and people
would say, "Oh, that was so beautiful," and I'd be thinking,
God, that was total out-and-out anger. I was just tearing
the hell out of the piano, how did they miss it?

EM: No, although I remember a teacher of mine saying
"since you want to be a musician it's good you're Asianall the most famous classical musicians are either Asian or
Jewish." That kind of talk went right over my head. It
wasn't until much later that I even understood what she
was talking about.

HN: Stereotypes add so much confusion for people, because
there's often something in a stereotype one can extract
pride from, right? There's absolutely no reason why a black
kid can't feel proud about being a great basketball player or
dancer. And there's no reason why an Asian community
can't feel really proud of how many Asian musicians have
surfaced.
EM: Yes, I find that in my work with Oakland Youth
Chorus. I spend a lot of time with the group I direct
there-Vocal Motion-they're 14 to 21 years in age, all
very bright and talented, and from all different types of
backgrounds-economic, social, racial. The Asian kids and
the black kids really talk about this issue. We'll be riding
in the van to a concert somewhere, and they get deeply
into this whole discussion. It usually comes up around
school-one of the Asian kids is particularly strong in
math, and one of the black kids will say, "Why are Asian
kids so good in math?" Another Asian will say, 'Tm not,
I'm being tutored in it." They get deeply involved in trying
to figure out why these differences appear to be going on.
They haven't come up with a solution yet, though I'm
waiting. If anybody can figure it out, they can.

HN: Very few people have an easy time saying that rage is
beautiful. Maybe what they meant to say was, "I find rage,
when it's not violent, passionate." We don't have a
language for it, especially for women who let strength and
power and resistance show.
EM: In music, there's so much power in silence. I found
that in conducting the Women's Philharmonic. When a
sixty-piece orchestra takes a full half-note rest, that can be
a moment of extreme emotion and expressiveness.

HN: I love ballad singers who dare to leave space. When I
listen to contemporary pop music, it's so busy. Endless. And
if it's not the voice, it's the synthesizer, and if it's not the
synth, it's the drum. I want to scream and say, "Stop!" So
now, if you had a fantasy piece of something that you would
conduct or commission, would it be connected to a spiritual
or political idea? Pablo Casals seemed to make a connection
between his commitment to humanitarianism and playing
the cello. It is a question for some music students-"If I do
non-verbal music, how can I be part of the musical
expression for peace and justice?"

HN: You've worked a lot in classical music, both as a pianist
and as a conductor. Was there ever a point where you
questioned whether you wanted to do a different style? Has
it always been classical music that you've pursued, until
lately?
EM: I've always been interested in lots of different kinds of
music. Growing up, I was so active playing and performing

Continued on page 8

3

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Close Up with Altazor
by Helen Cohen

Altazor, the nation's only women's nueva
cancion ensemble, composes and performs
music based on the indigenous instruments and
melodies of Chile, the Andes, Venezuela,
Argentina, and the Caribbean. The members
of Altazor-Dulce Arguelles, Lichi Fuentes,
Jackeline Rago and Vanessa Wang-raise
their voices in opposition to social injustice
throughout South and Central America,
clearly connecting the conditions of people of
color in the United States and throughout the
world.
HC: One of the things that has always been
so moving to me about Altazor is the
blending of your different musical and
cultural influences. I'm very interested in
hearing about your backgroundsculturally, politically, socially and
musically. How do those elements feed into
your music and the work that you do together?

THE MEMBERS OFALTAZOR:JACKELINE RAGO, LICHI FUENTES, VANESSA WANG,
AND DULCE ARGUELLES.

Lichi: Yes, when I was five, one of my sisters was studying
guitar and I wanted to play guitar, so I started watching
her. I learned the first chords just by watching her. I never
really studied guitar. Later, I took some lessons. I do my
best. I really like the instrument so I practice a lot. I have
been playing guitar since I was five years old; I always did
something musical in school. I formed a group with three
girls and two boys in high school. And like San Fernando
and the little towns around it, all the schools had festivals
every year. So we went school to school, participating in
the festivals-and we won all of them.

Lichi: I come from a family that is very musical. We
weren't professional musicians in my family, but we always
sang and played instruments. Music was the basic, the
point where everyone was united. It's still like that today.

I was born in Chile and grew up in a town called San
Fernando. We spent our summers in the countryside
singing around a fire with friends, participating in festivals
that we created with the people who were on vacation. It
was sort of like the tradition of my town and the little
towns around it. In Chile it happens a lot on the beach or
the countryside, people who go there to spend the summer
prepare activities-singing is one of the things that is very
common.

HC: That's great/ Was the music that you played and sang
then an important influence on the music you're doing with
Altazor?
Lichi: Not really. I used to sing songs by the Spanish
singer Rafael-and a lot of music from Spain. And then
my taste changed when I discovered Juan Manuel Serrat
from Spain. His music was sort of like popular music but
with a different concept because it included social issues.
This was when I was 11 and I started to know about
Violetta Parra-she was already a popular singer, yet I
wasn't familiar with her. The political situation in Chile
was kind of intense, I was aware of the different political
parties. I had a brother who belonged to a party of the left,
so I began to identify more with the social issues they were
raising. As a result, my taste in music changed a lot.

HC: Folk music, mostly?
Lichi: Folk music, popular music. It depends-whoever is

there sings what they want. In my family we used to sing a
lot of popular music from Argentina. My sisters like samba
a lot. We used to sing samba with lots of harmony because
we were so many brothers and sisters. That's how I got
used to doing that.
HC: Argentinean samba is different from Brazilian samba,
which is what we are more familiar with, right?
Lichi: Argentinean sambas are sort of romantic songslove songs. They talk about the countryside. The rhythm
is totally different from the Brazilian samba.

Jackie: In my case I started playing music when I was 12
years old. Like Lichi described in Chile, in Venezuela the
same thing happened. Every school had what was called
an estudiantina. An estudiantina is a group of students

HC: Did you learn to play instruments then?

4

························································································•◄
cuatro and mandolin. Then I studied classical, and that
who play folkloric instruments. From primary school on
was the first time I went away from the total folkloric
-thing. Because these other musicians were trained in jazz, I
learned a lot from them. Playing in Altazor is the first time
I got involved with political and social themes in music. I
wasn't exposed to political music in the same way as Lichi
because the political situation in Venezuela w~ different.
In Venezuela, my generation was living in a free democratic political situation and not exposed to political
change at that time. Venezuela has been a democracy for a
long time. We don't have the same political problems; we
have political problems, but not as extreme or recent, so
my generation didn't get so involved politically.

to today I've been studying the cuatro, the mandolin and
percussion. When I was 12, I studied with a group with
kids of all ages from 9 to 13. I played percussion and
cuatro.
HC: This was a group you started?
Jackie: I started it with a friend of mine, Roberto. We

grew up together from kindergarten and always played
music together. He's also a professional musician now.
Roberto and I worked together for a long time. We had a
theater group; we wrote the pieces, we made the costumes, we performed in theaters. Only comedy; of
course-we were the clowns! We did this until we went to
high school. Then we went to separate high schools, but
still kept playing mandolin and cuatro in the studio.

This style with Altazor is good for me. What I do
with Altazor is bring what I know of Venezuelan music.
Dulce: I grew up listening to Cuban music at home. As
far as playing music, I started taking lessons at age 10 or
11. I studied classical guitar, and performed as a soloist
and in duets. After college I explored electronic music and
composition. When I moved out to the Bay Area, I came
in contact with musicians who played Latin American
music and music from other parts of the world. That was
very exciting to me-I started to realize the power that
music has to move, to teach and to make people feel good.
I had been affected by other people's music and I wanted
to be involved in music that carried a message.

Then I graduated high school and studied at the
Conservatory of Music in Caracas. I studied classical
mandolin for two years. I also studied background music
for theater, but I never abandoned the music, never. One
of the reasons that helped me not to abandon music was
that in a country like Venezuela, everywhere you go there
is music. You ride public transportation and the driver has
music playing full volume. So you are always singing.
You walk downtown and all the stores have their own
music-it's crazy. They have stereos and they put the
speakers out on the streets.

Vanessa: It's kind of a funny question for me because I am

HC: Is the music that you hear on the streets and buses
popular, contemporary music? I'm curious-what brought
you back to folk music or folk traditions?

from the United States and I was born here. My parents
were born here and I don't come from a Latin background,
and I'm playing Latin music. I mean people seem to liave a
problem associating me with being from the United States.
I always get people asking the typical question, "Where are
you from?" And I say, "I'm from here." "Yeah, but really,
you know." "Yeah, I'm from here. I am really from here."
And people react with comments like, "'Oh, you speak
English so well?" "Well, yeah, I'm from here." And so
culturally maybe it needs a little more explanation of why
I'm doing this.

Jackie: You know what, I never "decided" to be a musi-

cian. My family always asked me what I wanted to study,
and I would look at them like they were silly. What are
. you asking me-music! They always supported me and
gave me the instruments I needed. But they never put me
in a private music class. I asked my dad, please, I want to
get registered in music school, and I don't want to go to
high school. And he told me I was crazy. "If you want to
be a professional musician, first you go to high school, and
then you study music." So I studied music at night and
attended high school during the day.

I've played music ever since I was pretty young. I
started playing piano when I was seven. I played classical
music, popular music and all the stuff that was going on in
the the late '60s and '70s. You know, everybody had their
steel-stringed guitars and played Joni Mitchell songs. It
wasn't until ,ater that I got into Latin music.

I always had that one focus of being committed to
music without knowing why. Then I decided to come here
and learn English and go to music school. Because in
Venezuela ten years ago you could go to the conservatory,
but you didn't have a major faculty to get a B.A. in music.
The only_place to concentrate on music was here or
Europe. I don't know, maybe in Africa or other countries,
too. So I decided to come here, and I went to Holy Names
College to study English and then study the Koday
program. I didn't like it. It wasn't what I was looking for. I
always dreamed of being in a group of folk musicians. You
know, first I studied folkloric music and I always played

I left the music program at UC Berkeley and wanted
to do something less formal, not so uptight, and with more
social relevance. I started playing music with a couple of
friends who played Irish and English traditional music,
which was fun. We didn't read music, just learned
everything by ear. It was very social music, and there was
always dancing. It was a very different experience for me,
Continued on next page

5

.........................................................................................,
HC: Can you give an example of that?

musically, to play socially instead of being in a little box
where you are playing by yourself. So that was one stepgoing into playing traditional music.

Vanessa: Well, some of it has been communicated to us
from the outside about the feeling that our performances
have. One example was when we did a split concert with
the group Illapu from Chile. People told us about how
different the energy on stage was and that there was a very
clear kind of gender split, they being an all-male group and
we being an all-female group. There is a different kind of
approach. We work collectively in the group. There isn't
anybody who has to be the leader or someone saying, "I
get to do all the solos. " We share that kind of stuff.

Later, I started to take a voice class in jazz, but it
didn't move me. The lyrics to the songs that we were
learning didn't do anything for me. I didn't feel inspired
by them or like I could identify with what they were
saying. I really wanted to look for some music that Ifelt
something about. That's when a friend of mine invited me
to join the La Pena Community Chorus, which was my
exposure to Nueva Candon in a more tangible way than
before. And so that's how I got interested. And I felt like it
was music that I could feel and that had meaning for me.
From there I started learning instruments from Latin
America at La Pena and hanging around with people who
play this kind of stuff. Along with that I was becoming
more politically involved as well and getting more and
more interested in things that were going on in Latin
America-specifically in Chile.

HC: Do you notice a clear division of labor or leadership?
Vanessa: No, and also there isn't any competition. I have
experience in other groups where there have been big ego
problems going on or people who feel that they can't share.
I'm not saying that men can't share! It's just that there is a
different kind of dynamic. Definitely. Like Lichi was
saying, it would change our dynamic to have men in the
group .

HC: How did Altazor get started as a group?

Dulce: I didn't realize the impact we would have on
audiences until we started performing in different parts of
the country. People come up to us after concerts-women,
men and older women, to tell us that they're moved by
seeing women holding and playing instruments. I'm
impressed by the amount of girls, not boys, who ask for
our autographs. This indicates to me their hunger for
female role models in music.

Vanessa: It started from Lichi's workshop. Lichi had a
performing Nueva Candon ensemble at La Pena Cultural
Center in Berkeley. When the workshop ended, we felt we
wanted to keep going, or at least some of us did. We had
been doing this for a couple of years, it was nice, and we
wanted to keep it going. So a small group of us stayed
together to keep performing, and it evolved into this group
we have now.

Jackie: There was just one more thing I wanted to say
about the question of being a women's band: What I don't
like about the identification of a women's group is that it
makes it sound like we're just for women, which we aren't.
We're for everybody, and it kind of makes me angry
because, for example, I was in a record store the other day
in the Latin American section, and our music wasn't there.
I went over to the women's music section and there we
were. I thought, "What is this? " It really bothered me that
there was this ghettoization of music by women. Like
somehow only women are going to be interested in this
music or that it's music just for women. I don't know
what it is!

HC: How does it feel to be an all-women's group doing
Nueva Cancion? Is it part of your identity and sense of
purpose-in terms of the music you choose to perform, or
how you're perceived by other musicians?
Lichi: It wasn't the purpose of the group to be an allwomen's group at the beginning. It just happened out of
this workshop . The women felt better playing together. I
have played with other groups-it wasn't so much the fact
that in this group we were all women-we just got along
well. The group has an identity, and I think it would kill
that identity if we had a male in our group. It's not that we
don't play music with men. As a group we have a sound, a
dynamic in the group; we have sort of come to an agreement of taste. You get used to each other. Maybe someday
a guy will appear and he will fit fine . It's not like we're
exclusively an all-women band. But the way I see it now,
it would be out of place.

HC: You wouldn't find a group that was all men in the
men's section, right?
Vanessa: Right! Where's the men's music section? The
whole rest of the store is the men's music section!
HC: Or the assumption, as you just said, that you're singing
just for a women's audience.

Vanessa: I think being an all-women group cuts both
ways. On the one hand there are definitely gender differences in the way people work. I have worked in mixed
groups. I think there is a way that we work together that
has to do with who we are individually, but also it has to
do with being women.

Vanessa: That's the part I really dislike-to be pigeonholed in that way when nobody seems to ask men's
groups, "Well, what does it feel like to be in an all-men's
group? " It's just taken for granted, but women always get

6

························································································•◄
asked that if it happens to be an all-women group. EveryJackie: This is a dream I don't think is so impossible. I
body feels like they are trying to make some point. No,
we're not making some point, we're just doing what we
want to do .

think we have a good message, a good sound, and my
dream is to bring this to Latin America or as far as we can.
In my country, society gives you a role. You are a
woman, so you have to be married and have children. I
have seen in my country and close to me in my family a lot
of frustration. A lot of intelligent women who are very
dominated by society.

Jackie: I think it is also very important to notice that in
Latin America and I think in the United States, Europe,
everywhere in the world , but especially in Latin America
because that's the example and the experience I have, most
of the instruments we play have been male dominated.
Drums are played by men; flutes, guitars, and most of the
strong lyrics are written by men. And in terms of instrumentation, men have always been on top and have always
put the women down. I have received comments like,
"Wow, for being a woman, you play a very good bongo! "

If I could go to Latin America or my own country
and show that women can have different lives. One of the
things that I personally like about our concerts is that
everybody participates. It's great! A friend of mine went to
a concert and saw that our music moves people. At the
end of the show everybody was dancing! That's the
purpose of the music-if we touch your skin and make
you move. T

I started playing music when I was five years old. I
didn't have a consciousness of men and women, I was a
kid. I was a kid who loved music. Whether I was a man or
woman, I'm this person that I am. And I chose to play the
bongo. When I was just a kid, it didn't matter. I never
related music with gender. I think it is a big mistake to see
with that prejudice, but you cannot blame people because
they are accustomed to seeing that. For example, at the
beginning it was hard for me to open my legs and put the
bongo between them, because it was not customary. It was
very difficult. I imagined playing the cajon. It's true, there
is something about being strong to play the skin of a
drum. You can always play soft, but you can also play
strong with female energy.

Altazor's music is available on cassette and CD.
Order blank is on page 23.
Helen Cohen is chair of the Board of RCW; singer and
percussionist in Vocolot, a women's a cappella folk ensemble
based in Oakland; participant in nueva cancion workshops at
La Peiia Cultural Work since 1985, where she first met and
played music with members of Altazor; works in the field of
community economic development providing technical
assistance to community land trusts; and other nonprofit
housing development and employment projects.

So I think people have to understand that the world
is changing and women should take over a little bit more,
to balance the male energy that has been dominating not
just in music, but in everything we do. I think it's great
that Altazor is all women and presents the message and the
instrumentation for people to know that it is possible for
women to do things like this .
We are in a territory in which people are more open.
If we go down to, say, Venezuela, it is pretty open; in Chile
it is a little more difficult to be to be an all-female group.
That's what Lichi has said all the time. We are as good as
the other groups which are all male. We are not competing; we just want to do a good job.
HC: Let me just ask a fun, thought-provoking question to
wrap up. If you could put yourself out there in whatever
way, if you could just choose what you wanted to be and
there were no obstacles in terms of money, limitations on
your time, children you are raising. What would you like to
be doing ·a t this point?
Dulce: I'd like to be able to play for the youth, to reach
young people and help them become aware of more
musical options than the glossy narcissistic images that
society feeds them through MTV.

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Elizabeth Min

consumer at all, which makes it all the more of a challenge
for me to create experiences and events that have participation. I'm very interested in participation and building
together. I'm looking for ways for any work that is created
and generated here to have a really long life, to go through
a lot of hands and many different places and be used in a
variety of ways.

continued from pagt 3

EM: Beauty has tremendous power for transformation.
What I'm interested in doing now is work that really
explores something about culture-building within our
society. Building of culture and the idea of cultural rights
for people is very all-encompassing and takes in political,
educational and economic factors. It embraces those and
goes beyond. It is also a place where people can choose
how they are going to act, because they're working off
inspiration. I'm interested in doing work that challenges us
to act, to not be passive consumers of whatever pablum
culture is put in front of our faces, but to build ourselves-not only things we're going to feed ourselves, but what
we're going to leave. I've done a lot of work with young
people, so my heart is really tuned into what they're going
to be ... not only what they can pick up and run with, but
that there's an environment where they can be creative
together.

HN: What is your vision for Redwood? And what will your

role be in creating it?

EM: I would like to see Redwood be more of a producing
entity-to put together projects where we create and
generate new work from our home base and then take it
out to the world. I believe Redwood is in a wonderful
position as a non-profit arts company, in that there are
people all over the country who are interested in the work
that we are doing here. They find it meaningful and feel it
speaks to changes they are working on in their own
communities. They need more music that feeds them and
supports the work they are doing. They need music that
helps, that is courageous and speaks up, that makes a
contribution to the heart and gut and soul. Getting that
music to them-that's what I want to do. Also, the whole
idea of doing cross-cultural cooperative work-that's really
where I'm coming from, that's what I've been doing and
what I want to do for a long while.

