SummeRings and Rox through Equinox

 

WOOW! … what a Summer … we began it by sleeping deeeeply in our annual post-academic and pre-festival cabin+creek+baths Mount Shasta retreat at Stewart Springs, hiking/sliding in whiteout snowstorms (yes, in June!) on the flanks of Shasta or Carson Pass, helping steward another team of student interns through their STARS program with the City El Cerrito, THEN onto our City of El Cerrito worldOne July 4th festival 2017 (thank you to ALL of our volunteers!), followed by the big “fest pack-down, repairs and notes-ponderings”, then to delight on Kaua’i for Heiva I Kauai, Manini Holo wave riding, Waipa Music & Mango Festival, and a demanding re-entry into the Back to School Edulanche, and local events ~ Brazil Day ~ Lavagaem, Solano Stroll, and California Coastal Cleanup.  Y’all can already revisit worldOnefestival 2016 on FB … thus, onward !  … and please do recommend … tellafriendtotellafiend about these blends, attune via 88.1 keCg 97.7 and take us with you via free download, smarter-as-informed-through-the-arts-phone-app tunein, search “worldoneradio” or “kecg” …   

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Heiva I Kaua’i 2016
Iorana, aloha, we love y’all, mahalos + maruru ! Manea +Jo and all heiva o’hana. This precious Kapa’a Tahitian dance and drumming festival opened its circle to our volunteering some 6 years ago, and we feel good + truly blessed to be a part of its community and cultural celebration. What started out as opala collection and recycling has evolved into blossoming friendships. (I got to have a first hands-on ki’i carving, AND mow the lawn at the jongle pahu shop! LOL!)  Below,  BruddahBlake + Corey totin’ spectator benches ! … LOVUMAN ! A Hui Ho !

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Waipa Music + Mango
I cannot say enough, and less is more here … suffice it to say that something precious and life-giving is alive and well around Waipa … A Hawai’i alternately sought, celebrated and squelched is flourishing quietly and determinedly intact, in and with the Aina and abiding Spirit of Aloha. I look forward with full heart and ready hands to collaborate in support of this community, in whatever way is genuinely and harmoniously helpful.  So many folks to thank and xo, and we do, in our hearts albeit from afar … Thank you all for teaching, keeping and sharing Malama Aina …  One afternoon, Stacey invited us .. we should come back to the fish pond to join a celebratory event, saluting the work of a specially convened ki’i carving retreat, a gathering of elder kahuna and young aspiring master carvers, working and learning together to additionally spark the renaissance of Living Hawaiian Arts + Culture … Below, in attendance with the alternately stoic or feisty younger carvers are Master Carvers and culture keepers Sam Ka’ai (Mau’i ) and Lionel Grant (Aotearoa/Maori) in the foreground.. and below, its a family affair with the Jon Osorio Trio ..

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Brasarte Brazil Day + Lavagem 
Everybody needs a hand! You have likely already figured out that we ourselves do indeed volunteer to help in other events, while we ask our nearby community to support us in the summer here in El Cerrito.  Closer to our own home is nearby Brasarte / Casa de Cultura in Berkeley. And YES, every event of this scale needs help. In this particular scenario these last two years I work afternoons on refuse and recycling while my beloved & I otherwise help check in early-arriving arts and food vendors. My clothes are pretty stank when I get home. Someone has got to do it, and the task is as un-glamorous as it is essential and physically demanding. Berkeley, Bay Area, Hanalei, US! … we have to learn to do a much, much better job of separating the recyclable and compostables we just purchased and managed to get in our mouths! Next, it really, really needs separating.  What I have been seeing over years of this task in various places, including my own high school, is just a mess .. all generations, we gotta do the recy thing correctly and deliberately !

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One of my fave moments of the Day was watching hard-workin’-spinnin’ DJ Jose Ruiz ( aka mundomuzik) , grab a cigar (like a mouth-clenched pontoon) and his seemingly possessed calabaza and shake shake shake shake it in the post-fest rumba inside Brasarte.   AbrazBro!jose-ruiz-corey-2016
Solano Stroll 2016

The truck load of gear pictured below should perhaps have a handle on the side like a jack-in-the-box.  Once open/un-packed, it turns into a whole lotta musicultural fun with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Patrick Landeza, Suhaila International, Non Stop Bhangra , RYSE Center, El Cerrito Dance Production , and the dancing Solano Strolling public ! Thank you Texx + Dano + Ernest +Tucker + Marin + Christopher for all the production help and TLC.  Our Thanks to Solano Avenue Association for production support and allowing us the privilege of producing this year’s Main Stage once again for the 250,000 strollers ! solano-stroll-truck-back-2016

 

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California Coastal Cleanup
Our thanks and love always to Judi + Eban and the Ca Coastal Commission team who mounts this event at Ocean Beach each year, along with tens of thousands of US fanning out along our precious waterways to do the right thing to remove around a million pounds of refuse off our beaches and creeks. Here’s to Clean Air + Clean Water + Clean Soil + Clean Livelihoods … a world we can share and thrive in with All Our Relations, 7 generations!  We met a whole new gen of National Park Rangers (Giselle + Maria ) entering the field …  and look forward reconnecting soon in classrooms and live keCg studios!     ca-coastal-seawall-2016

 

Autumn Winter Spring Summer ahead
Yes, we are sowing the seeds for our 19th annual worldOnefestival this 2017.  Invitations are already circulating and confirming. While we continue the world of educating daily in musicultural, broadcast journalism, citizenship and peopleovpeaceopoerunity.
Please KNOW, do not think for a moment, that we have not read-the-news-today-oh, boy … What a house of mirrors, of our own making… recent decades upon decades of media manipulations, strange entertainment and politicontradiction … atop historical oppressions and long standing policies, has lead to this current U.S Ball of Confusions/ Distortions, sociopsy gyro spinning wildly, trumping the prognostications of Future Shock, 1984, and/or Animal Farm. Tailspin, Foxisms-schisms, Babylon Cookie jar economic Wall Street table is tilted, cards are marked, while the biggest thieves and perpetrators walk? and collect millions in bonuses!  … The emperor, again, has no clothes … We are rewarding alot of BAD BEHAVIOR ..Babylon walls come a crumblin’ ..

We are thus ripe for living tarot  …. TOWER + (Dis) ILLUSION + BREAKTHROUGH …

You are not a commodity nor an oddity … we are humans being human … Stay Human and Aspire Higher!

Thought is our highest technology and sweat is the best perfume!  

Keep Calm (as you can) and Carry On! WE HAVE WORK TO DO !

As Prince exhorted … Are you willing to do the work ?

L ET’ S DO THE WORK !  =  ;  ) ~