August 5th, 6th, AND 7th Bay Area Massive!
Music Of Northern Africa with and Jef Stott.
Vocalist MC RAI and producer Jef Stott will bring the sound of the Magreb to the Bay Area for a weekend of shows August 5th, 6th and 7th.
MC Rai?s brand new CD ?RAIVOLUTION?
will be available at all shows!
These excerpts are from a letter/journal I kept on the recent Oregon trip. I wrote this letter for my best friends Todd and Mark
I ve been waiting for this trip for months now.
Haven t been on the road outside of the Bay Area for a long while. Rent was too high, I was too poor, and my life fell apart. But you and Mark know best what that urge to move feels like.
Headed to a festival makes this trip even more enjoyable. Getting there via a veggie-fueled bus and performing acts just like icing. Guess I don t have to mention mountains, clean air, and trees .
Dunsmuir, CA
Jonathan and the universe gave me a gift a few hours ago. A buttefly hit the windshield back down on Grant s Pass. [While taking a break at a rest stop, I wanted] to take the butterfly wings off of the windshield to put on my altar.
About to pluck its wings, I saw that it was alive! It s abdomen was smushed pretty bad. I peeled it off and put it on a piece of moss I had just picked up.
It wasn t flapping its wings, so I knew that its life i this reality was over. But it refused to die, twitching legs for most of our stopover. It eventually died, but I couldn t bare to take its wings.
So the universe gave me a gift: beauty dieing. Nature s infinite circle of renewal. Once again, death came to me in a pure form, and allowed me to test the waters of grief.
The death of the butterfly sent a direct metaphor to my center of being. Quines Creek, OR
Magic does happen in the world. We drove into the Oregon Country Fair (OCF) with no nighttime/employee wristbands and no parking stickers.
24 hours later, we had 5 wristbands, one extra and two of them gifted to us for free, and two parking passes. I feel that the OCF is a special place for me to be at the right moment.
Walking through the OCF is like being in a faire land theme park.
Booths, gates, and artwork line trails and fill meadows. Raw lumber and branches hide alot of the architecture and gates blend in to the forest. This lifestyle is vibrant, creative, and all-ages.
The OCF celebrates its elders and many families are present. Day one of the OCF
Tired tonight after ding six shows today and staying up most of the night last night. I spent most of the night in a solemn mood.
At one point an Iranian musician showed up to the place where I was hanging out at and began to drum and sing traditional Middle Eastern music. I began to think about the tribe of Ishmael and the wandering lifestyle of the Roma. My inner fears began to open up, and I realized that I was a bastard who had never seen my mother.
I am the landless people, I thought, the child of Abraham cast out into the dessert. My current life changes had even made me tribless. I felt like the lonely wandering monk once again.
I left the sweet music and walked into the craziness of the Saturday night fair. At one point, I came across a tree that had an altar under it. Someone was randomly kneeling in front of it.
The tree seemed out-of-time; it had a strange quality to it that nothing else had. I knew the night was over when I walked up to a jug band that had an inbred violin player. Bald, cross-eyed, and drooling, he played his violin held out in front of him.
The washboard player was staggering drunk, and the guitar player wasn t too far behind him. Sunday, July 11
After a week of magic, tests, and travel, the veggie bus crew points its compass south. After a lazy morning on some property (Pica Flores) near a creek by the McKenzie River, we spent most of the day looking for veggie oil and processing it for the drive home.
Travel goes slow when you run on veg, and I enjoyed every bit of the work that goes into being a fuel bootlegger.
Two nights ago, at Pica Flores, we had a group dinner. The matriarch of the property asked for everyone to introduce themselves.
I said something like this: Hi, I m Russell. Last weekend was my first Country Fair. This whole trip has been filled with miracles and the fair lived up to its myth from when I lived on the East Coast.
I ve met nothing but kind souls with big hearts, so am humbled by all of your good deeds. I m currently going through a shadowy life change, and am currently tribeless, so this trip brought much needed medicine into my center of being. I thank you all.
Thursday, July 13
One Tuesday, when nothing spectacular happened, Spider heard his belly grumble. Having just eaten, he had forgotten that he was still hungry, so his stomach churned noise like a whitewater rapid to remind him. For those of you that don t know much about Spider, his empty gut always led him into wiseacring times, weaving webs of trouble that made tangled messes.
So Spider left his webbed-up raspberry bush home and set out to find food. After some time, he came up on a river and saw Bear s den.
Hello Auntie Bear, Spider bellowed into the cave.
You up for a visit?
There was no answer, so Spider crept into the den. Over in a corner, neatly stowed, sat Bear s winter preserves.
Being good with her resources, Bear had taken the Salmon she needed, eaten what filled her up, and kept some for her long nap.
Well, well. Nothing like a bit of dried fish to quiet my tummy, Spider mused.
I ll just eat the first row so Bear won t notice that any are missing.
He ate the first row, and his stomach kept screaming. So he at all the Salmon and waddled out of the cave to go home.