HN: Please talk about the chorus and what you feel some of
the victories of that work have been. People talk about the
"lost generation," and I' m not sure I agree with that
analysis, but this is definitely a very hard time to be
growing up. In the work you have done with the chorus,
what kinds of successes and pitfalls have you encountered?

EM: I can say some truths I've learned about working with
the very next generation. The Oakland Youth Chorus is
ages 14 to 21-they're next. One thing I've learned is that
for the most part, this is an invisible group of people.
They're seen as "dangerous" and "going through a phase."
Separation and search for identity are the paramount issues
they're working on. The hardest thing for them is to
develop a sense of perspective, which I think you can only
get with experience. It's very hard for them to see the long
view. So, when doing an artistic project, for example, some
of the collaborative work I've created with them involves
working with other artists who are adult professionals.

In thinking about the twentieth anniversary year, I've
listened to all Redwood's records, read different articles
and talked to people about the past twenty years. It's really
been quite a twenty-year period, from 1972 to 1992. I
graduated from high school in 1972, and here I am the
Artistic Director of Redwood in 1992. Just thinking about
my close circle of friends and people that I know, the
transformations we've been through are amazing, from
complete and total passion for movements and causes and
social concerns to complete and total burnout, failure,
despair, addictions, recovery, children/no children,
marriages, relationships- rise and fall on the economic
and career ladder, involvement in other countries, other
cultures, all of that. We're talking about a really, actionpacked twenty years for a lot of people in the Redwood
community.

HN: Is. that need for immediate gratification directly
connected to this being an era of high technology, or has
that always been an issue for youth?

EM: I think it's specific to American culture because we're
so into consumerism. We're so passive about our culture.
An example of American culture is the mall. You can go to
the mall, instantly be entertained, get anything you want to
eat, buy anything in enormous quantities. It's such a
passive way to be.

HN: Some people are still fantasizing about the '60s.
(laughing) We are also walking proof about why working
with children is so important. If you graduated from high
school the year I started Redwood ...

EM: Yes, when I was a freshman in college, you gave an
anti-war concert where I went to college. I remember
thinking, "wow, that's really right-on." And Jeff Langley
was such a great piano player, I really clued into him. I've
thought about that a lot-that was twenty years ago!

HN: How do you see the audience as not just being passive
consumers? What are some of the ways people can keep a
musical experience alive, so that the experience doesn't stop
once we make a record and ship it out?

HN: And the generation you're working with at the

EM: That is my goal, to figure out that connection. I agree
with you, Redwood's audience is not the typical passive

Oakland Youth Chorus-these are the ones who will be the

8

.........................................................................................,
directors of our non-profits, the teachers in our schools, the
health care workers, the lawyers who are doing pro-bono
work for poor people.

ship line at alcohol company manufacturers or distributors.

HN: Let's say that there is a company that wants to
completely or partially subsidize a collaboration that
Redwood wants to do and they're wiling to sponsor
Redwood to tour it all across the country. But on the
program, the tickets, maybe a banner at the bottom of the
stage, we advertise their participation.

EM: And are they mad. Maybe they're even madder than
we were.

HN: I think they're more angry. Or maybe mad about
different things.
EM: They feel more ripped off, I think, than we did. They
feel let down.

EM: I'm certainly not closed to the idea. We have to seek
corporate support. And guess what, there are strong
progressive folks who work in corporations, too. It's not an
either/or scenario. There's no doubt that in order to
survive, a company like Redwood needs layers of different
kinds of sponsorship-that's just a reality of American life.
It's not that these sponsorships are handed to anybody on
a silver platter, you have to
work
hard for them. There are
Photo: Susan Freundlich
some places we would be
willing to go and some places
we wouldn't. In terms of their
visibility as one of our sponsors, that kind of partnership
would be carefully negotiated.
Please give me that situation to
figure out! Many big tours and
concerts have large sponsors"American Express Gold Card
presents Paul Simon" for
example. But didn't you have to
have a Gold Card to get a
ticket? I wouldn't be in favor of
Redwood doing something like
that.

HN: It's going to be an extraordinary next twenty.
EM: Yes, I'd like the twentieth to really be something that
can nurture all of us as we reflect on the last twenty and
get prepared to renew ourselves for the next twenty years,
because, let's face it, we need to keep going and we need to
keep renewing our strength. The
battle is deep and long at this point.

HN: Speaking of the twentieth
anniversary year, how do you feel
about the contradictions regarding
corporate sponsorship in this day
and age when the arts are
struggling so?

"

EM: I think corporations should
sponsor everything they possibly
can and embrace a vision of
cultural democracy and community
participation. Culture is about the
way we live, how we regard each
other, our dreams and aspirations,
our communication. It takes in so
many vital parts of the soul of our
communities. There are corporations with excellent track records in
this arena, but let's face it-we need
more help and as much involvement as possible.

HN: Actually people who didn't
have Gold Cards got tickets, but
HOLLY NEAR AND ELIZABETH MIN ON THE OAKLAND
the best seats in the house were
STEPS OF RCW.
reserved for people with Gold
Cards. I went to the concert and
sat
there
crying
in
the
dark
watching and thinking how
HN: Where do you think the line should be drawn by
those
artists
get
to
be
taken
care of while they do this
progressives when that corporate money is attached to the
of the struggles that Intibeautiful
music.
And
I
thought
corporation wanting visibility? In part I can understand the
Illimani
and
I
had
doing
our
collaboration-the
couches
view of the corporation-they're doing some good work and
that
we
slept
on,
the
buses
that
we
traveled
in,
the
cramped
they want the community to know it-after all, the
quarters,
the
lack
of
rehearsal
space,
the
limited
recording
community is demanding it-so corporations want to say
equipment, no video, and it goes on and on. I thought, yeah,
yes, we're doing it. Then there's also the reality that they're
we
were "pure" all right. And I asked myself if I would let
going to sell more product by being visible in this way.
an American Express Gold Card banner hang on the front
EM: We all have to realize that any dollars given to
of our stage-back then the answer would have been "no."
organizations are a write-off. There are advantages to
But I looked at the Paul Simon show and thought-this isn't
companies, absolutely clear advantages to being philanfair. American Express is going to survive whether they
thropic in the community, just in terms of their own taxes
have their banner on our stage or not. Who's not going to
and liabilities, and their own standing in the community.
survive is us. Right? Arts companies are folding all around
With the Youth Chorus, we've always drawn the sponsorus.
Continued on next page

9

························································································•◄
Elizabeth Min
Continued from previous page

EM: What did you take away from the Paul Simon show,
the sight of American Express? Is that your memory of it
now?

Remembering Peter

HN: No, I took away an extraordinary collaboration of
cared-for musicians.

For the past three years, Peter Babcock was the
gifted graphic artist, activist and editor who
worked behind the scenes on many of the pieces
you may have received in the mail from Redwood.
Peter died on October 1, 1991, of AIDS. He was a
treasured friend, and his passing is a tremendous
loss to us.

EM: We have to get real here. Redwood has wonderful
support now, and we need a lot more, and more different
kinds of support. There are some people who are able to
give organizations like Redwood lots of money and some
people who can give organizations like Redwood $10 a
year. We need both. We need corporations to sponsor us.
We need foundation and government support. That's the
only way we're going to survive. Sales of our records and
concert tickets alone cannot support our operation. If that
were the case, we would either sell in the millions or the
cost of each record or ticket would be so high, we couldn't
possibly be in business. Instead, we have to look this in the
face, realize that we are a non-profit, believe that our work
is important, that it provides a vital force in our community, and make a conscious decision about going after all
kinds of funding-including the corporate sector.

Shortly before Peter's death, Redwood
Cultural Work, OUT/LOOK and Mal Warwick
and Associates joined hands to honor Peter for his
Outstanding Contributions to Social Change.
We created an award to be given annually to
someone who embodies the spirit of Peter's work
and vision-someone who brings creativity in art
and design to the service of communication and
fundraising for social change.
In honor and celebration of Peter's life, we
wanted to share the text of that award with you.

HN: The reason I asked this question is that Ifeel I've
really learned a lot about that and changed my mind a lot
about it. And I wanted to hear your perspective on it
because I still don't know how to articulate it as clearly as
you just did.

For brilliance in communicating the essence
of the message, in images and words;
For excellence in the field of fundraising
for social change, using the tools of visual
design and editorial insight; For inspirational
vision in publishing and communications,
launching creative new ventures that enhance
social justice, community and the environment;
For energy, passion and the persistent desire
to make a better world, we honor Peter
for setting new standards of excellence in all
these pursuits.

EM: Anybody who wants to support Redwood should step
right up. You are needed, and please bring a friend. I used
to say that to people with the Youth Chorus. Conductors
would say to me, "They're so fabulous, I wish that I could
conduct them." I said, "Corne on, come to a rehearsal and
conduct them. The kids need to see as many adult professional musicians who are into their art as possible. You
want to work with them, come on. You're needed." Well,
the same is true for Redwood. We need lots of different
kinds of supporters out there. So step right up. We'll be
thrilled to have you. And I mean it! •

Friends and colleagues who would like to remember
Peter may send contributions to the BABCOCK
AWARD clo Redwood Cultural Work. •

Holly Near is the founder of Redwood. For over twenty years
she has worked as an outspoken singer, songwriter, actor and
recently , author. Holly continues to tour. Her concerts are
considered both artistic achievements as well as rejuvenating
community gatherings.

10

.........................................................................................,
toured Lebanon, playing in Tyre, Nabatia, Tripoli and
Beirut.
Marcel Khalife's music has always shown the
influence of his years of study at the National Conservatory of Music in Beirut, where he both studied and taught.
Through his twenty years of singing folk-based songs he
has also produced several works for symphony orchestra.
The most widely known piece of this nature is the 90minute oratorio, Ahmad al Arabi, a setting of the epic poem
by Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Al-Mayadeen has
always had several western instrumentalists in the band
with violins and flutes prominent in Khalife's composing
style.
For Summer Night's Dream, which is an adaptation of
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Khalife calls
upon a 28-piece version of Al-Mayadeen. This double-size
group features some who have been part of it for may years
like Micahel Keiralla and Antoin Khalife (Khalife's
brother) on violin and Bassam Saba playing flute. But
added are more violins, electric bass, saxophones, viola,
cello, piano, kanoun and accordion.

MARCEL KHALIFic

Marcel Khalife:
Summer Night's Dream

The music is as full as the instrumentation. Khalife's
gift for melody is deepened by rich harmonies and culturally hybrid polyrhythms. While Khalife does contribute
some excellent oud playing, our experience is of Khalife
the composer, whose style is very romantic with a solid
Middle Eastern foundation.

by Russ Jennings

Since 1972 Marcel Khalife has been performing inspiring
songs that were born in Arab culture, raised in the struggle
for democracy in Lebanon and educated by the national
aspirations of the Palestinians. He and his band, AlMayadeen, have performed all over Europe, North America
and Australia as well as their native Lebanon. In 1986 they
drew fifty thousand in a concert in Beirut, but most people
have listened to his music on treasured, and often illegal,
cassettes.

Two soloists stand out on the album. Antoin Deib
plays a magnificent accordion on 'Tango for My Lover's
Eyes," a darkly passionate piece in the middle of the
recording. On the final piece, "Salute," Aboud Al-Saadi is
featured in a blistering fast-fingered bebop jazz guitar solo
worthy of Charlie Christian. Summer Night's Dream was
premiered in the summer of 1991 at the Picadilly Theatre
in Beirut. In the program notes the piece's creators say
that, "It reflects the diversities in the structure of the
Shakespearean Subject, with its unbounded imagination,
in a Middle Eastern vision where the climates are purely
Middle Eastern." The climate on this album is very
commodious, and hopefully this album will make
Marcel Khalife a regular part of our North American
environment. T

This new recording on the Redwood label, Summer
Night's Dream, marks his first North American release
since 1983. This all-instrumental opus is the culmination
of several threads in Khalife's career. The music was
composed for a production by the Caracalla Dance Theatre
of Beirut. This collaboration with choreographer Abdul
Halim Caracalla is the first time Khalife has been able to
play a role in the Beirut arts scene since he was forced to
leave his country in the early days of the civil war. Beirut's
. status as a major arts city, reminiscent of Paris in the
'twenties, is only now beginning to reemerge.

Russ Jennings is a programmer on KPFA-FM, a freelance
writer, and an independent concert producer.

Last year, Khalife returned to perform in his native
town of Amsheet after being banned for 16 years. At his
opening concert, which was broadcast live on television,
the welcome from his old friends was tumultuous. The
town's fences and buildings were covered with pictures of
Khalife, replacing the graffiti, and the people clamored his
most radical songs. After Amsheet, he and Al-Mayadeen

Cassettes and CDs make great
premiums for organizations to use for
fundraising. Call (510) 835-1445 and
talk with Cynthia.
11

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WRITERS IN CONVERSATION:
Prese,ving Culture through Art
Annual Redwood Benefit
Oakland Museum Theatre and Restaurant
March 22

An Evening of Readings and Dialog with four of today's
most provocative women writers-Sara Levi Calderon,
Susan Griffin, Joy Harjo and Cherrie Moraga-moderated
by Holly Near.
Sara Levi Calderon is the author of the best-selling
Mexican novel, Two Mujeres, which is one of only three
openly lesbian and Mexican works in existence. The novel
explores the romance between divorced Jewish-Mexican
women and the constraints of family and society.
Calderon has taught Latin American Studies, studied acting
and screenplay writing, and is the mother of two sons. She
currently makes her home in the Bay Area.

WOMEN ONSTAGE
Rhodessa Jones in
Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women and
Marga Gomez is
Pretty, Witty and Gay
Scottish Rite Temple
154 7 Lakeside Dr. at 14th St, 1st Floor, Oakland
Friday, April 3, 8pm
Tickets: General admission $12

Susan Griffm, poet, playwright and author has
written, among others, the acclaimed Woman and Nature:
The Roaring Inside Her and Pornography and Silence:
Culture's Revenge Against Nature. Her many awards include
an Emmy and a MacArthur Foundation Grant for Peace
and International Cooperation. She narrated, scripted and
was interviewed in the film Berkeley in the Sixties. Her
newest work, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War,
will be published this year.

Known for bringing the unmentionable, controversial and
wild to center stage, actor Rhodessa Jones portrays the
experiences of jailed women as harrowing, dangerous and
profoundly touching. " ... She transcends art to create
some unforgettable moments of spiritual healing."-Los
Angeles Times
On the eve of her appearance on a television talk
show, Marga rewrites the Bible, battles extortionists, and
reads from the "lost" journals of Anais Nin.

Joy Harjo has published four books of poetry and is
at work on a fifth collection of poetic prose, The Field of
Miracles, and an anthology of Native women's writing,
Reinventing the Enemy's Language. She is a professor in
Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. She
makes her home in Albuquerque, where she plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice.

HOLLY NEAR PERFORMS
A WORK IN PROGRESS
Preservation Park Theater
April 15 and 20

Cherrie Moraga, poet, essayist, playwright and
political organizer, is the author of The Shadow of A Man
and Giving Up the Ghost, both full-length theater works.
Her most recent play, Heroes and Saints, a work commissioned by the Los Angeles Theater Center, is scheduled for
production in San Francisco this year. Moraga is currently
an instructor of Writing and Theatre in Chicano Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley.

On the heels of her successful autobiography, Fire in the
Rain ... Singer in the Storm, Holly and her sister/director
Timothy Near, have created a musical docudrama adapted
from the book for the stage. Unique in its form and
content, this riveting theater piece premiered at the San
Jose Repertory Theater last May. The play is scheduled to
open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles for an 8week run in August and September 1992. This spring, in
preparation for the LA production, Holly and Timothy will
be doing additional work on the play, giving it time to
grow and improve. Enjoy this rare opportunity to help
fine-tune the show-dose up! Redwood Cultural Work
will present Holly doing two readings of the work in
progress, with John Bucchino on piano, at the Preservation
Park Theater in Oakland, April 15th and 20th.

12

t

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Conjunto Cespedes is one of the leading Afro-Cuban
music and dance ensembles in the western United States.
Altazor is a leading American practitioner of Nueva
Cancion, combining the folkloric traditions of Cuba, Chile
and Venezuela, mixing them with modern harmonies and
lyrics addressing social concerns.
Guillen's vast body of work chronicles Cuba's social,
economic and political struggles. He believed that a poet
must create revolution while at the same time creating art.
To date, over 200 works by Guillen have been set to music
in a wide range of musical styles. Guillen poetry is rooted
in the structures of the son and the rumba, the two most
typical idioms of popular Cuban music.

QUEEN LATIFAH IN CONCERT

This concert brings together African and Latino
traditions, both of which have made, and continue to
make, distinct contributions to American culture.

MC Dominique DiPrima
Opening Act: Petite and Elite
Calvin Simmons Theatre
10 Tenth St. at Fallon, Oakland
Saturday, April 18th, 8pm
Tickets : Reserved Seating $22, $19.50, $15

REDWOOD MUSIC FESTIVAL '92
Calvin Simmons Theatre
May 29, 30

Don't miss the reigning queen of rap music in her solo
Oakland debut! Explosive, soulful and provocative,
Queen Latifah's music carries a message of love, empowerment, and the strength of women. Integrating singing and
rapping with an an occasional touch of R&B, jazz, reggae,
and soul, the queen is an experience not-to-be-missed.

Redwood's Festival is moving to Calvin Simmons and
expanding to two days! Participate in workshops and
master classes during the day and hear great music in
concert at night. Come be part of this celebration of
community!

"She put on the show of our lives and made all
things right between us and around us."-Danyel Smith,
Bay Guardian

For many years, the Greek Theatre and Estuary Park
have provided beautiful settings for potential sun worshipers and those who enjoy listening to good music while
scoping the lovely view. The Redwood Music Festival is
predictably fun as evidenced by regularly good crowds.
But because of the unpredictability of the weather, this year
we're taking the Festival indoors. The Festival's new
location allows us to create a new, improved format that
will provide more opportunity for audience participation.

NEW AMERICAN WORKS SERIES:
TODD MEZCLADO
Calvin Simmons Theatre
April 25

Featured artists this year include Holly Near and
Ronnie Gilbert Together Again, Odetta, Guardabarranco ,
Toshi Reagon, Geraldine Barney, Dia ta Dia ta, and
Romanovsky &: Phillips.

