Music, particularly international dance music, is a full-blown passion of mine and my family's. At any given moment, you can find my mother shouting James Brown, my dad crooning Peter Tosh, or my sister blasting Beyonce down the highway. Not long ago, my brother Dan, who happens to be the Einstein of urban music production, decided to jump on board and help me make our first global dance music album. It was 2010 and all we wanted was to rip the limits off music and produce something so soulful, it could wake the dead!
Naturally, we turned to the music of our ancestors and contemporaries -- Africans and African-Americans whose drums and chants can call forth an unearthly magic and whose impact is ever felt across the world today. What we produced turned into an even more incredible reality once we invited the terrific Weedie Braimah to dash his powerful Djembe magnificence into our hot dance-music sauce. The dance music we made was quite simply and unspeakably tantalizing...and at the time, my brother and I had just seen the movie Avatar 3 times and aptly named our album Avatar & Beyond.
Now, this Saturday, Dan, Weedie, and myself, will join forces once again and present a thrilling music class chronicling the epic magic and science of Black American Music, dating way back to Ancient Africa, and to the beginning of the Djembe and Hip-Hop.
I was over-joyed when the city Library asked me to organize this powerful
lecture and hands-on exploration of Black American Music. And now it is an honor to invite you to this experience -- which is set to be a true AddLife! adventure. Check it out!
--Malena!