When Bear returned, she roared with anger that someone was stupid enough to take her winter rations. Her cries were so loud, the nearby mountains split open and created a valley; her tears so many, they made lakes and rivers.
Meanwhile, Spider s belly hurt with hunger again.
Hello, Mr. Tummy, he joked, I hear you arguing and don t know what to say. What?
Eat more you re yelling at me? Why, sure I ll help us out!
Instead of going home, he took a left at the Timeless Oak Tree and headed to Grandmother s house.
Grandmother, older than the rocks that lined the oldest river, always had food to eat, tales to spin, and lessons to teach. Wise in many ways not known by regular folks, Grandmother actually knew that Spider s stomach headed her way.
Oh, oh, Spider said.
I can smell Grandmother s home cooking already. Mmm, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and corn from her garden! (slurp) Apples from her orchard and berries from her bushes!
Spider jumped in excitement, squirted some web for good measure, and doubled his time to eat sooner than later.
Nestled in the burned-out hollow of Dan the Old Redwood, Grandmother s house stood. Grandmother looked out one of the small half-circle windows and saw Spider walk into a nearby meadow.
His stomach grumbles echoed across the ridge, and he hastily crawled up to her door.
Grandmother, so gentle and kind-hearted, purred Spider in his most polite voice. So giving with your big heart and abundant garden.
Hello, Spider, she said flatly. Nice day for a little mischief, isn t it?
Oh, no honorable madam, he lied.
I was just in the nearby meadow, and saw a dead tree that would make good kindling for your hearth.
Firewood, huh? Are you offering to haul a few loads to my wood pile?
Grandmother said, playing along.
Why, of course. I m a bit hungry right now, but wouldn t mind the chore if you fed me first.
That s a fair trade. Here s a carrot for now. Eat this and bring me back some more veggies from my garden that I can cook up for you.
Oh, boy! Spider exclaimed (crunch) Carrot and veggies, all for me.
As you may already know, that dead tree never turned into firewood.
Once Spider ate that juicy, orange carrot, he forgot about his offer to trade. Instead, he ate all the veggies from Grandmother s garden, all the apples from her orchard, and all the berries from her bushes. With his stomach about to burst, and his greedy appetite temporarily gone, Spider realized that he d eaten ALL of Grandmother s food.
Um, I need to figure a way out of this mess, he told his aching belly. Shooting his web, he climbed up into a secluded tree and tried to think. Then his aching belly began to hurt a little more.
As the pain grew stronger, Spider had a harder time thinking up a good way to not get into trouble. The pain got so bad, he slid down the tree and staggered home.
His vision blurred and his stomach heaved.
Spider could only make it to the dead tree in the meadow. There, he spun a bed and rolled into a ball of pain. So, on any other day like that particular boring Tuesday, when you re hauling wood to your own pile, check for Spider before you pick up a piece.
His stomach ache will make him bite!
What about Grandmother s garden? Well, that carrot came from a nearby garden that had been infested with nasty No See Um flies.
They d laid eggs in all the veggies, so Grandmother hoped to make a cure to save her neighbor s garden. She thought Spider wouldn t mind being in a little experiment of hers. In his greedy state, Spider blindly ate the sick carrot and didn t notice the flies.
As for the rest of her garden, Spider didn t notice that Grandmother had other sections. So, being wise as the ancient sun and resourceful as the rain and clouds, Grandmother had plenty of food to feed all her friends and family. As long as you helped out around her farm, Grandmother gladly filled your pail with yummy produce.
Got a cranky (a rolled-up mural in a frame that moves when hand-cranked)? Do you have a story you d like tell with a cranky and would like to make one?
Cranky art uses ancient scroll technology, with a TV-like interface, to tell stories that are typically politically-themed.
We think that the artform came out of the 1960s peace movement, and the art form was recently performed by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, SF Art Revolution, and the Big Tadoo Puppet Crew. A cranky is easy to make, and better than watching cable TV. But the art form is underutilized and not widely known.
A small group of artists would like to have a Cranky Fest that would help share this niche art form. We are putting our feelers out to other artists who have a canky story to tell or would like to make one for a night of performance.
We are in the early stages of booking this event at the CounterPULSE space.
The date is TBD, but will most likely happen in the month of November.
If we get enough interest in performers who wish to tell a story with a cranky, and can work out a 2 hour show with the content, then we ll have an event!
No experience necessary, but we also do not have any budget to help you build a cranky.
We would like to offer a workshop to show ours, and give you ideas on how to build one.
Any type of performance is OK as long as you use a cranky in it somehow. Times should run about 10-20 minutes for your part.
We also hope to have a Make Your Own Cranky workshop at the time of the event. This will entail making simple shoebox crankies for the folks who come to the workshop, with maybe a performance or two during the main show s intermission.
Please get back to me ASAP so I can get an idea of the show for the CounterPULSE events bookers.
If you want to commit to this event, please do not flake out in the process. We want solid artists who d like to make this unique night fun, collaborative, and informative.
Please help us start the Neo-cranky revolution!
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