Breaking Musical Boundaries in the Bay

On this show, three reporters profile boundary breaking artists who call the Bay Area home. These artists refuse to be constricted by what’s trendy. We’ll travel from an intimate backyard concert in Oakland into the vastness of the cosmos with a stop on the way at Live Oak Park in Berkeley to listen to a bird who is also a composer.

Transcript

Shereen Marisol Meraji: You’re listening to Northgate Radio, a podcast and radio show produced out of Northgate Hall at UC Berkeley, with work by the students at the Graduate School of Journalism. I’m your host and head of the audio program, Shereen Marisol Meraji. The three stories you’re going to hear on this episode highlight innovative musicians who call the Bay Area home.

These are artists who refuse to be constricted by what’s trendy, artists who are pushing all kinds of boundaries. We’re going to be traveling from an intimate backyard concert in Oakland into the vastness of the cosmos. So let’s go for a ride and first meet the duo known as Astralogik. Astralogik performs at community based gigs all around the Bay Area.

Small gatherings, they believe, are much more conducive to fostering connection. Why? As I-Yun Chan reports, it’s because belonging eluded this duo for a long time, until they found each other and found healing through the music that they make together.

Charito: My name is Charito, first of all, I’m the vocalist in the duo Astralogik, and when I met Chen, who’s the guitarist. I was probably like 26 years old, I think. Yeah.

I-Yun Chan: I spoke with Charito and Chen right before their performance at a so far sound session. It was a private and intimate gig in a backyard in North Oakland.

Charito: After I graduated. I couldn’t kind of, I couldn’t step away from music, like even though I didn’t. Have a degree in it.

I decided to continue performing in bands and along that path. I Threw some mutual friends. I met Chen.

I-Yun Chan: Charito ended up doing a last minute gig with Chen because the original singer dropped out. Here’s Chen.

Chen: I was like, who’s this chick? And then when she started singing and I felt like her ethers, her ethers Angelic ethers are taking me. [laughter] I was like, Oh,

I-Yun Chan: This was almost 15 years ago. They became friends immediately.[ guitar

music plays] And one night Charito was singing at a restaurant and she called Chen over to play the guitar. guitar music fades]

Chen: So I came over and I started playing the music that I was, you know, already starting to develop and then she started writing on a piece of napkin. And then that. It’s called B. [song plays]

[Astralogik music]: This morning, not knowing what the day will bring, will I live my fantasies, or fall back asleep? Oh Lord, it’s so frustrating, cause I know I got it in me. Will my faith lead me to glory, or will my fear bring me to my knees?

I-Yun Chan: That was the first and only time Charito wrote a song on the spot.

Charito: Our relationship thus far, we had sort of like experienced this surge of energy in being around each other, like a sort of like a freedom, uh, an excitement, you know?

And I think that that moment I felt it really, really quickly. It just like hit me on the spot. So I was just like, Oh, okay, I need to write something right now. And so I think I was also Sort of in a lot of self search during that time too. So, a lot of like, just like soul searching, like kind of understanding like, what am I doing here on this planet?

Um, so that paired with the excitement, I feel like it just made it so that the flow just, And I’ve never done that before, ever. Like, I’ve never been so inspired by hearing someone play that I was just like, Oh, I’m going to write all this stuff down. I’m going to sing on top of it. [Astralogik music plays]

I-Yun Chan: Charito says she felt like she was always chasing something, worrying about the future, anxious about disappointing her family for not pursuing the typical American dream. She’s the logic in Astralogik, the organizer, the bill payer, the one who responds to emails. And Chen is the Astra.

She’s the dreamer and the one who inspires Charito to be who she is and do what she wants.

Charito: Realizing, like, it’s okay to sit still. It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to not think about tomorrow. It’s okay to just be here in your body.

I-Yun Chan: Chen says it was magical.

Charito: I think the universe really brought us together.

I-Yun Chan: It was like they belonged to one another. But finding a sense of belonging wasn’t always so easy. The two have Filipino heritage, but felt disconnected from their culture growing up. Chen grew up in Guam because the majority of her classmates were Chamorro, the indigenous people of Guam. She didn’t really see herself as a Filipino.

Chen: What am I and who am I? Where do I belong? Who do I belong to?

I-Yun Chan: After high school, she moved to the U. S. to her cousin’s place in Seattle. That’s when she was exposed to Filipino food and culture.

Chen: They’re really good cooks, my cousins. And, like, they taught me, like, Filipino martial arts. And then, when I moved down here, To the Bay Area is when I really became more proud to be Filipino.