Sizzling Afro-Cuban music by Conjunto Cespedes and
lilting Latin American New Song rhythms by Altazor
interpret the poetry of Cuban laureate Nicolas Guillen in
this world premiere of new songs commissioned by
Redwood. Inspired by Guillen's dedication to mulatez, the
concept of an interracial cultural identity, Todo Mezclado
is a feast of color, theater, dance and exuberant music.
• And don't worry if you don't speak Spanish-the show is
translated.

INVEST IN ASOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE
ORGANIZATION
Redwood Cultural Work is seeking loans ($3,000
minimum) for two years. We offer competitive
interest rates. Redwood has capitalized our
projects with the loan program since 1973.
Please contact Cynthia Frenz at RCW if you are
interested. Call (510) 835-1445. "Y

In the second year of this series, Redwood presents a
concert-l~ngth collaborative multi-media performance
featuring Conjunto Cespedes and Altazor. Todo Mezclado
is a commissioned collaboration of Afro-Cuban music and
dance and Nueva Cancion Latinoamericana (Latin American
New Song) centered around musical adaptations of poetry
by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen (1902-1969).

13

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open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in August of

More than Music from
Holly Near

by Mollie Katzen

this year.
If you can't get to LA to see the play, try her new
audio autobiography, Singer in the Storm ... The Life and
Music of Holly Near. This is a 2-cassette package, containing two hours of Holly chatting and reading pass~ges from
her writing, interspersed with cuts of many songs. You
might also enjoy her videotape, Singingfor Our Lives,
replete with footage of Holly in concert and cavorting in
the snow, spliced with nicely shot closeups of her reading
from the book. As is true for most progressive and independent artists, these works are produced with small
budgets. Still, the video is quite visually
compelling, and will keep even her
Photo: Chris Fesler
most diehard fans rejuvenated between
live concerts.

Several years ago, with the approach of her fortieth
birthday, Holly Near began to document her life and work
with a series of autobiographical projects. At the center of
this multifaceted undertaking is her 290-page book, Fire in
the Rain .. .Singer in the Storm (Morrow 1990). The narrative moves back and forth in time, from rich scenes of
Holly's rural childhood with her large, loving family to
vignettes about her budding political
awareness as a college student during the
Vietnam War to stories of her journey to
self-discovery. The reader is party to Holly's
Some might raise their eyebrows
numerous voyages-both through the
at the idea of a 40-year-old woman
world itself and through her responses to
writing the story of her own life. Yet
the world. Interspersed is a selection of
Holly's self-documentation is more a
lyrics to some of Holly's songs which, even
personal
stock-taking than a summary
though familiar, take on enhanced meaning
of
a
life.
It is a mid-career pause to look
when presented as poetry within the
backward and forward at the same time:
context of her narrative. For young people
a mirrored way station. These are
of the post-Vietnam War generation, Holly's
reflections of the early years in the life
book provides a chance to get some vivid
of
a gifted and passionate late 20th
impression of that important era beyond the
century
white North American woman
currently popular oversimplified '60s
striving
to engage meaningfully and
"nostalgia. " Holly's story continues into the
compassionately with a difficult world.
'70s and '80s, through the Reagan years and
As Holly publicly probes her memories
a dizzying period of global change. Her
and motivations, we are offered a
personal life and professional challenges
privileged
view into her personal
and choices are just about as dizzying. She
LAUGHING AT HER OWN
HOMOPHOBIA
IN
THIS
SCENE
struggles
and
triumphs, her self-love
lapses a bit too far into name-dropping and
FROM THE PLAY, HOLLY TELLS
and
self-hate,
her doubt and her clarity.
STORIES OF HER EARLY DAYS
self-aggrandizement, but at the same time,
IN WOMEN'S MUSIC.
I
look
forward
to the next installment,
invokes universal themes that ring true and
maybe 20 or so years down the line. It would be good to
resonate for many of us. Even with some unevenness (and
see Holly go even deeper into her material; at first glance
one may feel tired by Holly's pace!), Fire in the
Fire in the Rain ... Singer in the Storm feels like a mere
Rain . .. Singer in the Storm makes for a real page-turner.
introduction-a mid-life pause. Taken in the context of
In her musical docudrama of the same title, adapted
history, it honors a time and movement that many of us
from the book and developed for the stage by Holly and
were part of, enabling us to identify and to remember the
her sister, director Timothy Near, Holly expands some of
excitement of being there. Unstated, but implied at the end
her best anecdotal material into an engaging piece of
of both the book and the play is the message: "To be
theater. The stage is clearly Holly's home. Once again, her
continued ... " T
many journeys-inner and outer-come to life, this time
with Holly right in front of you. Her performance is strong
and fast-paced-so typical of her style. One feels satisfied
These recent products by Holly can be ordered on page 23.
by the end-entertained and inspired. It's commonplace to
Mollie Katzen is the author/illustrator of a popular trilogy
view an actor portraying the life of another character on
of vegetarian cookbooks: Moosewood Cookbook, The
stage. But to witness a woman telling the story of her own
Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and Still Life with Menu. She
life-the conflicts of a child artist as she discovers her
lives with her husband, son and daughter near Berkeley,
voice, teenage love with all its anticipation and disappointCalif
omia, and does a variety of cultural projects involving
ment, falling in love with a woman, falling in love with the
art,
writing,
music and progressive politics.
world-is a rare and powerful experience. The play will

14

"

.........................................................................................,

Meet Theresa Harlan

same tribe-my
enrollment
number easily
corrects these
false ideas. In the
context of individuals who fall
into the trap of
believing romantic
stereotypes of
Native Americans
and search for a
distant Native
ancestor to
THERESA HARIAN
provide them with
Native ancestry-my enrollment number easily separates
me from those who want to be Native. Yet in the context of
Native American history, my enrollment number is
nothing more than an arm of the United States policy
toward Native Americans. Many Native people have been
denied federal recognition for the want of easier access to
natural resources and land. Many California Native people
are not federally recognized. Many Native people are not
federally recognized through no fault of their own, but by
the hand of the government or consequences of its policies. In this context, my enrollment number is not a badge
of pride, but a painful reminder of Native people who have
been denied their right to be recognized as a sovereign
people and in general Native American and United States
history.

An inte,view with Elizabeth Min
Theresa Harlan has joined Redwood's staff as Assistant to
Susan Freundlich, Development Director. She is also a
freelance curator of contemporary Native American art and
will guest curate for the Boston Photographic Resource Center
and Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael in the fall of this
year. Harlan is the farmer Director of Exhibitions of the
American Indian Contemporary Arts gallery in San Francisco
and recently completed a fellowship at the California Arts
Council, where she compiled comprehensive information
about art and cultural activities taking place in California's
Native American communities. Theresa is an enrolled
member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo of New Mexico.
EM: What are some of the major themes that Native
American artists are dealing with now?

TH: Right now the hot issue is the 1990 Indian Arts &
Crafts law, which states that unless you meet the criteria,
you cannot call or market yourself as a Native artist or you
can be punished with a fine and jail. The criteria is you
must be a member of a federally recognized tribe, or be
listed on a state census as American Indian, or request
your tribe to give you the special designation of "Indian
artist."
EM: Can you explain more about this? What do you
mean?

TH: As federally recognized Native Americans, we each
have a number, a census number, that is connected to our
blood quantum. We are the only race in the U.S. that has
to keep track of our fractional blood quantum. This means
that on paper, I am half Santa Domingo Pueblo; but I need
to keep track of the fact that I am also one-quarter Laguna
Pueblo and one-quarter Jemez Pueblo. If I have children,
they will have to keep track-it's something that's passed
down. To be a federally recognized Indian means you have
to be at least one-quarter of one tribe recognized by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Statistically it will work
out that eventually there won't be any Native people left
on the BIA rolls, because there's so much intermarriage.
We now have inter-tribal children that are six tribes;
they're full blood, yet they aren't eligible for federal
recognition. It's a very bizarre practice.

EM: How is this controversy about the Indian Arts and
Crafts Law, the question of self-identity, the right of selfdetennination, expressed through art?

TH: Native artists are responding to it in their work. My
friend, photographer Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, has done a
whole series called "Creative Native." She's made a
portrait of herself with her census number across her
mouth so it looks like she's tattooed and censored. She's
written text that accompanies the portrait. Hulleah poses
the question-if she had lived in earlier days, would she
have been like the Nighthawk or Snake Society which
refused to cooperate with the government, or would she
have been a mixed blood, leading the government to the
full bloods? She's focused her recent work on challenging
this law.

EM: This whole question of blood and blending of blood is
such an American issue. To see how regulated it is for
Native Americans is shocking.

EM: As a curator, how do you approach the artist?

TH: I am truly in awe of artists-of their ideas, and the
courage and ability to create ideas of color and vision, and
that their creations will stand on their own, with or
without the artist. I really believe that art, once it is
created, has a life of its own. I don't try to dictate the
work. I just try to gather the people together and let them
continued on page 17
speak their messages.

TH: Yes, it can be very unsettling. Our enrollment
numbers and federal recognition can be a benefit to us on
one level and be harmful on another. It all depends on the
context. For instance, in the context of misconceptions
and stereotypes that Native people are extinct or of the

15

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DIAS DE AMAR-

GUARDABARRANCC

GUARDABARRANCO
CONCERT AND NEW
ALBUM REVIEW
by Larry Kelp

Their whole world has changed in the four years between
Nicaraguan singing duo Guardabarranco's debut album, Si
Buscabas, and their just-issued second recording, Dias de
Amar (Days to Love), and accompanying U.S. tour.
The brother-sister group, Katia and Salvador
Cardenal, began performing together in the cultural
outpouring that followed the 1979 Sandinista revolution in
their homeland. Like their Nueva Candon counterparts in
other Latin American countries, Guardab~rranco used
acoustic instruments and folk styles to express new views
and ideas about contemporary life. But what was true four
years ago has taken on a new frame of reference since the
election of President Violeta Chamorro. And what has
happened to Nueva Candon, its growing use of electric
instruments and Caribbean and other dance rhythms, may
have had an influence on Guardabarranco, but the duo has
changed little, musically, in the face of such vast political
and musical upheaval.

Their road has become harder. In July, no longer
supported by their own government, they undertook a
U.S. concert tour, singing songs from both their albums.
"We really wanted to come to the United States," Katia
told the audience of 400 at Oakland's First Presbyterian
Church on July 27, "because we know that even if the
government is not with us, the people are." The trip was
complicated by myriad visa headaches. To perform here
and in Canada, Katia said, "We've spent half our tour in
embassies."

The group, on its new album, may use darker
imagery in the lyrics, but it is still delivered with a gentle
intimacy unique in Nueva Candon, indeed in most music.
The songs are far from simple, but they are presented with
no adornment, just Katia and Salvador's voices and
Salvador's acoustic guitar for accompaniment. The lyrics
may no longer have such innocent hope as during the
Sandinista era, but they are still filled with hope, now hope
in the face of adversity.

Yet, as they harmonized so sweetly on stage, such
problems melted away. Some of their songs are purely
folk, others ride on catchy pop melodies worthy of the
Beatles. In songs about matters of the heart it felt like
eavesdropping on a confessional, it was so personal and
quiet. But when Katia opened up, and seemed to take on
the whole world and its attendant problems with just her
voice, she sang with an urgency and intensity that is rarely
captured on record. In those moments she sang without
equal, a special voice speaking for all humanity. Her vocal
range, her phrasing and the emotional depth of her
singing seemed more than equal to handling any amount
of adversity, even when set in the context of some of the
most peaceful and gentle music to come out of Nueva
Candon.

"La Libertad" ("Freedom") looks at life from behind
prison bars: "Freedom-a blind child, Freedom-a crazy
lover, Freedom-a swimmer in open sea, Freedom-in
jail, Freedom-in my mind, Freedom-a thinker against
the law." It is dedicated to Nelson Mandela. Other songs
focus on love in many forms, on nature and animals.
While Katia, 28, has a five-year-old daughter and has set
up a musical academy for children, Salvador, 31, who
writes most of the lyrics, has given up city life and now
makes his home on an island on Lake Grenada. His
closeness to nature and the values he sees there come
through in every lyric. Newer songs emphasize the facility
of nature and freedom. Yet even in their delicate melodies,
the pair's performance is filled with strength and resolve to
speak out for these causes.

The Cardenals' approach may seem to go against the
mainstream, but it is clear nothing else is needed to deliver
their vision. Rock star Jackson Browne was so taken with
the pair that he produced their first album. The new Dias
de Amar was recorded in Denmark, and then Browne and a
few bandmates added just a touch of guitar, bass and
percussion to a few of its songs. He's not alone in his

16

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admiration of their lives and music. Country-folk singer
Redwood Cultural Work is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. All
contributions are tax deductible to
the full extent allowable by law.

Nanci Griffith wrote one of her most heartfelt songs, 'The
Wing and the Wheel," inspired by a Canadian tour she did
with Guardabarranco.
Since then the duo has honed its unadorned music
until every line and every vocal nuance carries weight.
Children's hearts and birds serve as metaphors for their
vision of a world devoid of hunger and suffering (one song
on the new album even stabs directly at the American
government: "And if you are going to sing/Of freedom with
such pride/Then also sing that on Christmas/You sent
bombs to the children of Panama") If their lyrics often
reflect the reality of an imperfect world, their music at the
same time offers music so beautiful that it is easy to hope
that their vision is within grasp. T

Our Wish List:

Dias de Amar is new on the Redwood label, and is available on CD and cassette through the Redwood catalog on
page 23.
Lany Kelp is the Oakland Tribune's music critic, and host of
"Sing Out," the folk and political music program on Pacifica
Radio Station KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

Theresa Harlan

T

Travel (frequent flyer) coupons for artist travel
to concerts, and Redwood staff use for fundraising
and conferences. These are extremely helpful to us!

T

Printing donation for catalog, newsletter and
stationery

T

Intern/Volunteer to work on Redwood FestivalSpring '92

T

Copy machine

T

Computer chairs and desk chairs

T

An auto-reverse tape player to hook up to the
phone system, so callers will hear Redwood music

T

Videotape player (VHS)

T

A video camera and playback monitor

Continued from page 15

EM: How did you become involved with Redwood?
TH: I consider myself a lifetime non-profit person. I
believe in non-profits and find personal fulfillment in
working toward a goal that contributes to people's lives. I
left AICA because I wanted to further develop my nonprofit management skills and also make time to write
about Native American contemporary art. The growth and
development of an organization can be extremely tenuous
if not carefully managed. I was very attracted to Redwood
because Redwood seemed so adept at handling these
troublesome areas. I was especially interested in working
in development, since the environment of fundraising is
increasingly shifting away from large government and
foundation cash awards. I was impressed with Redwood
because it has such a broad and diverse base of support.
I was also impressed by Redwood because it is able to
carry out its vision with a positive and careful hand. I
really like working with Susan and the "Redwood Gang."
I am learning a lot. Susan is so eager to share with me. T

Donations of goods and services
to Redwood Cultural Work are
tax-deductible at their current
market value.

17

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Notes from an Artist's
Journal-Holly Near

I receive countless letters bemoaning the fact that I haven't
had the success I deserve, that I have not gotten famous
enough: "Why don't they play you on the radio? ... Why
aren't you on the major night-time talk shows?" Makes me
smile. I love my audience, keeping my best interests (and
theirs) at heart.
However, there is a danger in believing that mainstream success is an appropriate barometer. I search for
the balance between achieving mainstream visibility (i.e.,
wanting my music to be accessible to anyone who might
enjoy it, need it) and maintaining a critical analysis of the
failures of popular media. I do not want to fall prey to
their agenda of bigger is better. My fans and I see that the
dominant music industry is culturally and ideologically
narrow, economically motivated, often socially insensitive,
and offensive. We perceive that the industry lacks vision
and leadership, and has created a void. Yet popular media
reaches the largest number of people. This is disturbing,
given the power and influence of music in our lives.

MISSING HER FRIEND AND MOTHER, ANN, HOLLY
SINGS "ICICLE BLUE."

tives: some jazz, some classical, some folk, some Nueva
Cancion, some world music. But having the time and the
resources to look are hard to come by. Those of us who
have looked and found can pass this music on, and one by
one our discoveries become widespread.
The fact that independent culture has survived and
influenced the lives of millions of people must not be
forgotten in the face of the standards set by commercial
institutions. Just as we mustn't judge every political
gathering by comparing it to a million gathered in Washington or in Central Park, we must not fall prey to
thinking that if an artist does not play stadiums or sell
over a million CDs, they have failed . Precious and unique
communication takes place in small arenas. We lose an
essential part of ourselves if we let someone else decide
what is important.

I have written songs, with no hope of them being
heard, and years later I find that people who were detained
in a Latin American prison heard one of my songs, sung in
a whisper by a fellow prisoner who had learned it from a
solidarity worker. And what of the women who have
heard lesbian love songs around a campfire after the
potential critics have turned in, sung by one brave camp
counselor who knows she is not alone ... and once again,
lives and souls are reassured. What if I had decided not to
write the song because it would not get major radio play?

It is debilitating to think that the world is changed
by large numbers of people. I believe a relatively small
group of people can effect monumental change and not
even know what they have done until quite some time
later. True, large numbers of people give an idea
validity .. . but large numbers of people may not have been
the first to put it forth. At a sporting event, look how few
people start "the wave" until finally most participate. If
we fail to believe this, and then fail to remember it when
the going is tough, we miss a political and creative
opportunity in our lives.

That solidarity worker, that lesbian camp counselor
... they are our radio. They and you have been my radio
and the radio for other progressive artists. You have been
our billboards when you teach one of our songs to your
students at school. You have been our TV specials when
you include one of our songs in your Seder, church
service, wedding, funeral or birth ceremonies. You have
hosted our appearances on late-night TV when you sing
our songs as lullabies to your children, when you play our
records while you make love to your beloved. And you
put us on the charts when you buy our tapes and CDs,
videos and books, when you go to small art theaters to see
our films, when you sit in living rooms and hear our
poetry, when you watch us dance on floors dangerously
splintered, and when you support independent radio and
television stations.

Of course I want to have access to mainstream
television (with millions of people watching) for political
reasons, but also for artistic ones. It would be fun! How
exciting it was to hear Sweet Honey in the Rock sing, to
hear Linda Tillery and Rhiannon sing with Bobby
McFerrin, to see Vickie Randle play congas and sing with
Kenny Loggins-all on "The Arsenio Hall Show." And I
felt so proud of Martina Navratilova when she spoke so
articulately on "Donahue," and how great to hear TV stars
Sheila Kuehl and Dick Sargeant come out on "Geraldo."

