Bay Area is a hotbed for body music
Annual fest shines light on artform’s rich traditions
With more than a dozen artists representing musical traditions from around the world, the 10th International Body Music MiniFest is diminutive only by the prodigious standard set by previous festivals.
Produced by the East Bay arts organization Crosspulse, the International Body Music Festival has turned into a global force, bringing disparate artists together to share bodybased musical traditions and forge new collaborations.
Most recently, the festival assembled some 60 artists from 12 countries in Ghana this summer to interact with hundreds of local performers, “an experience that was life-changing for many of us,” says body percussion master Keith Terry, IBMF founder and artistic director. “The connection there was so strong, and we were welcomed so enthusiastically. It was a great exchange in both directions.”
Crosspulse used to present similar events in the United States featuring performers who flew in from distant locations. The increasing expense and difficulty in acquiring visas for foreign artists has forced the organization to produce the full festivals abroad. But Terry hasn’t given up on the U.S. The IBM MiniFest unfolds with two main chapters in Berkeley this weekend “drawing on the wealth of talent in the Bay Area,” he
says. “It’s a testimony to the quality of the arts here.”
The MiniFest opens today at UC Berkeley’s Morrison Hall with a free lecture/demonstration, “Body Music — The Oldest Music on the Planet,” and stomps into high gear Friday at Ashkenaz with “Pass It Around,” an interactive program designed to turn audiences into participants.
Cross-cultural collaboration is built into the structure of the music with Terry, bass singer Bryan Dyer and beatboxer Steve Hogan’s Corposonic Trio serving as a house rhythm section for Dewa Berata’s Balinese kecak, Jim Santi
Owen’s South Indian solkatu and Antwan Davis’ African-American stepping. They’ll also be interacting with Clara Rodriguez’s AguaClara Flamenco, Balkan folk dancers Ivan Velev and Sean Tergis, the Georgia sea islands’ Ranky Tanky with Rhonda Benin, and the contemporary body music of Evie Ladin’s MoToR/dance troupe.
“Each one has a 20-minute set, and the idea is their work opens up and involves the audience,” Terry says. “By the end of the evening, we start mashing it up, mixing and blending these styles and traditions. We’ve done it at a few festivals,
and it’s very fun.”
Saturday’s program at Freight & Salvage, “Pass It Down,” is a sit-down concert that explores how traditions, sounds and steps are transmitted from one generation to the next. The Corposonic Trio is once again the house band, working with a different, diverse roster of performers, including elder storyteller Diane Ferlatte, dancer-actress Brenda Wong Aoki, the Mexican music and dance ensemble Los Cenzontles, Mutsun Ohlone artist Kanyon Coyote Woman, spoken word artist Rico Pabón and vocalists Zoe Ellis and Evie Ladin.
Youth contingents are well represented by Grammy Award-nominated hip-hop group Alphabet Rockers, the Destiny Arts hip-hop combo and Oakland School for the Arts’ award-winning a cappella ensemble Vocal Rush.
“It’s an evening about passing down traditions and ideology,” Terry says, referring to the unavoidable themes of migration, immigration and gentrification. “These are local issues and global issues. Traveling, I see the same things happening all over the world, the construction cranes and condos being built, the displacement.
So many of these artists are activists on the front lines. To have them all in one place feels like medicine for the community.”
Part of the seductive alchemy of the Crosspulse Body Music events is the way that the organization’s international collaborations enrich and inform projects back home. Festivals in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Ghana have played an essential role in building an international movement, and the MiniFest provides a laboratory for investigating new rhythmic combinations.
“A lot of artists don’t grasp the concept until they perform with Keith,” says bass vocalist Dyer, who has collaborated with Terry in various ensembles for decades, including the allbody band Slammin.
“It’s always a lot of fun to introduce an artist to presenting a song in this manner. This actually works! There’s not a chordal instrument, and with all that open space comes a lot of room to play, to take songs to different places. All these different concepts coming together bring new life to a song. Artists are always surprised.”
Audiences too.