I-Yun Chan: Charito family also immigrated from the Philippines to Guam and eventually settled in California, where Charito was born and raised.

Charito: I lived in the suburbias of California. So I almost didn’t feel Filipino for a long time. And also because I felt like most of my young life When I was a child and an adolescent, I was trying to be what I saw on TV, which was like pretty white people.

And so, um, that’s what, that’s what, yeah, because that’s all that was shown to me on TV, you know?

I-Yun Chan: Charito’s experience is actually pretty common among the Filipino American community, says Anthony O’Campo, an author and sociologist whose research focuses on the Filipino American experience.

Anthony O’Campo: At least when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s, a lot of Filipinos were, were ashamed of their culture, or were less embracing of their culture, they felt that Filipino culture, or speaking Filipino languages was less than, was not a good thing to do.

I-Yun Chan: He says that obsession with whiteness and disconnection from culture can be traced all the way back to the colonization of the Philippines, first by Spain and then the United States.

Anthony O’Campo: There are a lot of colonial influences and cultural legacies that have, you know, lasted and endured through generations that very much influenced everyday life of Filipino Americans in the U. S. today.

I-Yun Chan: Here’s Chen again.

I think the awareness of how colonialism has like taken a hold of our, our programming. Our internal programming since birth, I think it’s acknowledging that, um, being brave to step out of that matrix. Becoming aware of the history of their ancestral land and the Filipino American identity has connected Astralogik to a wide range of POC musicians.

Charito: The connections we’ve made are these lifelong connections. I feel like, like they are people who held us down when we’ve like, Been at our lowest, like when her dad passed away, they all helped us get her to be able to be with her dad during that time, or we were homeless for two years, like they, these people in these communities helped us get gigs so we can make some money or, or helped us have a space to stay in when we, you know, if we didn’t have a place to stay for the night.

I-Yun Chan: Music has also been a way for them to accept themselves, not only as Filipinas. But as queer Filipinas.

[Astralogik music]: But in simplicity we have more than we think Power to stand up and speak The only thing your heart really seeks Today I will make a choice Today I’ll raise up my voice Stand up and really rejoice A day to recognize my Love

Chen: For 26 years I was, uh, And when I met her and we, we ended up becoming partners, like that was a really difficult thing for me at first, mostly because of sort of the stigma within my family and they’re very religious. But like us having music to sort of continuously be together and show ourselves and to see how the response was that we were embraced, you know, that was the healing.

And. And it was received so well. You know, it’s the only reason that we’re still getting gigs today is people accept us how we are.

I-Yun Chan: Just like the song Right Place, they found healing and purpose with each other, with music and with the community they’ve built together.

Chen: For me, Right Place feels like wherever we’re at, emotionally, spiritually. Physically, we’re, we’re here. This is where we’re supposed to be.

[Astralogik music]: Um, our music is like a self help book for me and it’s still helping me even up to now, even though it’s transformed into these different layers of meaning.

So yeah, I hope it self helps you too.

I-Yun Chan: Astralogik performs gigs and shows all around the Bay Area, and most of them are community based. Like the one I went to in someone’s backyard in Oakland. Chen says small spaces create the kind of intimacy and connection that everyone needs right here and right now.

Chen: During these crazy times, I’m hoping that we can still like gather in community, you know, and still find joy in the sadness that we’re all going through and just keep our love together.

Shereen Marisol Meraji: Before musicians like Chen and Charito of Astralogik perform live, They rehearse. They play the same notes over and over and over again so they can groove with each other and their audience with ease. But what if a performance is interrupted by a screaming baby, dogs barking, or the incessant squawking of a bird?

Reporter Julia Haney discovered that for composer Wendy Reid and her co composer Lulu, Interruptions like that are the point.

Julia Haney: So have you performed with Lulu before?

Anthony O’Campo: Uh, yes. Like, we did something in Oakland, like, maybe around five years ago or something.

Performer: Lulu is amazing. She has an incredible repertory of sounds.

You’ve seen Lulu before. Well, I’ve

seen Lulu before, yeah.

From what I understand, Lulu’s got a bit of stage fright sometimes.

Julia Haney: The first time I meet Lulu and hear her sing is at Live Oak Park in Berkeley under a small redwood grove. She’s just about to start warming up with the rest of her ensemble and her co composer, Wendy Reid.

It’s perfect for music, I think. The kind of music I do, I should say. Wendy and Lulu have been making their kind of music for years, and sometimes performing it live. The people that have come to listen today crouch on the stairs or settle into the grassy bank high above the musicians

Wendy Reid: I do like the fact that it’s not a regular performance space that I’ve kind of created this and that odd group of people will end up there as a result.