For decades people have counted on the radio as a
link to the world. They have not always, if ever, gotten the
whole picture through mainstream programming. This is
tragic and frightening. Those who search can find alterna-

C ontinued ►

18

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ fi

REDWOOD ARTISTS ON THE ROAD

6/20
6/21
8/16

ALTAZOR
4/25
5/2*
5/24
5/1
8/20*

Oakland
Berkeley
Albuquerque
Saratoga
Medford

CA
CA
NM
CA
OR

Vancouver
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Santa Monica
San Diego
Davis
Lethbridge
Edmonton
Saskatoon
Winnipeg
Minneapolis
Waterloo
London
Hamilton
Kingston
Peterborough
Ottawa
Montreal
Peterborough
Portsmouth
Westboro

BC,CAN
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
ALB, CAN
ALB, CAN
SASK, CAN
MANT,CAN
MN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT,CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
CAN
NH
NH
WA

ONT, CAN
IL
AK

RONNIE GILBERT
4/3-5/17

Milwaukee

WI

INTI-ILLIMANI
3/24
3/26-27*
3/28-29,30*
4/1
4/3
4/4
4/5
4/8
4/10
4/11
4/12
4/13
4/15
4/16

FERRON
3/16
3/19-21
3/22
3/27
3/28
3/31
4/29
4/30
5/1
5/2
5/3
5/5
5/6
5/7
5/8
5/9
5/10
5/12
5/14
5/15
5/16

Toronto
Oak Park
Haines

West Lafayette
Chicago
Scottsdale
Hanover
New York
Philadelphia
Eugene
Santa Barbara
Claremont
North Hollywood
Davis
Berkeley
Berkeley

IN
IL
TX
AZ
NH
NY
PA
OR
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA

JUDY SMALL
3/15
3/18
3/20
3/22

Winnipeg
Regina
Calgary
Berkeley

MANT, CAN
SASK, CAN
ALB, CAN
CA

HOLLY NEAR
3/15
3/19
3/20
3/21
3/22
3/26
3/27
3/28
3/29-30
4/1
4/2
4/3
4/4
4/7-8
4/15 & 20
4/21 •
4/22
4/24
6/6
6/7
6/14
8/2-9/27

Holly Near
Co ntinued f rom previous page

These are great moments, and I celebrate them. But they
aren't the only moments.
I read your letters. Do not let our invisibility in the
mainstream diminish what you mean to progressive and
independent artists. It immobilizes the creative spirit to
wallow in a mood of defeat. Of course it feels different
than 20 years ago. The conditions are different. But the
music is still here. It is a disservice to our humanity to be
controlled by hopelessness. Like Toshi Reagon singing
Bernice's song, "you hold your breath for change to come,
we're gone have to carry you out"!* It will be awhile
before peace songs and lesbian love songs are commonplace on Top 40 stations. In the meanwhile, remember you
are our radio . We need you more than ever before, and I
venture to say,.you need us-for what people have ever
survived a nightmare without music? 'Y
* "How Long" by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Grand Rapids
Sarasota
Washington
Raleigh
Oakland
Spring Valley
Nashua
Cambridge
Durham
Toronto
Woodstock
Albany
Lewisburg
Seattle
Oakland
Arcata
Santa Rosa
Kingston
Elmer
Spring Valley
Saratoga
Los Angeles

MI
FL
DC
NC
CA
NY
NH
MA
NH
ONT,CAN
NY
NY
PA
WA
CA
CA
CA
RI
NJ
NY
CA
CA

*indicates tentative dates
For more information call (510) 835-1445 .

For a complete Redwood catalog, write to us at P.O. Box
10408, Oakland, CA 94610.

19

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Chicken Made of Rags

An Interview with Greg Landau,
producer of Redwood's first
children's release, The Story of
the Chicken Made of Rags
by Karen Hester
KH: How did you get interested in recording Chicken
Made of Rags?
GL: The story begins many years ago. My mother had an
uncle who was born in Santiago, Cuba. He used to tell her
stories to put her to sleep. He told her this story about The
Chicken Made of Rags (Chicken). So this story got recycled
and told to my sister and myself when we were kids. In
the early '70s, my mother, Nina Serrano, with Judy Binder,
wrote a play called The Chicken Made of Rags, which
played all around the Bay Area, and in many Bay Area
schools. When I returned to the Bay Area, after living for
many years in Nicaragua and working with Soul Vibrations, I talked to Nina about reviving Chicken and recording it because Soul Vibes was going to be in the United
States and they were interested in doing it. I had also
talked to other local musicians who were very excited
about recording it.

THE "CHICKEN" FAMILY, FROM L. TOR.CAMILO LANDAU, PHIL SERRANO, NLNA SERRANO, GREG
LANDAU, VALERIE LANDAU.

We asked the actors to use natural voices rather than
fake cartoony voices, maintaining their different accents,
typical regional and ethnic accents. In this way, we tried to
enrich the child's listening experience. We also used a
story that children could identify with, about something
that's going to help them in their life. It's a story about
how you get tricked all the time and you can't always trust
powerful, established authority figures, so you have to
question-you have to be careful.

So my idea was to use Chicken as a way of creating a
multi-cultural narrative that talked about the way people
live in the United States, about the different kinds of ethnic
and cultural identities, different kinds of sounds and what
they mean, the different kinds of work people do. I looked
for actors who spoke in English with different kinds of
accents. In the musical arrangements we also tried to
reflect a whole different range of styles, from country
music, rock'n'roll, to Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, rap,
jazz, blues, cumbia-all different kinds of music. We
wanted to arrange it in a way to make a children's record
that wouldn't talk down to children, but would try to be
something they would be interested in, something of
quality, something very creative, that would inspire
children to look into other cultures and try to understand
the variety of cultures surrounding them.

KH: This was really a family affair. You had your mom,
your uncle, sister and nephew all working on it. How did
you all work together?
GL: Well, basically in a low-budget operation, you have to
look at who is going to work for cheap or for free, and the
first place to start is with your family, because they can't
say no. That wasn't the only reason-they are all very
talented people. It worked out very well because the
project was close to all of us. I had the momentum of
producing the Soul Vibrations record and working with
Soul Vibes, and that they were there, so it gave us the
momentum to carry out this recording, too, which meant
hours and weeks in the studio, editing and recording,
mixing, writing arrangements, fifteen singers and musicians, chord charts.

KH: You're also a videographer and a parent and uncle.
You know the power of TV to captivate kids and also to
anesthetize their imaginations. How do we get kids to turn
off the TV and listen to music instead?
GL: I think a cassette is something that will help children a
lot in developing their creativity and imagination. The
problem with TV, because it's sound and image, is it
doesn't leave anything to the children's imagination. They
hear a voice and they see who's saying it. It's sort of

20

························································································•◄
who is really struggling for a living. At this particular
moment in American history there are a lot of ways to
interpret what all these birds do out on the street and why
they're so eager to go to the hotel for a grand banquet.
KH: Because they're homeless and need to eat something?

GL: Some kids have seen that. They see it in their own
lives and they understood clearly what's going on. It
wasn't what was intended by the authors, but as times
change, people get more and more like these birds, out
hustling on the street. People will go to great lengths to
have a nice dinner.
KH: Let's talk about the educational market and what your
and your mom's and sister's hopes are for getting Chicken
into the classroom.
GL: One thing we want to do is develop a workbook to go
along with the cassette to help teachers use it as an
educational tool. The workbook would explain some of the
things that are going on in terms of the music, the narrative, the story line that could help the teacher to make
certain points, to teach certain lessons, using Chicken as a
form of entertainment. It would be a tool to teach about
music, theater, and cooperation. There are a lot of lessons
that could be drawn from this story. T

OUR FIRST CHILDREN'S RELEASE-ON
CASSETTE FROM REDWOOD.

drawing the map and pictures for them right there and not
allowing them to develop their images and apply them to
their own experience. With a recording, the good thing is
that children hear a voice and picture in their own minds
who that person is or what they might look like. They
develop the whole stage and scenery and action in their
heads if you can give them the pieces to put together.
Even the sounds, too-you don't see the musicians, so you
just imagine these birds, singing and playing. I'm very
much in favor of radio and radio drama because I think it
helps kids to develop their creativity and imagination in
ways that TV doesn't.

The Story of the Chicken Made of Rags is available on
cassette, and can be ordered on page 23.

Karen Hester is the Publicity Director of Redwood Cultural
Work.
Greg Landau is a musician, record and video producer and
Ph.D candidate in Communications. He lived in Nicaragua
and worked with Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Mancotal for
nine years and has worked with Soul Vibrations since 1987.

KH: I have a 7-year-oldfriend Sabrina who loves this
cassette. Have you had much experience seeing how kids
are reacting to it?

Getting More Than
One Mailing?

GL: Yeah, I've given out copies to different kids and
watched them listen to it. We listen to their critiques.

Redwood is trying to keep up with our friends and
supporters-especially when you move or change
your address. If you are getting more than one
mailing or want to change your address with
Redwood, please send in the mailing label(s) and
tell us which one is correct. T

One of the characters that was kind of interesting
was the goose. The goose picks up aluminum cans and
bottles on the street. And some kids saw the goose as the
garbage collector that would push a broom like a street
cleaner-some kids saw the goose as a homeless person
walking around with a shopping cart picking up cans and
bottles. It was interesting because depending on where
kids live and what they see, they would interpret the
characters in different ways. Take the swan that dances in
the park. Some of them saw her as the elegant ballerina
and some saw her as a person who dances in the park,

21

························································································•◄

RCW Memberships

$25 Individual Membership
Includes: 5% discount on all catalog items for one year and
subscription to Varied Voices.

NEW VIDEO
AVAILABLE FROM
REDWOOD

$35 Friendship Membership
One free record/cassette or CD; 10% discount on every
item in the catalog for one year; and subscription to Varied
Voices.
$50 Contributing Membership
Two free records/cassettes or CDs; poster; 10% discount
on every item in the catalog for one year; and subscription
to Varied Voices.
$100 Supporting Membership
Four free records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
20% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$500 Sustaining Membership
Fifteen records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
25% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$1000 Redwood Benefactor
A complete library of Redwood music; Redwood T-Shirt; a
complimentary copy of every new Redwood release that
year; 25% discount on every item in the catalog; and
subscription to Varied Voices.
$2000 Redwood Presenter
As a Redwood Presenter you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice. You will also receive a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary copy of each new release
as it becomes available, along with your subscription to
Varied Voices.
$5000 Redwood Producer
As a Redwood Producer you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice, along with backstage privileges. Special recognition of your support will be made within album projects
and/or concerts you help to produce. You will also receive
a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary
copy of each new release as it becomes available, along
with your subscription to Varied Voices and other special
Redwood gifts.

Festival T-Shirts
We have beautiful commorative t-shirts from our
1991 Festival! The shirts are designed by Bay
Area artist Nancy Hom. The design represents
music of peace and hope from Redwood artists
the world over. The 3-color design (teal, red and
white) on a black t-shirt is a 100% Beefy-Tin a
roomy size XL Available from Redwood for $15.
See the order form to order. T

All memberships are tax-deductible
less the value of the free items.
22

......

♦♦......

•• •• ••• • • • • • •• •

,~~l~,~~lil lifilil l l~l ~If ...................................,
OK

M 001 111 633

I

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Univllflfr11r~111i1fjjijj

Varied Voices Order Form
Sign me up to be a Redwood member so I can continue to receive Varied Voices
(Check membership type below-see preceding page for description.).
Please send me a catalog to order my free items.
Redwood Cultural Work An~ual Membership Program
_ $25. Individual
_ $500. Sustaining
_ $35. Friendship
$1000. Benefactor
_ $50. Contributing
$2000. Presenter
_ $100. Supporting
$5000. Producer

Amount$

_I am already a member. Use my additional tax-deductible gift to help
support the Challenge Campaign.
Featured Releases in this issue
Qty
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, Cass. $9.98
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, CD $14.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, Cass. $9.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, CD $14.98
_ CHICKEN MADE OF RAGS, Many, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, CD $14.98

Amount$

Music and more from Holly Near
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Hardback $19.95
Amount$
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Paperback $10.00
_ SINGER IN THE STORM, LIFE AND MUSIC, Audio 2-tape set, $15.95
_ SINGING FOR OUR LIVES, Video $29.95

_ Redwood Festival Commemorative T-Shirt, $15.00
Subtotal $ _ __
Membership#_ _ _ _ _ _ _ discount
8.25% Sales Tax (CA only) Does not apply to contributions.
Postage and Handling (see below)
TOTAL $
Method of Payment
Check enclosed
_ Bill my: __ VISA
MasterCard
Card# _ _ __
Signature _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Exp.Date _ _ _ _ __

Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ State _ _ Zip _ _ _ _ Phone(_) _ _ _ _ _ __
Postage and Handling
1st Class/UPS $3.50 for the 1st item, $0.50 each add'l item. Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Rush Service/UPS Second Day $7.00 for the 1st item, $1.00 each add'l item.
Allow up to 1 week for delivery-same for international orders sent via surface mail.
Send To
Redwood Cultural Work, P.O. Box 10408, Oakland, CA 94610 or call 1-800-888-7664.

23

························································································•◄

To Our Special Friends:
Last fall Redwood was awarded a California Arts
Council Challenge grant of $25,000! This is our
first grant of this kind and reflects the opinion of
the Council that our work is of the highest
artistic quality and significance. This kind of
grant usually goes to well-established arts companies who have long received the support of the
state.
In order to receive the $25,000, we must
raise $50,000 over and above what we raised last
year.
We are so happy with the response we have
received so far. We send our love and heartfelt
thanks to all of our friends who have contributed
to our Challenge Campaign. We are now more
than half way toward reaching our goal, but we
still need more contributions to make the necessary match. We are asking you to consider
joining our Challenge Campaign, or to make a
second gift if you've already joined. Help us with
this special campaign now-so we can show the
state of California how important Redwood is to
its members and friends. Just check the appropriate box on the order form inside. Thanks!

Inspired by a weekend reading of Fire in
the Rain ... Singer in the Stonn, Rain Burns
was moved to lend us a super Macintosh.
Thank you Rain, computer life at Redwood will never be the same.
Many individuals have made contributions, large and small to Redwood's
work. We are very appreciative of each
gift. We'd like to especially thankHarriet Goldhor Lerner, Marion Gibson,
Maya Miller, Jo-Lynne Worley, Jean
Sutherland, Bette Shulman and Holly
Near.
And for your generous support of
our work, special thanks to the City of
Oakland-Oakland Redevelopment
Agency, California Arts Council,
Rockefeller Foundation, Alameda County
Art Commission, San Francisco Foundation Zellerbach Foundation and the
'
Columbia Foundation 'Y

Non-Profit Organization
U.S. Postage

PAID
Permit No. 489
Oakland, CA

Redwood

Ma,- i an HLi 1scy

CULTURAL WORK

11:::::7 N. l•J. ::::1st.
Oklahoma City □ 1=:: 7:3118

POST OFFICE BOX 10408
OAKLAND, CA 94610

TIME-DATED MATERIAL -

@ ·~

DO NOT DELAY



h op"'rty cf the Center

VOICES
Introducing

Elizabeth Min,
New Artistic Director
A Conversation with Holly Near
Elizabeth Min has joined Redwood Cultural Work as Artistic
Director. Min comes to Redwood from her position as
Executive Artistic Director of Oakland Youth Chorus, where
she built one of the most innovative and diverse arts companies for young singers in the U.S. She founded the Bay Area
Women's Philharmonic, and was its music director and
conductor for the orchestra's first four seasons. Min is
interviewed by Redwood founder, artist, board member and
outgoing Artistic Director Holly Near.
HN: I'd like you to talk about some doors that you have
passed through to get to where you are today. What are
your family traditions, your root connections? What got you
into music-thinking the way you think-living where you
live?
EM: (Laughing) I've spent thousands of dollars in therapy
on those subjects.
HN: Were you raised in California?
EM: No, I was raised in Colorado-born in Minneapolis. I
was adopted-a fact I found out just a little more than a
year ago-so at the moment, I am engaged in a birth
parent search. I've located my birth mother and she's about
to become a real person to me at any moment.

In this Issue
T

Close Up with Altazor

T

Exciting Spring Events
and Artists on Tour

ELIZABETH MIN

HN: Do you know her heritage, where she comes from?
EM: She's of English, French and German descent. My
father is Javanese and an Indonesian citizen. She's from
the U.S. but he's never been here. They met in Europe
after WWII when she worked with the Quakers and he
was a student. He eventually returned to Indonesia to
work in agriculture. I have one letter from her where she
chronicles their relationship, describing how they were
very much in love, but when she found herself pregnant in
Europe in 1953-1 was born in 1954-she said it was such
Continued on next page

T

New Redwood Music
from Marcel Khalife and
Guardabarranco

T

Our First Children's
Release

PUBLISHED BY REDWOOD CULTURAL WORK T

T

More than Music from
Holly Near

... and more.

VOL 1, NUMBER 3 T

SPRING 1992

························································································•◄
a heady experience, traveling and working in different

Varied Voices

Redwood Cuttural Work

11~,
1
m

places in post-war Europe, that she just had to go home
and get grounded. She couldn't deal with going to live in
Indonesia right after the revolution. He really wanted to
get married but she just couldn't do it. At the time, she was
24 and he was 32 and he didn't speak much Engltsh so
they communicated mainly in German.

Varied Voices has a history in the documentation of culture.
Varied Voices of Black Women was the title of the first national
tour of black women's music, organized by Roadwork, Inc., in
1978. Through this journal of art and politics, we want to
follow in this tradition, bringing you the voices of women and
men who are carriers of culture, toward the development of a
richer, multicultural society.

HN: And then you were adopted by people over here who
lived in Minneapolis?
EM: No, they lived in Colorado. My adopted father was
Hawaiian and Korean and my adopted mother is Caucasian. They were looking for mixed-race children to adopt.

The mission of Redwood Cultural Work is to produce
performing arts which promote international peace and human
understanding for all people by presenting artists, primarily
women, who represent a wide spectrum of cultures and artistic
traditions.

HN: That's a lot of new information to take in. You have to
tell me how much of this you don't want printed because it's
so new. It means so much to so many people.

We carry out our mission by

EM: Yes, I've thought about this and decided it's something personal that I would like to share. Not just the
whole search for my own identity, which is another story
for another time, but the whole mixed race thing, which
for me personally is a really big issue. The more I delve
into this whole adoption thing, the more I find especially
people of color discovering their blended heritages. With
one foot in one culture and the other in another-where
do we fit? What does this mean about being an American?

T Presenting an annual season of concerts, and by
recording and distributing music of significant
national and international composers and
performers whose work illuminates cultural and
social issues of our time

T Commissioning and presenting collaborative
new works involving artists of diverse cultural
perspectives

T By undertaking cultural advocacy work locally
and nationally

HN: Do you think there's something strange about living in
America that actually makes for both confusion of identity
but also an acceptance of mixed identity, as opposed to if
you lived in a very identifiable culture and you were the
outcast? This country is considered such a melting pot of
cultures even though it is not an equitable one.

