Tag Archives: John Pietaro

Event Review: Dissident Arts Festival 2015…Day Two

DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2015 POSTERDate: August 16, 2015
Venue: Shapeshifter Lab (NY)
Review By Dawoud Kringle

On Sunday, August 16th, Brooklyn’s Shapeshifter Lab hosted the second day of the annual The Dissident Arts Festival.

(The Dissident Arts Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event took place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively. DooBeeDoo congratulates this “annual gathering of revolutionary creativity.” John Pietaro respect and keep the good work!)

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Event Recommendation: “DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL” Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Full Weekend of Music, Spoken Word, Dance Toward Social Change

DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2015 POSTERThe Dissident Arts Festival, the annual gathering of revolutionary creativity, will fete its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event takes place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively.

Highlights of this year’s special anniversary Festival will be the reunion of free jazz master Daniel Carter and 1980s hardcore/no wave band Dissipated Face. Other features include modern dance/new music performance by Patricia Nicholson-Parker (co-producer of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art) which includes averitable all-star line-up including Jason Hwang and Michael TA Thompson. Another feature will be Downtown stalwart Trudy Silver and her multi-media radical group Where’s the Outrage? which can count violinist Rosie Hertlein and saxophonists Daniel Carter and Ras Moshe among its ranks. Additionally, make way for the neo-Beat spoken word of Steve Dalachinsky, the Nueva Cancion of Bernardo Palombo, liberation jazz by the Red Microphone, the expansive sound of the 12 Houses Orchestra (conducted by Matt Lavelle), poet Raymond Nat Turner’s Remembrance of the Victims of Police Violence, the “other-world art music” of Sumari, topical spoken word by Chris Butters, Safiya Martinez and Sana Shabazz, and Festival founder John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project which fetes the heritage of revolutionary poetry and prose over the past century.

The event is sponsored by the Len Ragozin Foundation and endorsed by the National Writers Union-New York UAW Local 1981 and DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY world music magazine.

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Recommended Event: DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Full Weekend of Music, Spoken Word, Dance Toward Social Change

The Dissident Arts Festival, the annual gathering of revolutionary creativity, will fete its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event takes place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively.

A highlight of this year’s special anniversary Festival will be the reunion of free jazz master Daniel Carter’s 1980s hardcore/no wave band Dissipated Face. Other features include modern dance performance by Patricia Parker (producer of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art), neo-beat spoken word by Steve Dalachinsky, Downtown stalwart Trudy Silver’s solo piano, the Nueva Cancion of Bernardo Palumbo, liberation jazz by the Red Microphone, the expansive sound of the 12 Houses Orchestra (conducted by Matt Lavelle), poet Raymond Nat Turner’s Remembrance of the Victims of Police Violence, the “other-world art music” of Sumari, topical spoken word by Chris Butters, Safiya Martinez and Sana Shabazz, and Festival founder John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project. The event is sponsored by the Len Ragozin Foundation and endorsed by the National Writers Union-New York and the on-line magazine DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY.

Day One

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Woody Guthrie: 75 Years into “This Land is Your Land” and the Fight’s Still On

Text by John Pietaro – videos selected by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on Bastille Day, 1912 and some say that revolution was his birthright. Few before him, or since, can lay claim to the mastery of protest music as honestly as Woody. Though he battled the ravages of Huntington’s disease in his later years and lived only into middle age, his time remains eternal. And his life story is the stuff legends are built on.

75 years ago today, February 23, 1940, Woody completed work on an acerbic song of fight-back he then sang as “God Blessed America For Me”. Later, upon further reflection, Woody shifted its emphasis to include an embrace of the nation’s beauty and promise as much as it damned its inequity. “This Land is Your Land” has, through the decades, come to be seen as the ultimate folk revival song, indeed, our second national anthem. A closer examination of it, though, reveals the revolutionary core.

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