Event - Sundays on the Lawn – Live Music Performances
Sundays on the Lawn – Live Music Performances
07.15.18, 1:30 pm
Join us Sunday afternoons, 1:30 – 4pm for Sundays on the Lawn, a new outdoor program featuring internationally renowned bands and musicians, plus free art making classes and lawn games. Bring your friends and families for an afternoon on the museum’s lawn. Grab a picnic from the cafe and enjoy a stellar line-up of bands organized around the theme of call and response and calls to action by guest curator Ariana Hellerman. Art making classes and lawn games start at 1:30pm, music performances start at 3pm.
*In case of rain, all programs will take place inside the museum!
BAND: Las Llamadas with Favela Candombe Ensemble
Las Llamadas literally “the calls” in Spanish, signifies the African tradition of Uruguay, when slaves used candombe drums to call one another. Today, Las Llamadas signify the largest Carnival celebrations in Uruguay, when groups of musicians parade through the streets of the once-African neighborhoods of Barrio Sur and Palermo, using the drums to call one another out of their homes and parade through the capital, Montevideo. During this time, there are between 80-90 comparsas (music groups from each neighborhood) who wear costumes that reflect (and mock) the music’s historical roots in the slave trade. Recognized by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Candombe, the music form played during Las Llamadas, means “pertaining to blacks” in Kikongo and originally referred to self-help dancing societies founded by persons of African descent. Today, Candombe is a source of pride and a symbol of the identity of communities of African descent in Montevideo, expressing the communities’ needs and feelings with regard to their ancestors. During Las Llamadas, the music of candombe is performed on three types of barriles (drums), made of wood and animal skins. The collective process of fire-tuning takes place before playing, when musicians comes together around fire to warm the skins of the drums. This group, created for this performance and led by Juan Chiavassa, shares the rhythmic traditions of Uruguay and Las Llamadas with his group, along with a desfile (parade).
Vocals: Virginia García Alves
Winds: Anggie Obin, Mariano Gil
Candombe Drums: Arturo Prendez, Juan Ca, Sergio Camaran, Claudio Altesor, Juan Chiavassa, Fabri, El Chino
Winds: Anggie Obin, Mariano Gil
Candombe Drums: Arturo Prendez, Juan Ca, Sergio Camaran, Claudio Altesor, Juan Chiavassa, Fabri, El Chino
More about:
CALLS:
CALL and response
CALL to action
Call and Response is a form of interaction in which the speaker’s statements (“calls”) are punctuated by direct commentary from the audience. In music, it is a technique where one musician offers a phrase and a second player responds. The musicians build on each other’s offerings and move the song forward, collectively. Forms of call and response music are widely present in parts of the world touched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in this country, can be seen in the most famous of African-American music genres including gospel, blues, soul, R&B, and hip hop. Often times, the lyrics reflect the social struggles experienced.
A Call To Action is an instruction to an audience, designed to provoke an immediate response. Calls to Action have inspired radical collaborations that call for change, whether for peace, the end of war, community formation, or political resistance.
Artist’s Calls to Action have inspired songs that become protest anthems, fighting issues of injustice, including institutional racism, income inequality, and war. In the United States, Sam Cooke penned the Civil Rights masterpiece “A Change Is Gonna Come;” folk and mainstream artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, helped to create the soundtrack to the anti-war movement during Vietnam.
In many ways, both Call and Response music and musician’s Calls to Action relate to civic life and the struggle for social justice. Call and Response is often a pervasive pattern of democratic participation— used in public gatherings, in the discussion of civic affairs, and in religious rituals – it ensures that all voices are heard and that all issues are addressed. Politically, social Calls to Action are usually sparked when something has gone awry; it signals an alarm for change.
In this series, we have engaged artists from different parts of the world, whose music shines light onto one of the two Calls. “Call and Response” music and musical “Calls to Action” are quite similar in that they both tell interactive stories and are both dependent on a collective experience. In these dire political times, we are in need of dialogue and each other.
– statement by Ariana Hellerman