Redwood Cultural Work's programs are rooted in
nearly 20 years of national leadership in the field of socially
relevant and culturally diverse music. This experience reflects
the profound ways that music and culture empower, change
and enrich people's lives.
Volunteers: A very special heartfelt thank you to all of
you who so generously give your time, energy and resources to
Redwood. We couldn't do this work without you!

EM: I think it's an accepted thing for people of mixed
European ancestry. My whole life I've heard white people
say, "Well everybody's a mixture of something." But for
blended people of color, it's a matter of visibility and
acceptance in the culture.

Varied Voices is published bi-annually by Redwood
Cultural Work with the help of volunteers and friends . We're
grateful for the generous gifts of time, energy and expertise
from Peter Kiehm and Mimi Heft. Our thanks to you all.
Editors: Susan Freundlich and Joanie Shoemaker
Managing Editor: Peter Kiehm
Editorial Assistants: Jan Jue, Theresa Harlan, Bea Andrade,
'
Charmaine Curtis
Production Art & Illustration: Mimi Heft
Printing: Alonzo
Board of Directors
Dulce Arguelles
Leslie Cagan
Helen Cohen
Charmaine Curtis
Jo Durand

Lisa Honig
Angela Johnson
Holly Near
Gus Newport
Robbie Osman

Staff Members
Bea Andrade
Judy Evans
Cynthia Frenz
Susan Freundlich
Development
Director

Theresa Harlan
Susan Sage
Karen Hester
Kathleen Sullivan
Joanie Shoemaker,
Angela Johnson
Executive
JanJue
Elizabeth Min,
Director
Artistic Director

HN: What did you think you were?

EM: I always checked "other" on forms because nobody
ever told me what I was-the shame was pretty deep. All I
could really go on was how I was treated, and I knew I was
treated differently than white kids, that was very clear.
When I began playing the piano in public at about age 8,
people started telling me that I had an Asian name, or they
would say, "Are you Japanese or Chinese or what?" That
was just like a piece of information to me. "Oh. I'm Asian,
OK" So, I knew that I was different from kids around me,
although I went to a very racially mixed school system in
elementary school. .. very very diverse.

Patrice Perkins
Joanie Shoemaker
Hugh Vasquez
Jo-Lynne Worley,
President

There were a lot of Mexican kids. And AfricanAmerican kids, and Puerto Rican kids, but not any other
Asians.

2

.......................................... ...................... .........................,
from an early age that I really didn't have time to get
deeply into other styles. I was under the influence of a very
strong teacher-which I'm thankful for-but she filled all
my time with the classical thing. But, I've always liked
everything else, and I've certainly always wanted to play a
lot of different kinds of music.

HN: So people probably assumed you were Mexican, except
for your name?
EM: Yes. That's often been the case. Even when I lived in
Mexico, until about 30 minutes into the conversation
(laughing) .

HN: How does that affect your music?

HN: Do you think that along the way you connected any
kind of expression of humanitarianism to wordless music?
What is your emotional connection to what you played? As
you developed as a person and started to have a world view
and politics, how did you connect that to being an artist, a
conductor -not only in your childhood but also as an
adult?

EM: In my work as a conductor it's been an innate thing
with me-I always want to explore the putting together of
various elements and seeing what new whole is created. I
guess it's true that in my work as a conductor, "blending"
is a major part of what I've been doing.

HN: Do you feel that because people applied an Asian
stereotype to how they saw you, that stereotyping is what
directed you towards classical music, the way black kids
sometimes feel they get pushed into sports?

EM: Since I was a musician from such a young age, music
was always an extremely emotional thing for me. It was my
personal expression-where the real power of the self
came from. Because of the restrained atmosphere in which
I grew up, I didn't express raw out-and-out emotion in
other ways. Playing the real hard-core classical repertoire
when you're 10, 11 and 12 is very, very powerful. It's very
emotional and taps into deep, deep feeling-the connections of the harmonies and melodies, the different styles
and just the absolute power and timelessness of the music
itself. It's also a very physical kind of thing. The music I've
always liked best is most grounded to dance, the more
physical, rather than the more cerebral, intellectual side of
classical music. I would express lots of emotions, the
whole range. Sometimes I would perform and people
would say, "Oh, that was so beautiful," and I'd be thinking,
God, that was total out-and-out anger. I was just tearing
the hell out of the piano, how did they miss it?

EM: No, although I remember a teacher of mine saying
"since you want to be a musician it's good you're Asianall the most famous classical musicians are either Asian or
Jewish." That kind of talk went right over my head. It
wasn't until much later that I even understood what she
was talking about.

HN: Stereotypes add so much confusion for people, because
there's often something in a stereotype one can extract
pride from, right? There's absolutely no reason why a black
kid can't feel proud about being a great basketball player or
dancer. And there's no reason why an Asian community
can't feel really proud of how many Asian musicians have
surfaced.
EM: Yes, I find that in my work with Oakland Youth
Chorus. I spend a lot of time with the group I direct
there-Vocal Motion-they're 14 to 21 years in age, all
very bright and talented, and from all different types of
backgrounds-economic, social, racial. The Asian kids and
the black kids really talk about this issue. We'll be riding
in the van to a concert somewhere, and they get deeply
into this whole discussion. It usually comes up around
school-one of the Asian kids is particularly strong in
math, and one of the black kids will say, "Why are Asian
kids so good in math?" Another Asian will say, 'Tm not,
I'm being tutored in it." They get deeply involved in trying
to figure out why these differences appear to be going on.
They haven't come up with a solution yet, though I'm
waiting. If anybody can figure it out, they can.

HN: Very few people have an easy time saying that rage is
beautiful. Maybe what they meant to say was, "I find rage,
when it's not violent, passionate." We don't have a
language for it, especially for women who let strength and
power and resistance show.
EM: In music, there's so much power in silence. I found
that in conducting the Women's Philharmonic. When a
sixty-piece orchestra takes a full half-note rest, that can be
a moment of extreme emotion and expressiveness.

HN: I love ballad singers who dare to leave space. When I
listen to contemporary pop music, it's so busy. Endless. And
if it's not the voice, it's the synthesizer, and if it's not the
synth, it's the drum. I want to scream and say, "Stop!" So
now, if you had a fantasy piece of something that you would
conduct or commission, would it be connected to a spiritual
or political idea? Pablo Casals seemed to make a connection
between his commitment to humanitarianism and playing
the cello. It is a question for some music students-"If I do
non-verbal music, how can I be part of the musical
expression for peace and justice?"

HN: You've worked a lot in classical music, both as a pianist
and as a conductor. Was there ever a point where you
questioned whether you wanted to do a different style? Has
it always been classical music that you've pursued, until
lately?
EM: I've always been interested in lots of different kinds of
music. Growing up, I was so active playing and performing

Continued on page 8

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Close Up with Altazor
by Helen Cohen

Altazor, the nation's only women's nueva
cancion ensemble, composes and performs
music based on the indigenous instruments and
melodies of Chile, the Andes, Venezuela,
Argentina, and the Caribbean. The members
of Altazor-Dulce Arguelles, Lichi Fuentes,
Jackeline Rago and Vanessa Wang-raise
their voices in opposition to social injustice
throughout South and Central America,
clearly connecting the conditions of people of
color in the United States and throughout the
world.
HC: One of the things that has always been
so moving to me about Altazor is the
blending of your different musical and
cultural influences. I'm very interested in
hearing about your backgroundsculturally, politically, socially and
musically. How do those elements feed into
your music and the work that you do together?

THE MEMBERS OFALTAZOR:JACKELINE RAGO, LICHI FUENTES, VANESSA WANG,
AND DULCE ARGUELLES.

Lichi: Yes, when I was five, one of my sisters was studying
guitar and I wanted to play guitar, so I started watching
her. I learned the first chords just by watching her. I never
really studied guitar. Later, I took some lessons. I do my
best. I really like the instrument so I practice a lot. I have
been playing guitar since I was five years old; I always did
something musical in school. I formed a group with three
girls and two boys in high school. And like San Fernando
and the little towns around it, all the schools had festivals
every year. So we went school to school, participating in
the festivals-and we won all of them.

Lichi: I come from a family that is very musical. We
weren't professional musicians in my family, but we always
sang and played instruments. Music was the basic, the
point where everyone was united. It's still like that today.

I was born in Chile and grew up in a town called San
Fernando. We spent our summers in the countryside
singing around a fire with friends, participating in festivals
that we created with the people who were on vacation. It
was sort of like the tradition of my town and the little
towns around it. In Chile it happens a lot on the beach or
the countryside, people who go there to spend the summer
prepare activities-singing is one of the things that is very
common.

HC: That's great/ Was the music that you played and sang
then an important influence on the music you're doing with
Altazor?
Lichi: Not really. I used to sing songs by the Spanish
singer Rafael-and a lot of music from Spain. And then
my taste changed when I discovered Juan Manuel Serrat
from Spain. His music was sort of like popular music but
with a different concept because it included social issues.
This was when I was 11 and I started to know about
Violetta Parra-she was already a popular singer, yet I
wasn't familiar with her. The political situation in Chile
was kind of intense, I was aware of the different political
parties. I had a brother who belonged to a party of the left,
so I began to identify more with the social issues they were
raising. As a result, my taste in music changed a lot.

HC: Folk music, mostly?
Lichi: Folk music, popular music. It depends-whoever is

there sings what they want. In my family we used to sing a
lot of popular music from Argentina. My sisters like samba
a lot. We used to sing samba with lots of harmony because
we were so many brothers and sisters. That's how I got
used to doing that.
HC: Argentinean samba is different from Brazilian samba,
which is what we are more familiar with, right?
Lichi: Argentinean sambas are sort of romantic songslove songs. They talk about the countryside. The rhythm
is totally different from the Brazilian samba.

Jackie: In my case I started playing music when I was 12
years old. Like Lichi described in Chile, in Venezuela the
same thing happened. Every school had what was called
an estudiantina. An estudiantina is a group of students

HC: Did you learn to play instruments then?

4

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cuatro and mandolin. Then I studied classical, and that
who play folkloric instruments. From primary school on
was the first time I went away from the total folkloric
-thing. Because these other musicians were trained in jazz, I
learned a lot from them. Playing in Altazor is the first time
I got involved with political and social themes in music. I
wasn't exposed to political music in the same way as Lichi
because the political situation in Venezuela w~ different.
In Venezuela, my generation was living in a free democratic political situation and not exposed to political
change at that time. Venezuela has been a democracy for a
long time. We don't have the same political problems; we
have political problems, but not as extreme or recent, so
my generation didn't get so involved politically.

to today I've been studying the cuatro, the mandolin and
percussion. When I was 12, I studied with a group with
kids of all ages from 9 to 13. I played percussion and
cuatro.
HC: This was a group you started?
Jackie: I started it with a friend of mine, Roberto. We

grew up together from kindergarten and always played
music together. He's also a professional musician now.
Roberto and I worked together for a long time. We had a
theater group; we wrote the pieces, we made the costumes, we performed in theaters. Only comedy; of
course-we were the clowns! We did this until we went to
high school. Then we went to separate high schools, but
still kept playing mandolin and cuatro in the studio.

This style with Altazor is good for me. What I do
with Altazor is bring what I know of Venezuelan music.
Dulce: I grew up listening to Cuban music at home. As
far as playing music, I started taking lessons at age 10 or
11. I studied classical guitar, and performed as a soloist
and in duets. After college I explored electronic music and
composition. When I moved out to the Bay Area, I came
in contact with musicians who played Latin American
music and music from other parts of the world. That was
very exciting to me-I started to realize the power that
music has to move, to teach and to make people feel good.
I had been affected by other people's music and I wanted
to be involved in music that carried a message.

Then I graduated high school and studied at the
Conservatory of Music in Caracas. I studied classical
mandolin for two years. I also studied background music
for theater, but I never abandoned the music, never. One
of the reasons that helped me not to abandon music was
that in a country like Venezuela, everywhere you go there
is music. You ride public transportation and the driver has
music playing full volume. So you are always singing.
You walk downtown and all the stores have their own
music-it's crazy. They have stereos and they put the
speakers out on the streets.

Vanessa: It's kind of a funny question for me because I am

HC: Is the music that you hear on the streets and buses
popular, contemporary music? I'm curious-what brought
you back to folk music or folk traditions?

from the United States and I was born here. My parents
were born here and I don't come from a Latin background,
and I'm playing Latin music. I mean people seem to liave a
problem associating me with being from the United States.
I always get people asking the typical question, "Where are
you from?" And I say, "I'm from here." "Yeah, but really,
you know." "Yeah, I'm from here. I am really from here."
And people react with comments like, "'Oh, you speak
English so well?" "Well, yeah, I'm from here." And so
culturally maybe it needs a little more explanation of why
I'm doing this.

Jackie: You know what, I never "decided" to be a musi-

cian. My family always asked me what I wanted to study,
and I would look at them like they were silly. What are
. you asking me-music! They always supported me and
gave me the instruments I needed. But they never put me
in a private music class. I asked my dad, please, I want to
get registered in music school, and I don't want to go to
high school. And he told me I was crazy. "If you want to
be a professional musician, first you go to high school, and
then you study music." So I studied music at night and
attended high school during the day.

I've played music ever since I was pretty young. I
started playing piano when I was seven. I played classical
music, popular music and all the stuff that was going on in
the the late '60s and '70s. You know, everybody had their
steel-stringed guitars and played Joni Mitchell songs. It
wasn't until ,ater that I got into Latin music.

I always had that one focus of being committed to
music without knowing why. Then I decided to come here
and learn English and go to music school. Because in
Venezuela ten years ago you could go to the conservatory,
but you didn't have a major faculty to get a B.A. in music.
The only_place to concentrate on music was here or
Europe. I don't know, maybe in Africa or other countries,
too. So I decided to come here, and I went to Holy Names
College to study English and then study the Koday
program. I didn't like it. It wasn't what I was looking for. I
always dreamed of being in a group of folk musicians. You
know, first I studied folkloric music and I always played

I left the music program at UC Berkeley and wanted
to do something less formal, not so uptight, and with more
social relevance. I started playing music with a couple of
friends who played Irish and English traditional music,
which was fun. We didn't read music, just learned
everything by ear. It was very social music, and there was
always dancing. It was a very different experience for me,
Continued on next page

5

.........................................................................................,
HC: Can you give an example of that?

musically, to play socially instead of being in a little box
where you are playing by yourself. So that was one stepgoing into playing traditional music.

Vanessa: Well, some of it has been communicated to us
from the outside about the feeling that our performances
have. One example was when we did a split concert with
the group Illapu from Chile. People told us about how
different the energy on stage was and that there was a very
clear kind of gender split, they being an all-male group and
we being an all-female group. There is a different kind of
approach. We work collectively in the group. There isn't
anybody who has to be the leader or someone saying, "I
get to do all the solos. " We share that kind of stuff.

Later, I started to take a voice class in jazz, but it
didn't move me. The lyrics to the songs that we were
learning didn't do anything for me. I didn't feel inspired
by them or like I could identify with what they were
saying. I really wanted to look for some music that Ifelt
something about. That's when a friend of mine invited me
to join the La Pena Community Chorus, which was my
exposure to Nueva Candon in a more tangible way than
before. And so that's how I got interested. And I felt like it
was music that I could feel and that had meaning for me.
From there I started learning instruments from Latin
America at La Pena and hanging around with people who
play this kind of stuff. Along with that I was becoming
more politically involved as well and getting more and
more interested in things that were going on in Latin
America-specifically in Chile.

HC: Do you notice a clear division of labor or leadership?
Vanessa: No, and also there isn't any competition. I have
experience in other groups where there have been big ego
problems going on or people who feel that they can't share.
I'm not saying that men can't share! It's just that there is a
different kind of dynamic. Definitely. Like Lichi was
saying, it would change our dynamic to have men in the
group .

HC: How did Altazor get started as a group?

Dulce: I didn't realize the impact we would have on
audiences until we started performing in different parts of
the country. People come up to us after concerts-women,
men and older women, to tell us that they're moved by
seeing women holding and playing instruments. I'm
impressed by the amount of girls, not boys, who ask for
our autographs. This indicates to me their hunger for
female role models in music.

Vanessa: It started from Lichi's workshop. Lichi had a
performing Nueva Candon ensemble at La Pena Cultural
Center in Berkeley. When the workshop ended, we felt we
wanted to keep going, or at least some of us did. We had
been doing this for a couple of years, it was nice, and we
wanted to keep it going. So a small group of us stayed
together to keep performing, and it evolved into this group
we have now.

Jackie: There was just one more thing I wanted to say
about the question of being a women's band: What I don't
like about the identification of a women's group is that it
makes it sound like we're just for women, which we aren't.
We're for everybody, and it kind of makes me angry
because, for example, I was in a record store the other day
in the Latin American section, and our music wasn't there.
I went over to the women's music section and there we
were. I thought, "What is this? " It really bothered me that
there was this ghettoization of music by women. Like
somehow only women are going to be interested in this
music or that it's music just for women. I don't know
what it is!

HC: How does it feel to be an all-women's group doing
Nueva Cancion? Is it part of your identity and sense of
purpose-in terms of the music you choose to perform, or
how you're perceived by other musicians?
Lichi: It wasn't the purpose of the group to be an allwomen's group at the beginning. It just happened out of
this workshop . The women felt better playing together. I
have played with other groups-it wasn't so much the fact
that in this group we were all women-we just got along
well. The group has an identity, and I think it would kill
that identity if we had a male in our group. It's not that we
don't play music with men. As a group we have a sound, a
dynamic in the group; we have sort of come to an agreement of taste. You get used to each other. Maybe someday
a guy will appear and he will fit fine . It's not like we're
exclusively an all-women band. But the way I see it now,
it would be out of place.

HC: You wouldn't find a group that was all men in the
men's section, right?
Vanessa: Right! Where's the men's music section? The
whole rest of the store is the men's music section!
HC: Or the assumption, as you just said, that you're singing
just for a women's audience.

Vanessa: I think being an all-women group cuts both
ways. On the one hand there are definitely gender differences in the way people work. I have worked in mixed
groups. I think there is a way that we work together that
has to do with who we are individually, but also it has to
do with being women.

Vanessa: That's the part I really dislike-to be pigeonholed in that way when nobody seems to ask men's
groups, "Well, what does it feel like to be in an all-men's
group? " It's just taken for granted, but women always get

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asked that if it happens to be an all-women group. EveryJackie: This is a dream I don't think is so impossible. I
body feels like they are trying to make some point. No,
we're not making some point, we're just doing what we
want to do .

think we have a good message, a good sound, and my
dream is to bring this to Latin America or as far as we can.
In my country, society gives you a role. You are a
woman, so you have to be married and have children. I
have seen in my country and close to me in my family a lot
of frustration. A lot of intelligent women who are very
dominated by society.

