By Artivista | Women in Hip Hop
A night of female Hip Hop excellence, celebrating the power of woman.
Artivist Entertainment is not limited to projects within California or the United States. As a global company, we work across hemispheres and geographies to connect artists and communities through projects and events.
MUSIC FOR THE MOB | BAD APPLES MUSIC
Artivist Entertainment joined forces with Australia’s leading Aboriginal label, Bad Apples Music to establish a cultural exchange partnership between the USA and Australia.
With a shared commitment to supporting artists dedicated to using their art for positive social transformation, Bad Apples Music hosted Native American singer/songwriter, rapper and spoken word artist Calina Lawrence, for a performance with Bad Apples Music presents: Music For The Mob for Brunswick Music Festival.
An enrolled member of the Suquamish Tribe, Calina Lawrence was born and raised within her Indigenous culture in the Pacific Northwest area of Washington State. Her musical career and activism have remained mutually exclusive since the beginning, always lending her voice to the preservation of Suquamish traditions while she explored her love for many contemporary genres.
Having released her debut album Epicenter in 2018, Lawrence’s R&B, soul and spoken word fused artistry dedicates itself to addressing social injustices globally, including racial injustice, police brutality, climate injustice, suicide prevention, violence against women, and many other causes.
Lawrence played shows in Sydney and Melbourne, ahead of the all female, all First Nations concert in Shore Reserve closing out the Brunswick festival, alongside a lineup of fierce females in Australian music, including Emma Donavan and The Putbacks, Alice Skye, Miiesha and DJ Soju Gang.
KANAKY HONORING IN CHUMASH COUNTRY
An opportunity arose to support an inbound Kanaky delegation from New Caledonia, a small cluster of islands in the Pacific hours flight from the East Coast of Australia.
The tour group were raising profile for the referendum for the Nations independence from the occupation of France and of Kanaky culture, a distinct people within Melanesia.
While in Los Angeles the group worked up a song with Mark Gonzales and Aloe Blacc and gifted performances to the community of Leimert Park with a show at the Hot and Cool Cafe.
Culturally important was the connection made to the Chumash tribal Nation with an exchange and gifting ceremony between nations who are the keepers of their Indigenous story, identity and songline.
FANDANGO SIN FRONTERAS | PLAYING FOR CHANGE
Fandango sin Fronteras is an exchange, or intercambio, between musicians, artists, and community workers from Los Angeles and Veracruz, Mexico. Its primary concept of organzing and exchange comes from el fandango — the participatory performance-celebration of Veracruz’s son jarocho musical genre — which is to build community through participatory music.
In January 2003, Los Angeles’ music group Quetzal along with a dozen other musicians, visual artists, writers, and community workers from Los Angeles visited Xalapa, Veracruz, to help organize and form part of the first Chicano-Jarocho meeting. From this, a myriad of projects, recordings, writings, performances, and relationships have evolved, extending the concept of el fandango to a transnational network of artists and community workers in Veracruz and the Chicano and Mexican immigrant communities of Los Angeles.
To enhance this dialogue, Flores spent nine months in Xalapa, Veracruz, in 2007 with his family composing and recording music with women of El Nuevo Movimiento Jaranero, a movement geared at reinvigorating the son jarocho music tradition of Southern Veracruz.With developed skills in music, organizing, and producing, Flores was hired as the Program Coordinator for the American Music Partnership of Seattle in 2008. In facilitating this collaboration between the University of Washington (UW), The Experience Music Project, and KEXP 90.3 FM, he co-founded and launched the Seattle Fandango Project, one of the UW’s most successful and sustainable community partnership initiatives engaging diverse and historically aggrieved communities inside and outside the university.
ARTIVISTA AUSTRALIA
Australian female hip hop artists are taking on the genre’s gender problem, one gig at a time. Highlighting the power of women in music, Sydney Australia.
