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
Date: Saturday August 15, 2015
Time: 7pm – 11:30pm
Venue: El Taller Latino Americano (PS109 Arts Space 215, East 99 street, between 2nd and 3rd avenue, 212-665-9460)
Ticket: t.b.a.
Line up
7pm – Raymond Nat Turner- Remembrance of the Victims of Racist Police Violence
7:20pm – Sumari
8:05pm – Sana Shabazz, poetry
8:20pm -The Red Microphone
9pm – Steve Dalachinsky, Free Jazz poetry
9:30pm – Bernardo Palombo, Nueva Cancion
10:20pm – The 12 Houses Orchestra
Day Two
Date: Sunday, August 16, 2015
Time: 7pm – 10:30PM
Venue: ShapeShifter Lab (18 Whitwell Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11215, 646 – 820-9452)
Ticket: t.b.a.
Line Up
7:10pm – Trudy Silver
7:45pm – Safiya Martinez, poetry
7:55pm – John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project
8:30pm – Patricia Parker, Dance
9:05pm – Chris Butters, poetry
9:20pm – Dissipated Face featuring Daniel Carter
HISTORY: Since its inception in 2006, the Dissident Arts Festival has been a powerful vehicle to bridge radical arts to progressive socio-political activism. Increasingly, the Festival has gained media attention over the course of its decade-long history as evidenced by press in TimeOut NY, the Indypendent, the Villager, Downtown Express, Chronogram and others. In 2013, noted jazz journalist Howard Mandel offered kudos in his remarks on social media. Over the years the Dissident Arts Festival has been endorsed by the Rosenberg Fund for Children, the Len Ragozin Foundation, Local 802’s Justice for Jazz Artists campaign, Occupy Musicians, the Howland Cultural Center and the on-line magazine DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY.
Originally based in the Hudson Valley city of Beacon NY and moving to NYC in 2010, the Festival’s performers and speakers over the years included actor/raconteur Malachy McCourt, late great trumpet player Roy Campbell, folk legend Pete Seeger, filmmaker Kevin Keating, spoken word artists Steve Dalachinsky and the late Louis Reyes Rivera, the late reeds player/composer Will Connell, political satirist/activist Randy Credico , hip hop ensemble ReadNex Poetry Squad, labor leader Henry Foner, punk-folk artist Lach and many more. Films screened included ‘Giuliani Time’, ‘Cultures of Resistance’, ‘Salt of the Earth’, ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and ‘Metropolis’. Other special features were tributes to Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht, Woody Guthrie, and Phil Ochs. The Dissident Arts Festival has also offered a voice to progressive political candidates and radical labor organizations.
This year’s special anniversary edition of the Dissident Arts Festival is dedicated to the people’s struggle for unity.
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