Jackie: I think it is also very important to notice that in
Latin America and I think in the United States, Europe,
everywhere in the world , but especially in Latin America
because that's the example and the experience I have, most
of the instruments we play have been male dominated.
Drums are played by men; flutes, guitars, and most of the
strong lyrics are written by men. And in terms of instrumentation, men have always been on top and have always
put the women down. I have received comments like,
"Wow, for being a woman, you play a very good bongo! "

If I could go to Latin America or my own country
and show that women can have different lives. One of the
things that I personally like about our concerts is that
everybody participates. It's great! A friend of mine went to
a concert and saw that our music moves people. At the
end of the show everybody was dancing! That's the
purpose of the music-if we touch your skin and make
you move. T

I started playing music when I was five years old. I
didn't have a consciousness of men and women, I was a
kid. I was a kid who loved music. Whether I was a man or
woman, I'm this person that I am. And I chose to play the
bongo. When I was just a kid, it didn't matter. I never
related music with gender. I think it is a big mistake to see
with that prejudice, but you cannot blame people because
they are accustomed to seeing that. For example, at the
beginning it was hard for me to open my legs and put the
bongo between them, because it was not customary. It was
very difficult. I imagined playing the cajon. It's true, there
is something about being strong to play the skin of a
drum. You can always play soft, but you can also play
strong with female energy.

Altazor's music is available on cassette and CD.
Order blank is on page 23.
Helen Cohen is chair of the Board of RCW; singer and
percussionist in Vocolot, a women's a cappella folk ensemble
based in Oakland; participant in nueva cancion workshops at
La Peiia Cultural Work since 1985, where she first met and
played music with members of Altazor; works in the field of
community economic development providing technical
assistance to community land trusts; and other nonprofit
housing development and employment projects.

So I think people have to understand that the world
is changing and women should take over a little bit more,
to balance the male energy that has been dominating not
just in music, but in everything we do. I think it's great
that Altazor is all women and presents the message and the
instrumentation for people to know that it is possible for
women to do things like this .
We are in a territory in which people are more open.
If we go down to, say, Venezuela, it is pretty open; in Chile
it is a little more difficult to be to be an all-female group.
That's what Lichi has said all the time. We are as good as
the other groups which are all male. We are not competing; we just want to do a good job.
HC: Let me just ask a fun, thought-provoking question to
wrap up. If you could put yourself out there in whatever
way, if you could just choose what you wanted to be and
there were no obstacles in terms of money, limitations on
your time, children you are raising. What would you like to
be doing ·a t this point?
Dulce: I'd like to be able to play for the youth, to reach
young people and help them become aware of more
musical options than the glossy narcissistic images that
society feeds them through MTV.

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Elizabeth Min

consumer at all, which makes it all the more of a challenge
for me to create experiences and events that have participation. I'm very interested in participation and building
together. I'm looking for ways for any work that is created
and generated here to have a really long life, to go through
a lot of hands and many different places and be used in a
variety of ways.

continued from pagt 3

EM: Beauty has tremendous power for transformation.
What I'm interested in doing now is work that really
explores something about culture-building within our
society. Building of culture and the idea of cultural rights
for people is very all-encompassing and takes in political,
educational and economic factors. It embraces those and
goes beyond. It is also a place where people can choose
how they are going to act, because they're working off
inspiration. I'm interested in doing work that challenges us
to act, to not be passive consumers of whatever pablum
culture is put in front of our faces, but to build ourselves-not only things we're going to feed ourselves, but what
we're going to leave. I've done a lot of work with young
people, so my heart is really tuned into what they're going
to be ... not only what they can pick up and run with, but
that there's an environment where they can be creative
together.

HN: What is your vision for Redwood? And what will your

role be in creating it?

EM: I would like to see Redwood be more of a producing
entity-to put together projects where we create and
generate new work from our home base and then take it
out to the world. I believe Redwood is in a wonderful
position as a non-profit arts company, in that there are
people all over the country who are interested in the work
that we are doing here. They find it meaningful and feel it
speaks to changes they are working on in their own
communities. They need more music that feeds them and
supports the work they are doing. They need music that
helps, that is courageous and speaks up, that makes a
contribution to the heart and gut and soul. Getting that
music to them-that's what I want to do. Also, the whole
idea of doing cross-cultural cooperative work-that's really
where I'm coming from, that's what I've been doing and
what I want to do for a long while.

HN: Please talk about the chorus and what you feel some of
the victories of that work have been. People talk about the
"lost generation," and I' m not sure I agree with that
analysis, but this is definitely a very hard time to be
growing up. In the work you have done with the chorus,
what kinds of successes and pitfalls have you encountered?

EM: I can say some truths I've learned about working with
the very next generation. The Oakland Youth Chorus is
ages 14 to 21-they're next. One thing I've learned is that
for the most part, this is an invisible group of people.
They're seen as "dangerous" and "going through a phase."
Separation and search for identity are the paramount issues
they're working on. The hardest thing for them is to
develop a sense of perspective, which I think you can only
get with experience. It's very hard for them to see the long
view. So, when doing an artistic project, for example, some
of the collaborative work I've created with them involves
working with other artists who are adult professionals.

In thinking about the twentieth anniversary year, I've
listened to all Redwood's records, read different articles
and talked to people about the past twenty years. It's really
been quite a twenty-year period, from 1972 to 1992. I
graduated from high school in 1972, and here I am the
Artistic Director of Redwood in 1992. Just thinking about
my close circle of friends and people that I know, the
transformations we've been through are amazing, from
complete and total passion for movements and causes and
social concerns to complete and total burnout, failure,
despair, addictions, recovery, children/no children,
marriages, relationships- rise and fall on the economic
and career ladder, involvement in other countries, other
cultures, all of that. We're talking about a really, actionpacked twenty years for a lot of people in the Redwood
community.

HN: Is. that need for immediate gratification directly
connected to this being an era of high technology, or has
that always been an issue for youth?

EM: I think it's specific to American culture because we're
so into consumerism. We're so passive about our culture.
An example of American culture is the mall. You can go to
the mall, instantly be entertained, get anything you want to
eat, buy anything in enormous quantities. It's such a
passive way to be.

HN: Some people are still fantasizing about the '60s.
(laughing) We are also walking proof about why working
with children is so important. If you graduated from high
school the year I started Redwood ...

EM: Yes, when I was a freshman in college, you gave an
anti-war concert where I went to college. I remember
thinking, "wow, that's really right-on." And Jeff Langley
was such a great piano player, I really clued into him. I've
thought about that a lot-that was twenty years ago!

HN: How do you see the audience as not just being passive
consumers? What are some of the ways people can keep a
musical experience alive, so that the experience doesn't stop
once we make a record and ship it out?

HN: And the generation you're working with at the

EM: That is my goal, to figure out that connection. I agree
with you, Redwood's audience is not the typical passive

Oakland Youth Chorus-these are the ones who will be the

8

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directors of our non-profits, the teachers in our schools, the
health care workers, the lawyers who are doing pro-bono
work for poor people.

ship line at alcohol company manufacturers or distributors.

HN: Let's say that there is a company that wants to
completely or partially subsidize a collaboration that
Redwood wants to do and they're wiling to sponsor
Redwood to tour it all across the country. But on the
program, the tickets, maybe a banner at the bottom of the
stage, we advertise their participation.

EM: And are they mad. Maybe they're even madder than
we were.

HN: I think they're more angry. Or maybe mad about
different things.
EM: They feel more ripped off, I think, than we did. They
feel let down.

EM: I'm certainly not closed to the idea. We have to seek
corporate support. And guess what, there are strong
progressive folks who work in corporations, too. It's not an
either/or scenario. There's no doubt that in order to
survive, a company like Redwood needs layers of different
kinds of sponsorship-that's just a reality of American life.
It's not that these sponsorships are handed to anybody on
a silver platter, you have to
work
hard for them. There are
Photo: Susan Freundlich
some places we would be
willing to go and some places
we wouldn't. In terms of their
visibility as one of our sponsors, that kind of partnership
would be carefully negotiated.
Please give me that situation to
figure out! Many big tours and
concerts have large sponsors"American Express Gold Card
presents Paul Simon" for
example. But didn't you have to
have a Gold Card to get a
ticket? I wouldn't be in favor of
Redwood doing something like
that.

HN: It's going to be an extraordinary next twenty.
EM: Yes, I'd like the twentieth to really be something that
can nurture all of us as we reflect on the last twenty and
get prepared to renew ourselves for the next twenty years,
because, let's face it, we need to keep going and we need to
keep renewing our strength. The
battle is deep and long at this point.

HN: Speaking of the twentieth
anniversary year, how do you feel
about the contradictions regarding
corporate sponsorship in this day
and age when the arts are
struggling so?

"

EM: I think corporations should
sponsor everything they possibly
can and embrace a vision of
cultural democracy and community
participation. Culture is about the
way we live, how we regard each
other, our dreams and aspirations,
our communication. It takes in so
many vital parts of the soul of our
communities. There are corporations with excellent track records in
this arena, but let's face it-we need
more help and as much involvement as possible.

HN: Actually people who didn't
have Gold Cards got tickets, but
HOLLY NEAR AND ELIZABETH MIN ON THE OAKLAND
the best seats in the house were
STEPS OF RCW.
reserved for people with Gold
Cards. I went to the concert and
sat
there
crying
in
the
dark
watching and thinking how
HN: Where do you think the line should be drawn by
those
artists
get
to
be
taken
care of while they do this
progressives when that corporate money is attached to the
of the struggles that Intibeautiful
music.
And
I
thought
corporation wanting visibility? In part I can understand the
Illimani
and
I
had
doing
our
collaboration-the
couches
view of the corporation-they're doing some good work and
that
we
slept
on,
the
buses
that
we
traveled
in,
the
cramped
they want the community to know it-after all, the
quarters,
the
lack
of
rehearsal
space,
the
limited
recording
community is demanding it-so corporations want to say
equipment, no video, and it goes on and on. I thought, yeah,
yes, we're doing it. Then there's also the reality that they're
we
were "pure" all right. And I asked myself if I would let
going to sell more product by being visible in this way.
an American Express Gold Card banner hang on the front
EM: We all have to realize that any dollars given to
of our stage-back then the answer would have been "no."
organizations are a write-off. There are advantages to
But I looked at the Paul Simon show and thought-this isn't
companies, absolutely clear advantages to being philanfair. American Express is going to survive whether they
thropic in the community, just in terms of their own taxes
have their banner on our stage or not. Who's not going to
and liabilities, and their own standing in the community.
survive is us. Right? Arts companies are folding all around
With the Youth Chorus, we've always drawn the sponsorus.
Continued on next page

9

························································································•◄
Elizabeth Min
Continued from previous page

EM: What did you take away from the Paul Simon show,
the sight of American Express? Is that your memory of it
now?

Remembering Peter

HN: No, I took away an extraordinary collaboration of
cared-for musicians.

For the past three years, Peter Babcock was the
gifted graphic artist, activist and editor who
worked behind the scenes on many of the pieces
you may have received in the mail from Redwood.
Peter died on October 1, 1991, of AIDS. He was a
treasured friend, and his passing is a tremendous
loss to us.

EM: We have to get real here. Redwood has wonderful
support now, and we need a lot more, and more different
kinds of support. There are some people who are able to
give organizations like Redwood lots of money and some
people who can give organizations like Redwood $10 a
year. We need both. We need corporations to sponsor us.
We need foundation and government support. That's the
only way we're going to survive. Sales of our records and
concert tickets alone cannot support our operation. If that
were the case, we would either sell in the millions or the
cost of each record or ticket would be so high, we couldn't
possibly be in business. Instead, we have to look this in the
face, realize that we are a non-profit, believe that our work
is important, that it provides a vital force in our community, and make a conscious decision about going after all
kinds of funding-including the corporate sector.

Shortly before Peter's death, Redwood
Cultural Work, OUT/LOOK and Mal Warwick
and Associates joined hands to honor Peter for his
Outstanding Contributions to Social Change.
We created an award to be given annually to
someone who embodies the spirit of Peter's work
and vision-someone who brings creativity in art
and design to the service of communication and
fundraising for social change.
In honor and celebration of Peter's life, we
wanted to share the text of that award with you.

HN: The reason I asked this question is that Ifeel I've
really learned a lot about that and changed my mind a lot
about it. And I wanted to hear your perspective on it
because I still don't know how to articulate it as clearly as
you just did.

For brilliance in communicating the essence
of the message, in images and words;
For excellence in the field of fundraising
for social change, using the tools of visual
design and editorial insight; For inspirational
vision in publishing and communications,
launching creative new ventures that enhance
social justice, community and the environment;
For energy, passion and the persistent desire
to make a better world, we honor Peter
for setting new standards of excellence in all
these pursuits.

EM: Anybody who wants to support Redwood should step
right up. You are needed, and please bring a friend. I used
to say that to people with the Youth Chorus. Conductors
would say to me, "They're so fabulous, I wish that I could
conduct them." I said, "Corne on, come to a rehearsal and
conduct them. The kids need to see as many adult professional musicians who are into their art as possible. You
want to work with them, come on. You're needed." Well,
the same is true for Redwood. We need lots of different
kinds of supporters out there. So step right up. We'll be
thrilled to have you. And I mean it! •

Friends and colleagues who would like to remember
Peter may send contributions to the BABCOCK
AWARD clo Redwood Cultural Work. •

Holly Near is the founder of Redwood. For over twenty years
she has worked as an outspoken singer, songwriter, actor and
recently , author. Holly continues to tour. Her concerts are
considered both artistic achievements as well as rejuvenating
community gatherings.

10

.........................................................................................,
toured Lebanon, playing in Tyre, Nabatia, Tripoli and
Beirut.
Marcel Khalife's music has always shown the
influence of his years of study at the National Conservatory of Music in Beirut, where he both studied and taught.
Through his twenty years of singing folk-based songs he
has also produced several works for symphony orchestra.
The most widely known piece of this nature is the 90minute oratorio, Ahmad al Arabi, a setting of the epic poem
by Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Al-Mayadeen has
always had several western instrumentalists in the band
with violins and flutes prominent in Khalife's composing
style.
For Summer Night's Dream, which is an adaptation of
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Khalife calls
upon a 28-piece version of Al-Mayadeen. This double-size
group features some who have been part of it for may years
like Micahel Keiralla and Antoin Khalife (Khalife's
brother) on violin and Bassam Saba playing flute. But
added are more violins, electric bass, saxophones, viola,
cello, piano, kanoun and accordion.

MARCEL KHALIFic

Marcel Khalife:
Summer Night's Dream

The music is as full as the instrumentation. Khalife's
gift for melody is deepened by rich harmonies and culturally hybrid polyrhythms. While Khalife does contribute
some excellent oud playing, our experience is of Khalife
the composer, whose style is very romantic with a solid
Middle Eastern foundation.

by Russ Jennings

Since 1972 Marcel Khalife has been performing inspiring
songs that were born in Arab culture, raised in the struggle
for democracy in Lebanon and educated by the national
aspirations of the Palestinians. He and his band, AlMayadeen, have performed all over Europe, North America
and Australia as well as their native Lebanon. In 1986 they
drew fifty thousand in a concert in Beirut, but most people
have listened to his music on treasured, and often illegal,
cassettes.

Two soloists stand out on the album. Antoin Deib
plays a magnificent accordion on 'Tango for My Lover's
Eyes," a darkly passionate piece in the middle of the
recording. On the final piece, "Salute," Aboud Al-Saadi is
featured in a blistering fast-fingered bebop jazz guitar solo
worthy of Charlie Christian. Summer Night's Dream was
premiered in the summer of 1991 at the Picadilly Theatre
in Beirut. In the program notes the piece's creators say
that, "It reflects the diversities in the structure of the
Shakespearean Subject, with its unbounded imagination,
in a Middle Eastern vision where the climates are purely
Middle Eastern." The climate on this album is very
commodious, and hopefully this album will make
Marcel Khalife a regular part of our North American
environment. T

This new recording on the Redwood label, Summer
Night's Dream, marks his first North American release
since 1983. This all-instrumental opus is the culmination
of several threads in Khalife's career. The music was
composed for a production by the Caracalla Dance Theatre
of Beirut. This collaboration with choreographer Abdul
Halim Caracalla is the first time Khalife has been able to
play a role in the Beirut arts scene since he was forced to
leave his country in the early days of the civil war. Beirut's
. status as a major arts city, reminiscent of Paris in the
'twenties, is only now beginning to reemerge.

Russ Jennings is a programmer on KPFA-FM, a freelance
writer, and an independent concert producer.

Last year, Khalife returned to perform in his native
town of Amsheet after being banned for 16 years. At his
opening concert, which was broadcast live on television,
the welcome from his old friends was tumultuous. The
town's fences and buildings were covered with pictures of
Khalife, replacing the graffiti, and the people clamored his
most radical songs. After Amsheet, he and Al-Mayadeen

Cassettes and CDs make great
premiums for organizations to use for
fundraising. Call (510) 835-1445 and
talk with Cynthia.
11

························································································•◄
WRITERS IN CONVERSATION:
Prese,ving Culture through Art
Annual Redwood Benefit
Oakland Museum Theatre and Restaurant
March 22

An Evening of Readings and Dialog with four of today's
most provocative women writers-Sara Levi Calderon,
Susan Griffin, Joy Harjo and Cherrie Moraga-moderated
by Holly Near.
Sara Levi Calderon is the author of the best-selling
Mexican novel, Two Mujeres, which is one of only three
openly lesbian and Mexican works in existence. The novel
explores the romance between divorced Jewish-Mexican
women and the constraints of family and society.
Calderon has taught Latin American Studies, studied acting
and screenplay writing, and is the mother of two sons. She
currently makes her home in the Bay Area.

WOMEN ONSTAGE
Rhodessa Jones in
Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women and
Marga Gomez is
Pretty, Witty and Gay
Scottish Rite Temple
154 7 Lakeside Dr. at 14th St, 1st Floor, Oakland
Friday, April 3, 8pm
Tickets: General admission $12

Susan Griffm, poet, playwright and author has
written, among others, the acclaimed Woman and Nature:
The Roaring Inside Her and Pornography and Silence:
Culture's Revenge Against Nature. Her many awards include
an Emmy and a MacArthur Foundation Grant for Peace
and International Cooperation. She narrated, scripted and
was interviewed in the film Berkeley in the Sixties. Her
newest work, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War,
will be published this year.

Known for bringing the unmentionable, controversial and
wild to center stage, actor Rhodessa Jones portrays the
experiences of jailed women as harrowing, dangerous and
profoundly touching. " ... She transcends art to create
some unforgettable moments of spiritual healing."-Los
Angeles Times
On the eve of her appearance on a television talk
show, Marga rewrites the Bible, battles extortionists, and
reads from the "lost" journals of Anais Nin.

