That’s How the Light Gets In

Boomshake Music's Mitali Purkayastha and Nicole Zapata discuss the legendary women, trans, and gender non-conforming BIPOC street protest drumming crew. Along the way, they share the legacy of Boomshake’s former-musical-director / now-ancestor, teacher auntie Monica Hastings Smith and how Boomshake publicly and unapologetically grieved such a sudden, enormous loss of their leader, and what role art, music, and cultural work plays in helping us make sense of our grief. We also talked about culture as a tool to show up as our authentic selves in a world hell-bent on compartmentalization, how Boomshake integrates ancestral rhythms and musical traditions into their music making from New Orleans to Brazil to Palestine, how music can create safety for children in street protests, and of course, we asked them teach us a few Boomshake chants/rhythms!
 
Mentioned on the pod:
Boomshake: http://www.boomshakemusic.com
Boomshake on IG: @BoomshakeMusic
Palestinian Debke group on IG: @aljuthoor.dabke
 
 

Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project collective members, Angela Aguilar and Quinton Sankofa discuss MG’s just transition principle, “If it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic.” In the process, they talk about talk everything from the Black Panther Party to the Zapatistas and from mass movements for a ceasefire in Palestine to land stewardship and radical imagination. 
 
Mentioned on the pod:
MG’s just transition zine: https://movementgeneration.org/justtransition/
"Zapantera Negra: An artistic encounter between the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas”: https://www.commonnotions.org/zapantera-negra-updated
MG’s Creative Wildfire program: https://creativewildfire.org/
City of Ghosts: https://www.netflix.com/title/80994664
African Camp Fire Stories: https://shows.acast.com/african-camp-fire-stories
Leah Penniman: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/leah-penniman/
Sins Invalid: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/

Welcome to "That's how the light gets in," where we’ll will be interviewing artists and cultural workers here in the Bay Area and beyond who make our movements shine, who root our actions in the wisdom of our elders and ancestors, and who create and defend culture to hold us and future generations through the best and the hardest of times.