Joy Harjo has published four books of poetry and is
at work on a fifth collection of poetic prose, The Field of
Miracles, and an anthology of Native women's writing,
Reinventing the Enemy's Language. She is a professor in
Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. She
makes her home in Albuquerque, where she plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice.

HOLLY NEAR PERFORMS
A WORK IN PROGRESS
Preservation Park Theater
April 15 and 20

Cherrie Moraga, poet, essayist, playwright and
political organizer, is the author of The Shadow of A Man
and Giving Up the Ghost, both full-length theater works.
Her most recent play, Heroes and Saints, a work commissioned by the Los Angeles Theater Center, is scheduled for
production in San Francisco this year. Moraga is currently
an instructor of Writing and Theatre in Chicano Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley.

On the heels of her successful autobiography, Fire in the
Rain ... Singer in the Storm, Holly and her sister/director
Timothy Near, have created a musical docudrama adapted
from the book for the stage. Unique in its form and
content, this riveting theater piece premiered at the San
Jose Repertory Theater last May. The play is scheduled to
open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles for an 8week run in August and September 1992. This spring, in
preparation for the LA production, Holly and Timothy will
be doing additional work on the play, giving it time to
grow and improve. Enjoy this rare opportunity to help
fine-tune the show-dose up! Redwood Cultural Work
will present Holly doing two readings of the work in
progress, with John Bucchino on piano, at the Preservation
Park Theater in Oakland, April 15th and 20th.

12

t

J

························································································•◄
Conjunto Cespedes is one of the leading Afro-Cuban
music and dance ensembles in the western United States.
Altazor is a leading American practitioner of Nueva
Cancion, combining the folkloric traditions of Cuba, Chile
and Venezuela, mixing them with modern harmonies and
lyrics addressing social concerns.
Guillen's vast body of work chronicles Cuba's social,
economic and political struggles. He believed that a poet
must create revolution while at the same time creating art.
To date, over 200 works by Guillen have been set to music
in a wide range of musical styles. Guillen poetry is rooted
in the structures of the son and the rumba, the two most
typical idioms of popular Cuban music.

QUEEN LATIFAH IN CONCERT

This concert brings together African and Latino
traditions, both of which have made, and continue to
make, distinct contributions to American culture.

MC Dominique DiPrima
Opening Act: Petite and Elite
Calvin Simmons Theatre
10 Tenth St. at Fallon, Oakland
Saturday, April 18th, 8pm
Tickets : Reserved Seating $22, $19.50, $15

REDWOOD MUSIC FESTIVAL '92
Calvin Simmons Theatre
May 29, 30

Don't miss the reigning queen of rap music in her solo
Oakland debut! Explosive, soulful and provocative,
Queen Latifah's music carries a message of love, empowerment, and the strength of women. Integrating singing and
rapping with an an occasional touch of R&B, jazz, reggae,
and soul, the queen is an experience not-to-be-missed.

Redwood's Festival is moving to Calvin Simmons and
expanding to two days! Participate in workshops and
master classes during the day and hear great music in
concert at night. Come be part of this celebration of
community!

"She put on the show of our lives and made all
things right between us and around us."-Danyel Smith,
Bay Guardian

For many years, the Greek Theatre and Estuary Park
have provided beautiful settings for potential sun worshipers and those who enjoy listening to good music while
scoping the lovely view. The Redwood Music Festival is
predictably fun as evidenced by regularly good crowds.
But because of the unpredictability of the weather, this year
we're taking the Festival indoors. The Festival's new
location allows us to create a new, improved format that
will provide more opportunity for audience participation.

NEW AMERICAN WORKS SERIES:
TODD MEZCLADO
Calvin Simmons Theatre
April 25

Featured artists this year include Holly Near and
Ronnie Gilbert Together Again, Odetta, Guardabarranco ,
Toshi Reagon, Geraldine Barney, Dia ta Dia ta, and
Romanovsky &: Phillips.

Sizzling Afro-Cuban music by Conjunto Cespedes and
lilting Latin American New Song rhythms by Altazor
interpret the poetry of Cuban laureate Nicolas Guillen in
this world premiere of new songs commissioned by
Redwood. Inspired by Guillen's dedication to mulatez, the
concept of an interracial cultural identity, Todo Mezclado
is a feast of color, theater, dance and exuberant music.
• And don't worry if you don't speak Spanish-the show is
translated.

INVEST IN ASOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE
ORGANIZATION
Redwood Cultural Work is seeking loans ($3,000
minimum) for two years. We offer competitive
interest rates. Redwood has capitalized our
projects with the loan program since 1973.
Please contact Cynthia Frenz at RCW if you are
interested. Call (510) 835-1445. "Y

In the second year of this series, Redwood presents a
concert-l~ngth collaborative multi-media performance
featuring Conjunto Cespedes and Altazor. Todo Mezclado
is a commissioned collaboration of Afro-Cuban music and
dance and Nueva Cancion Latinoamericana (Latin American
New Song) centered around musical adaptations of poetry
by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen (1902-1969).

13

························································································•◄
open at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in August of

More than Music from
Holly Near

by Mollie Katzen

this year.
If you can't get to LA to see the play, try her new
audio autobiography, Singer in the Storm ... The Life and
Music of Holly Near. This is a 2-cassette package, containing two hours of Holly chatting and reading pass~ges from
her writing, interspersed with cuts of many songs. You
might also enjoy her videotape, Singingfor Our Lives,
replete with footage of Holly in concert and cavorting in
the snow, spliced with nicely shot closeups of her reading
from the book. As is true for most progressive and independent artists, these works are produced with small
budgets. Still, the video is quite visually
compelling, and will keep even her
Photo: Chris Fesler
most diehard fans rejuvenated between
live concerts.

Several years ago, with the approach of her fortieth
birthday, Holly Near began to document her life and work
with a series of autobiographical projects. At the center of
this multifaceted undertaking is her 290-page book, Fire in
the Rain .. .Singer in the Storm (Morrow 1990). The narrative moves back and forth in time, from rich scenes of
Holly's rural childhood with her large, loving family to
vignettes about her budding political
awareness as a college student during the
Vietnam War to stories of her journey to
self-discovery. The reader is party to Holly's
Some might raise their eyebrows
numerous voyages-both through the
at the idea of a 40-year-old woman
world itself and through her responses to
writing the story of her own life. Yet
the world. Interspersed is a selection of
Holly's self-documentation is more a
lyrics to some of Holly's songs which, even
personal
stock-taking than a summary
though familiar, take on enhanced meaning
of
a
life.
It is a mid-career pause to look
when presented as poetry within the
backward and forward at the same time:
context of her narrative. For young people
a mirrored way station. These are
of the post-Vietnam War generation, Holly's
reflections of the early years in the life
book provides a chance to get some vivid
of
a gifted and passionate late 20th
impression of that important era beyond the
century
white North American woman
currently popular oversimplified '60s
striving
to engage meaningfully and
"nostalgia. " Holly's story continues into the
compassionately with a difficult world.
'70s and '80s, through the Reagan years and
As Holly publicly probes her memories
a dizzying period of global change. Her
and motivations, we are offered a
personal life and professional challenges
privileged
view into her personal
and choices are just about as dizzying. She
LAUGHING AT HER OWN
HOMOPHOBIA
IN
THIS
SCENE
struggles
and
triumphs, her self-love
lapses a bit too far into name-dropping and
FROM THE PLAY, HOLLY TELLS
and
self-hate,
her doubt and her clarity.
STORIES OF HER EARLY DAYS
self-aggrandizement, but at the same time,
IN WOMEN'S MUSIC.
I
look
forward
to the next installment,
invokes universal themes that ring true and
maybe 20 or so years down the line. It would be good to
resonate for many of us. Even with some unevenness (and
see Holly go even deeper into her material; at first glance
one may feel tired by Holly's pace!), Fire in the
Fire in the Rain ... Singer in the Storm feels like a mere
Rain . .. Singer in the Storm makes for a real page-turner.
introduction-a mid-life pause. Taken in the context of
In her musical docudrama of the same title, adapted
history, it honors a time and movement that many of us
from the book and developed for the stage by Holly and
were part of, enabling us to identify and to remember the
her sister, director Timothy Near, Holly expands some of
excitement of being there. Unstated, but implied at the end
her best anecdotal material into an engaging piece of
of both the book and the play is the message: "To be
theater. The stage is clearly Holly's home. Once again, her
continued ... " T
many journeys-inner and outer-come to life, this time
with Holly right in front of you. Her performance is strong
and fast-paced-so typical of her style. One feels satisfied
These recent products by Holly can be ordered on page 23.
by the end-entertained and inspired. It's commonplace to
Mollie Katzen is the author/illustrator of a popular trilogy
view an actor portraying the life of another character on
of vegetarian cookbooks: Moosewood Cookbook, The
stage. But to witness a woman telling the story of her own
Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and Still Life with Menu. She
life-the conflicts of a child artist as she discovers her
lives with her husband, son and daughter near Berkeley,
voice, teenage love with all its anticipation and disappointCalif
omia, and does a variety of cultural projects involving
ment, falling in love with a woman, falling in love with the
art,
writing,
music and progressive politics.
world-is a rare and powerful experience. The play will

14

"

.........................................................................................,

Meet Theresa Harlan

same tribe-my
enrollment
number easily
corrects these
false ideas. In the
context of individuals who fall
into the trap of
believing romantic
stereotypes of
Native Americans
and search for a
distant Native
ancestor to
THERESA HARIAN
provide them with
Native ancestry-my enrollment number easily separates
me from those who want to be Native. Yet in the context of
Native American history, my enrollment number is
nothing more than an arm of the United States policy
toward Native Americans. Many Native people have been
denied federal recognition for the want of easier access to
natural resources and land. Many California Native people
are not federally recognized. Many Native people are not
federally recognized through no fault of their own, but by
the hand of the government or consequences of its policies. In this context, my enrollment number is not a badge
of pride, but a painful reminder of Native people who have
been denied their right to be recognized as a sovereign
people and in general Native American and United States
history.

An inte,view with Elizabeth Min
Theresa Harlan has joined Redwood's staff as Assistant to
Susan Freundlich, Development Director. She is also a
freelance curator of contemporary Native American art and
will guest curate for the Boston Photographic Resource Center
and Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael in the fall of this
year. Harlan is the farmer Director of Exhibitions of the
American Indian Contemporary Arts gallery in San Francisco
and recently completed a fellowship at the California Arts
Council, where she compiled comprehensive information
about art and cultural activities taking place in California's
Native American communities. Theresa is an enrolled
member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo of New Mexico.
EM: What are some of the major themes that Native
American artists are dealing with now?

TH: Right now the hot issue is the 1990 Indian Arts &
Crafts law, which states that unless you meet the criteria,
you cannot call or market yourself as a Native artist or you
can be punished with a fine and jail. The criteria is you
must be a member of a federally recognized tribe, or be
listed on a state census as American Indian, or request
your tribe to give you the special designation of "Indian
artist."
EM: Can you explain more about this? What do you
mean?

TH: As federally recognized Native Americans, we each
have a number, a census number, that is connected to our
blood quantum. We are the only race in the U.S. that has
to keep track of our fractional blood quantum. This means
that on paper, I am half Santa Domingo Pueblo; but I need
to keep track of the fact that I am also one-quarter Laguna
Pueblo and one-quarter Jemez Pueblo. If I have children,
they will have to keep track-it's something that's passed
down. To be a federally recognized Indian means you have
to be at least one-quarter of one tribe recognized by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Statistically it will work
out that eventually there won't be any Native people left
on the BIA rolls, because there's so much intermarriage.
We now have inter-tribal children that are six tribes;
they're full blood, yet they aren't eligible for federal
recognition. It's a very bizarre practice.

EM: How is this controversy about the Indian Arts and
Crafts Law, the question of self-identity, the right of selfdetennination, expressed through art?

TH: Native artists are responding to it in their work. My
friend, photographer Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, has done a
whole series called "Creative Native." She's made a
portrait of herself with her census number across her
mouth so it looks like she's tattooed and censored. She's
written text that accompanies the portrait. Hulleah poses
the question-if she had lived in earlier days, would she
have been like the Nighthawk or Snake Society which
refused to cooperate with the government, or would she
have been a mixed blood, leading the government to the
full bloods? She's focused her recent work on challenging
this law.

EM: This whole question of blood and blending of blood is
such an American issue. To see how regulated it is for
Native Americans is shocking.

EM: As a curator, how do you approach the artist?

TH: I am truly in awe of artists-of their ideas, and the
courage and ability to create ideas of color and vision, and
that their creations will stand on their own, with or
without the artist. I really believe that art, once it is
created, has a life of its own. I don't try to dictate the
work. I just try to gather the people together and let them
continued on page 17
speak their messages.

TH: Yes, it can be very unsettling. Our enrollment
numbers and federal recognition can be a benefit to us on
one level and be harmful on another. It all depends on the
context. For instance, in the context of misconceptions
and stereotypes that Native people are extinct or of the

15

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DIAS DE AMAR-

GUARDABARRANCC

GUARDABARRANCO
CONCERT AND NEW
ALBUM REVIEW
by Larry Kelp

Their whole world has changed in the four years between
Nicaraguan singing duo Guardabarranco's debut album, Si
Buscabas, and their just-issued second recording, Dias de
Amar (Days to Love), and accompanying U.S. tour.
The brother-sister group, Katia and Salvador
Cardenal, began performing together in the cultural
outpouring that followed the 1979 Sandinista revolution in
their homeland. Like their Nueva Candon counterparts in
other Latin American countries, Guardab~rranco used
acoustic instruments and folk styles to express new views
and ideas about contemporary life. But what was true four
years ago has taken on a new frame of reference since the
election of President Violeta Chamorro. And what has
happened to Nueva Candon, its growing use of electric
instruments and Caribbean and other dance rhythms, may
have had an influence on Guardabarranco, but the duo has
changed little, musically, in the face of such vast political
and musical upheaval.

Their road has become harder. In July, no longer
supported by their own government, they undertook a
U.S. concert tour, singing songs from both their albums.
"We really wanted to come to the United States," Katia
told the audience of 400 at Oakland's First Presbyterian
Church on July 27, "because we know that even if the
government is not with us, the people are." The trip was
complicated by myriad visa headaches. To perform here
and in Canada, Katia said, "We've spent half our tour in
embassies."

The group, on its new album, may use darker
imagery in the lyrics, but it is still delivered with a gentle
intimacy unique in Nueva Candon, indeed in most music.
The songs are far from simple, but they are presented with
no adornment, just Katia and Salvador's voices and
Salvador's acoustic guitar for accompaniment. The lyrics
may no longer have such innocent hope as during the
Sandinista era, but they are still filled with hope, now hope
in the face of adversity.

Yet, as they harmonized so sweetly on stage, such
problems melted away. Some of their songs are purely
folk, others ride on catchy pop melodies worthy of the
Beatles. In songs about matters of the heart it felt like
eavesdropping on a confessional, it was so personal and
quiet. But when Katia opened up, and seemed to take on
the whole world and its attendant problems with just her
voice, she sang with an urgency and intensity that is rarely
captured on record. In those moments she sang without
equal, a special voice speaking for all humanity. Her vocal
range, her phrasing and the emotional depth of her
singing seemed more than equal to handling any amount
of adversity, even when set in the context of some of the
most peaceful and gentle music to come out of Nueva
Candon.

"La Libertad" ("Freedom") looks at life from behind
prison bars: "Freedom-a blind child, Freedom-a crazy
lover, Freedom-a swimmer in open sea, Freedom-in
jail, Freedom-in my mind, Freedom-a thinker against
the law." It is dedicated to Nelson Mandela. Other songs
focus on love in many forms, on nature and animals.
While Katia, 28, has a five-year-old daughter and has set
up a musical academy for children, Salvador, 31, who
writes most of the lyrics, has given up city life and now
makes his home on an island on Lake Grenada. His
closeness to nature and the values he sees there come
through in every lyric. Newer songs emphasize the facility
of nature and freedom. Yet even in their delicate melodies,
the pair's performance is filled with strength and resolve to
speak out for these causes.

The Cardenals' approach may seem to go against the
mainstream, but it is clear nothing else is needed to deliver
their vision. Rock star Jackson Browne was so taken with
the pair that he produced their first album. The new Dias
de Amar was recorded in Denmark, and then Browne and a
few bandmates added just a touch of guitar, bass and
percussion to a few of its songs. He's not alone in his

16

························································································•◄
admiration of their lives and music. Country-folk singer
Redwood Cultural Work is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. All
contributions are tax deductible to
the full extent allowable by law.

Nanci Griffith wrote one of her most heartfelt songs, 'The
Wing and the Wheel," inspired by a Canadian tour she did
with Guardabarranco.
Since then the duo has honed its unadorned music
until every line and every vocal nuance carries weight.
Children's hearts and birds serve as metaphors for their
vision of a world devoid of hunger and suffering (one song
on the new album even stabs directly at the American
government: "And if you are going to sing/Of freedom with
such pride/Then also sing that on Christmas/You sent
bombs to the children of Panama") If their lyrics often
reflect the reality of an imperfect world, their music at the
same time offers music so beautiful that it is easy to hope
that their vision is within grasp. T

Our Wish List:

Dias de Amar is new on the Redwood label, and is available on CD and cassette through the Redwood catalog on
page 23.
Lany Kelp is the Oakland Tribune's music critic, and host of
"Sing Out," the folk and political music program on Pacifica
Radio Station KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

Theresa Harlan

T

Travel (frequent flyer) coupons for artist travel
to concerts, and Redwood staff use for fundraising
and conferences. These are extremely helpful to us!

T

Printing donation for catalog, newsletter and
stationery

T

Intern/Volunteer to work on Redwood FestivalSpring '92

T

Copy machine

T

Computer chairs and desk chairs

T

An auto-reverse tape player to hook up to the
phone system, so callers will hear Redwood music

T

Videotape player (VHS)

T

A video camera and playback monitor

Continued from page 15

EM: How did you become involved with Redwood?
TH: I consider myself a lifetime non-profit person. I
believe in non-profits and find personal fulfillment in
working toward a goal that contributes to people's lives. I
left AICA because I wanted to further develop my nonprofit management skills and also make time to write
about Native American contemporary art. The growth and
development of an organization can be extremely tenuous
if not carefully managed. I was very attracted to Redwood
because Redwood seemed so adept at handling these
troublesome areas. I was especially interested in working
in development, since the environment of fundraising is
increasingly shifting away from large government and
foundation cash awards. I was impressed with Redwood
because it has such a broad and diverse base of support.
I was also impressed by Redwood because it is able to
carry out its vision with a positive and careful hand. I
really like working with Susan and the "Redwood Gang."
I am learning a lot. Susan is so eager to share with me. T

Donations of goods and services
to Redwood Cultural Work are
tax-deductible at their current
market value.

17

························································································•◄

Notes from an Artist's
Journal-Holly Near

I receive countless letters bemoaning the fact that I haven't
had the success I deserve, that I have not gotten famous
enough: "Why don't they play you on the radio? ... Why
aren't you on the major night-time talk shows?" Makes me
smile. I love my audience, keeping my best interests (and
theirs) at heart.
However, there is a danger in believing that mainstream success is an appropriate barometer. I search for
the balance between achieving mainstream visibility (i.e.,
wanting my music to be accessible to anyone who might
enjoy it, need it) and maintaining a critical analysis of the
failures of popular media. I do not want to fall prey to
their agenda of bigger is better. My fans and I see that the
dominant music industry is culturally and ideologically
narrow, economically motivated, often socially insensitive,
and offensive. We perceive that the industry lacks vision
and leadership, and has created a void. Yet popular media
reaches the largest number of people. This is disturbing,
given the power and influence of music in our lives.

MISSING HER FRIEND AND MOTHER, ANN, HOLLY
SINGS "ICICLE BLUE."

tives: some jazz, some classical, some folk, some Nueva
Cancion, some world music. But having the time and the
resources to look are hard to come by. Those of us who
have looked and found can pass this music on, and one by
one our discoveries become widespread.
The fact that independent culture has survived and
influenced the lives of millions of people must not be
forgotten in the face of the standards set by commercial
institutions. Just as we mustn't judge every political
gathering by comparing it to a million gathered in Washington or in Central Park, we must not fall prey to
thinking that if an artist does not play stadiums or sell
over a million CDs, they have failed . Precious and unique
communication takes place in small arenas. We lose an
essential part of ourselves if we let someone else decide
what is important.

I have written songs, with no hope of them being
heard, and years later I find that people who were detained
in a Latin American prison heard one of my songs, sung in
a whisper by a fellow prisoner who had learned it from a
solidarity worker. And what of the women who have
heard lesbian love songs around a campfire after the
potential critics have turned in, sung by one brave camp
counselor who knows she is not alone ... and once again,
lives and souls are reassured. What if I had decided not to
write the song because it would not get major radio play?

It is debilitating to think that the world is changed
by large numbers of people. I believe a relatively small
group of people can effect monumental change and not
even know what they have done until quite some time
later. True, large numbers of people give an idea
validity .. . but large numbers of people may not have been
the first to put it forth. At a sporting event, look how few
people start "the wave" until finally most participate. If
we fail to believe this, and then fail to remember it when
the going is tough, we miss a political and creative
opportunity in our lives.

That solidarity worker, that lesbian camp counselor
... they are our radio. They and you have been my radio
and the radio for other progressive artists. You have been
our billboards when you teach one of our songs to your
students at school. You have been our TV specials when
you include one of our songs in your Seder, church
service, wedding, funeral or birth ceremonies. You have
hosted our appearances on late-night TV when you sing
our songs as lullabies to your children, when you play our
records while you make love to your beloved. And you
put us on the charts when you buy our tapes and CDs,
videos and books, when you go to small art theaters to see
our films, when you sit in living rooms and hear our
poetry, when you watch us dance on floors dangerously
splintered, and when you support independent radio and
television stations.

Of course I want to have access to mainstream
television (with millions of people watching) for political
reasons, but also for artistic ones. It would be fun! How
exciting it was to hear Sweet Honey in the Rock sing, to
hear Linda Tillery and Rhiannon sing with Bobby
McFerrin, to see Vickie Randle play congas and sing with
Kenny Loggins-all on "The Arsenio Hall Show." And I
felt so proud of Martina Navratilova when she spoke so
articulately on "Donahue," and how great to hear TV stars
Sheila Kuehl and Dick Sargeant come out on "Geraldo."

For decades people have counted on the radio as a
link to the world. They have not always, if ever, gotten the
whole picture through mainstream programming. This is
tragic and frightening. Those who search can find alterna-

C ontinued ►

18

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ f ♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ fi

REDWOOD ARTISTS ON THE ROAD

6/20
6/21
8/16

ALTAZOR
4/25
5/2*
5/24
5/1
8/20*

Oakland
Berkeley
Albuquerque
Saratoga
Medford

CA
CA
NM
CA
OR

Vancouver
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Santa Monica
San Diego
Davis
Lethbridge
Edmonton
Saskatoon
Winnipeg
Minneapolis
Waterloo
London
Hamilton
Kingston
Peterborough
Ottawa
Montreal
Peterborough
Portsmouth
Westboro

BC,CAN
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
ALB, CAN
ALB, CAN
SASK, CAN
MANT,CAN
MN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT,CAN
ONT, CAN
ONT, CAN
CAN
NH
NH
WA

ONT, CAN
IL
AK

RONNIE GILBERT
4/3-5/17

Milwaukee

WI

INTI-ILLIMANI
3/24
3/26-27*
3/28-29,30*
4/1
4/3
4/4
4/5
4/8
4/10
4/11
4/12
4/13
4/15
4/16

FERRON
3/16
3/19-21
3/22
3/27
3/28
3/31
4/29
4/30
5/1
5/2
5/3
5/5
5/6
5/7
5/8
5/9
5/10
5/12
5/14
5/15
5/16

Toronto
Oak Park
Haines

West Lafayette
Chicago
Scottsdale
Hanover
New York
Philadelphia
Eugene
Santa Barbara
Claremont
North Hollywood
Davis
Berkeley
Berkeley

IN
IL
TX
AZ
NH
NY
PA
OR
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA
CA

JUDY SMALL
3/15
3/18
3/20
3/22

Winnipeg
Regina
Calgary
Berkeley

MANT, CAN
SASK, CAN
ALB, CAN
CA

HOLLY NEAR
3/15
3/19
3/20
3/21
3/22
3/26
3/27
3/28
3/29-30
4/1
4/2
4/3
4/4
4/7-8
4/15 & 20
4/21 •
4/22
4/24
6/6
6/7
6/14
8/2-9/27

Holly Near
Co ntinued f rom previous page

These are great moments, and I celebrate them. But they
aren't the only moments.
I read your letters. Do not let our invisibility in the
mainstream diminish what you mean to progressive and
independent artists. It immobilizes the creative spirit to
wallow in a mood of defeat. Of course it feels different
than 20 years ago. The conditions are different. But the
music is still here. It is a disservice to our humanity to be
controlled by hopelessness. Like Toshi Reagon singing
Bernice's song, "you hold your breath for change to come,
we're gone have to carry you out"!* It will be awhile
before peace songs and lesbian love songs are commonplace on Top 40 stations. In the meanwhile, remember you
are our radio . We need you more than ever before, and I
venture to say,.you need us-for what people have ever
survived a nightmare without music? 'Y
* "How Long" by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Grand Rapids
Sarasota
Washington
Raleigh
Oakland
Spring Valley
Nashua
Cambridge
Durham
Toronto
Woodstock
Albany
Lewisburg
Seattle
Oakland
Arcata
Santa Rosa
Kingston
Elmer
Spring Valley
Saratoga
Los Angeles

MI
FL
DC
NC
CA
NY
NH
MA
NH
ONT,CAN
NY
NY
PA
WA
CA
CA
CA
RI
NJ
NY
CA
CA

*indicates tentative dates
For more information call (510) 835-1445 .

For a complete Redwood catalog, write to us at P.O. Box
10408, Oakland, CA 94610.

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Chicken Made of Rags

An Interview with Greg Landau,
producer of Redwood's first
children's release, The Story of
the Chicken Made of Rags
by Karen Hester
KH: How did you get interested in recording Chicken
Made of Rags?
GL: The story begins many years ago. My mother had an
uncle who was born in Santiago, Cuba. He used to tell her
stories to put her to sleep. He told her this story about The
Chicken Made of Rags (Chicken). So this story got recycled
and told to my sister and myself when we were kids. In
the early '70s, my mother, Nina Serrano, with Judy Binder,
wrote a play called The Chicken Made of Rags, which
played all around the Bay Area, and in many Bay Area
schools. When I returned to the Bay Area, after living for
many years in Nicaragua and working with Soul Vibrations, I talked to Nina about reviving Chicken and recording it because Soul Vibes was going to be in the United
States and they were interested in doing it. I had also
talked to other local musicians who were very excited
about recording it.

THE "CHICKEN" FAMILY, FROM L. TOR.CAMILO LANDAU, PHIL SERRANO, NLNA SERRANO, GREG
LANDAU, VALERIE LANDAU.

We asked the actors to use natural voices rather than
fake cartoony voices, maintaining their different accents,
typical regional and ethnic accents. In this way, we tried to
enrich the child's listening experience. We also used a
story that children could identify with, about something
that's going to help them in their life. It's a story about
how you get tricked all the time and you can't always trust
powerful, established authority figures, so you have to
question-you have to be careful.

So my idea was to use Chicken as a way of creating a
multi-cultural narrative that talked about the way people
live in the United States, about the different kinds of ethnic
and cultural identities, different kinds of sounds and what
they mean, the different kinds of work people do. I looked
for actors who spoke in English with different kinds of
accents. In the musical arrangements we also tried to
reflect a whole different range of styles, from country
music, rock'n'roll, to Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, rap,
jazz, blues, cumbia-all different kinds of music. We
wanted to arrange it in a way to make a children's record
that wouldn't talk down to children, but would try to be
something they would be interested in, something of
quality, something very creative, that would inspire
children to look into other cultures and try to understand
the variety of cultures surrounding them.

KH: This was really a family affair. You had your mom,
your uncle, sister and nephew all working on it. How did
you all work together?
GL: Well, basically in a low-budget operation, you have to
look at who is going to work for cheap or for free, and the
first place to start is with your family, because they can't
say no. That wasn't the only reason-they are all very
talented people. It worked out very well because the
project was close to all of us. I had the momentum of
producing the Soul Vibrations record and working with
Soul Vibes, and that they were there, so it gave us the
momentum to carry out this recording, too, which meant
hours and weeks in the studio, editing and recording,
mixing, writing arrangements, fifteen singers and musicians, chord charts.

KH: You're also a videographer and a parent and uncle.
You know the power of TV to captivate kids and also to
anesthetize their imaginations. How do we get kids to turn
off the TV and listen to music instead?
GL: I think a cassette is something that will help children a
lot in developing their creativity and imagination. The
problem with TV, because it's sound and image, is it
doesn't leave anything to the children's imagination. They
hear a voice and they see who's saying it. It's sort of

20

························································································•◄
who is really struggling for a living. At this particular
moment in American history there are a lot of ways to
interpret what all these birds do out on the street and why
they're so eager to go to the hotel for a grand banquet.
KH: Because they're homeless and need to eat something?

GL: Some kids have seen that. They see it in their own
lives and they understood clearly what's going on. It
wasn't what was intended by the authors, but as times
change, people get more and more like these birds, out
hustling on the street. People will go to great lengths to
have a nice dinner.
KH: Let's talk about the educational market and what your
and your mom's and sister's hopes are for getting Chicken
into the classroom.
GL: One thing we want to do is develop a workbook to go
along with the cassette to help teachers use it as an
educational tool. The workbook would explain some of the
things that are going on in terms of the music, the narrative, the story line that could help the teacher to make
certain points, to teach certain lessons, using Chicken as a
form of entertainment. It would be a tool to teach about
music, theater, and cooperation. There are a lot of lessons
that could be drawn from this story. T

OUR FIRST CHILDREN'S RELEASE-ON
CASSETTE FROM REDWOOD.

drawing the map and pictures for them right there and not
allowing them to develop their images and apply them to
their own experience. With a recording, the good thing is
that children hear a voice and picture in their own minds
who that person is or what they might look like. They
develop the whole stage and scenery and action in their
heads if you can give them the pieces to put together.
Even the sounds, too-you don't see the musicians, so you
just imagine these birds, singing and playing. I'm very
much in favor of radio and radio drama because I think it
helps kids to develop their creativity and imagination in
ways that TV doesn't.

The Story of the Chicken Made of Rags is available on
cassette, and can be ordered on page 23.

Karen Hester is the Publicity Director of Redwood Cultural
Work.
Greg Landau is a musician, record and video producer and
Ph.D candidate in Communications. He lived in Nicaragua
and worked with Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Mancotal for
nine years and has worked with Soul Vibrations since 1987.

KH: I have a 7-year-oldfriend Sabrina who loves this
cassette. Have you had much experience seeing how kids
are reacting to it?

Getting More Than
One Mailing?

GL: Yeah, I've given out copies to different kids and
watched them listen to it. We listen to their critiques.

Redwood is trying to keep up with our friends and
supporters-especially when you move or change
your address. If you are getting more than one
mailing or want to change your address with
Redwood, please send in the mailing label(s) and
tell us which one is correct. T

One of the characters that was kind of interesting
was the goose. The goose picks up aluminum cans and
bottles on the street. And some kids saw the goose as the
garbage collector that would push a broom like a street
cleaner-some kids saw the goose as a homeless person
walking around with a shopping cart picking up cans and
bottles. It was interesting because depending on where
kids live and what they see, they would interpret the
characters in different ways. Take the swan that dances in
the park. Some of them saw her as the elegant ballerina
and some saw her as a person who dances in the park,

21

························································································•◄

RCW Memberships

$25 Individual Membership
Includes: 5% discount on all catalog items for one year and
subscription to Varied Voices.

NEW VIDEO
AVAILABLE FROM
REDWOOD

$35 Friendship Membership
One free record/cassette or CD; 10% discount on every
item in the catalog for one year; and subscription to Varied
Voices.
$50 Contributing Membership
Two free records/cassettes or CDs; poster; 10% discount
on every item in the catalog for one year; and subscription
to Varied Voices.
$100 Supporting Membership
Four free records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
20% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$500 Sustaining Membership
Fifteen records/cassettes or CDs; one Redwood T-Shirt;
25% discount on every item in the catalog for one year;
and subscription to Varied Voices.
$1000 Redwood Benefactor
A complete library of Redwood music; Redwood T-Shirt; a
complimentary copy of every new Redwood release that
year; 25% discount on every item in the catalog; and
subscription to Varied Voices.
$2000 Redwood Presenter
As a Redwood Presenter you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice. You will also receive a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary copy of each new release
as it becomes available, along with your subscription to
Varied Voices.
$5000 Redwood Producer
As a Redwood Producer you will be helping Redwood
produce music on an on-going basis. You will receive
complimentary tickets to Redwood concerts of your
choice, along with backstage privileges. Special recognition of your support will be made within album projects
and/or concerts you help to produce. You will also receive
a complete library of Redwood music and a complimentary
copy of each new release as it becomes available, along
with your subscription to Varied Voices and other special
Redwood gifts.

Festival T-Shirts
We have beautiful commorative t-shirts from our
1991 Festival! The shirts are designed by Bay
Area artist Nancy Hom. The design represents
music of peace and hope from Redwood artists
the world over. The 3-color design (teal, red and
white) on a black t-shirt is a 100% Beefy-Tin a
roomy size XL Available from Redwood for $15.
See the order form to order. T

All memberships are tax-deductible
less the value of the free items.
22

......

♦♦......

•• •• ••• • • • • • •• •

,~~l~,~~lil lifilil l l~l ~If ...................................,
OK

M 001 111 633

I

~

1

Univllflfr11r~111i1fjjijj

Varied Voices Order Form
Sign me up to be a Redwood member so I can continue to receive Varied Voices
(Check membership type below-see preceding page for description.).
Please send me a catalog to order my free items.
Redwood Cultural Work An~ual Membership Program
_ $25. Individual
_ $500. Sustaining
_ $35. Friendship
$1000. Benefactor
_ $50. Contributing
$2000. Presenter
_ $100. Supporting
$5000. Producer

Amount$

_I am already a member. Use my additional tax-deductible gift to help
support the Challenge Campaign.
Featured Releases in this issue
Qty
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, Cass. $9.98
_ ALTAZOR, Altazor, CD $14.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, Cass. $9.98
_ DIAS DE AMAR, Guardabarranco, CD $14.98
_ CHICKEN MADE OF RAGS, Many, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, Cass. $9.98
_ SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Marcel Khalife, CD $14.98

Amount$

Music and more from Holly Near
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Hardback $19.95
Amount$
_ FIRE IN THE RAIN, SINGER IN THE STORM, Paperback $10.00
_ SINGER IN THE STORM, LIFE AND MUSIC, Audio 2-tape set, $15.95
_ SINGING FOR OUR LIVES, Video $29.95

_ Redwood Festival Commemorative T-Shirt, $15.00
Subtotal $ _ __
Membership#_ _ _ _ _ _ _ discount
8.25% Sales Tax (CA only) Does not apply to contributions.
Postage and Handling (see below)
TOTAL $
Method of Payment
Check enclosed
_ Bill my: __ VISA
MasterCard
Card# _ _ __
Signature _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Exp.Date _ _ _ _ __

Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ State _ _ Zip _ _ _ _ Phone(_) _ _ _ _ _ __
Postage and Handling
1st Class/UPS $3.50 for the 1st item, $0.50 each add'l item. Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Rush Service/UPS Second Day $7.00 for the 1st item, $1.00 each add'l item.
Allow up to 1 week for delivery-same for international orders sent via surface mail.
Send To
Redwood Cultural Work, P.O. Box 10408, Oakland, CA 94610 or call 1-800-888-7664.

23

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To Our Special Friends:
Last fall Redwood was awarded a California Arts
Council Challenge grant of $25,000! This is our
first grant of this kind and reflects the opinion of
the Council that our work is of the highest
artistic quality and significance. This kind of
grant usually goes to well-established arts companies who have long received the support of the
state.
In order to receive the $25,000, we must
raise $50,000 over and above what we raised last
year.
We are so happy with the response we have
received so far. We send our love and heartfelt
thanks to all of our friends who have contributed
to our Challenge Campaign. We are now more
than half way toward reaching our goal, but we
still need more contributions to make the necessary match. We are asking you to consider
joining our Challenge Campaign, or to make a
second gift if you've already joined. Help us with
this special campaign now-so we can show the
state of California how important Redwood is to
its members and friends. Just check the appropriate box on the order form inside. Thanks!

Inspired by a weekend reading of Fire in
the Rain ... Singer in the Stonn, Rain Burns
was moved to lend us a super Macintosh.
Thank you Rain, computer life at Redwood will never be the same.
Many individuals have made contributions, large and small to Redwood's
work. We are very appreciative of each
gift. We'd like to especially thankHarriet Goldhor Lerner, Marion Gibson,
Maya Miller, Jo-Lynne Worley, Jean
Sutherland, Bette Shulman and Holly
Near.
And for your generous support of
our work, special thanks to the City of
Oakland-Oakland Redevelopment
Agency, California Arts Council,
Rockefeller Foundation, Alameda County
Art Commission, San Francisco Foundation Zellerbach Foundation and the
'
Columbia Foundation 'Y

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Redwood

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