It won’t be just the people who are coming to a concert.

Julia Haney: At first glance, this event doesn’t look so odd. A dozen ensemble members are dressed in black. There’s a tuba, a flute. Everyone is settling in as the musicians start warming up. But I can’t discern a tune. One group member blows into a long metal tube.

Others scratch their instruments softly. They all form a semicircle around the star of the show. Lulu. The one so many people came here to see. But Lulu is still quietly observing, unassuming. She seems only barely aware of all of the eyes on her.

Wendy Reid: The score itself is based on Lulu’s and my interactions. We improvise, uh, a little bit, probably every day.

I’ll try to imitate her, either on my violin, sometimes I do it vocally, and then we kind of create these concoctions. So it’s not really I’m transcribing her, I’m transcribing us, and maybe I’ll slightly change it if I feel like, as a composer, I’m allowed to do that. And so I

Julia Haney: have a whole series of these.

Wendy and Lulu have been making music together for as long as they’ve known each other. Eighteen years. This series is called Ambient Bird because Lulu is a bird, an African gray parrot. Hi. Hello, how are you? I’m good, how about you? I’m good, your neighbor. At Wendy’s home in Berkeley, Lulu’s crate is right next to the door, surrounded by stacks of books and records.

She’s gray with light eyes and a bright red undercoat. And she likes being sprayed with water.

Wendy Reid: Sometimes he starts talking, let me see if she’ll talk. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Julia Haney: It’s hard to hear, but Lulu is imitating our laughter, and doing a very good job.

Wendy Reid: The laughing is like human, you know, it’s scary.

You look pretty. The most of the things she says are things where someone’s calling her cute, or pretty Beautiful bird. She has all those down and she also, you know, if you get too close to her, she’ll bite you and she’ll know you’ll, you’ll say, ouch. So she says, ouch before you. And then she’ll start laughing because that’s what people do.

So she’s picked up all these kind of interactions with people and how can she entertain them? But, um, it’s kind of embarrassing. It’s not her intellectual side. It’s her conniving side really.

Julia Haney: Wendy’s been making music with animals for decades, including a parrotlet named Choo Choo and her dog. I’ve had different birds

Wendy Reid: In my life I’ve had different animals in my life. I have some, a couple of pieces with some dog barks. That dog didn’t have the vocabulary of a bird, so she wasn’t going to be featured in all my pieces, but, uh, all the birds that I’ve had have been featured in my music since 1980.

Julia Haney: Birdsong is embedded in Wendy’s earliest memories of music, when she’d go to her grandmother’s ranch in Wyoming and escape to a nearby forest with a creek to play her violin.

Wendy Reid: The ranch was a little bit like that performance space. It was surrounded by all these trees and in a creek. I never thought about that parallel until just now. And I’d go out and I’d play my violin and just kind of play around with my violin and the music I knew. I actually didn’t want people to follow me, to hear me play.

I just wanted to be out there by myself and, and do my own thing and not be thinking that I have to perform for somebody.

Julia Haney: At home, Wendy and Lulu spend time listening to each other and responding. Wendy records their interactions. Their composing process is spontaneous and unique every time.

Wendy Reid: There’s no steps. There’s no steps at all.

She does everything. She starts it. She initiates it. If I really want to do something with her, I’ll go, you know, something like that, and try to inspire her. She

won’t do it. You know, how you kind of yell to somebody when you want to just hear their voice. Sometimes it erupts into something really big or not.

Julia Haney: Lulu’s a little shy when I visit. But Wendy says when she’s teaching violin at home, Lulu loves to chime in. When I’m here, you know, teaching.

Wendy Reid: She is not shy at all. She’s over there in the other room and she’s walking away. She’s singing. She corrects notes. Sometimes somebody’s playing a little out of tune and then she’ll throw them the right note and I’ll say just like a little, a little bit higher. You know, when a teacher corrects you, it’s much more intimidating.

But when a bird is correcting you, it’s funny and humorous, but you get the same kind of, you know, uh, instruction really.

Julia Haney: And Wendy is adamant that the bird is not a sound effect.

Wendy Reid: I think of her as an equal when I write a piece of music. She can’t write the notes down, but she’s definitely creating the ideas with me.

Julia Haney: In the materials for the Live Oak performance, Lulu’s name is listed before Wendy’s. Wendy introduces the performers one by one. [audience applause] Then, she picks up her violin, and the music starts.

But with all the eyes on her, and so many interesting sounds, Lulu tends to get a little stage fright. And Wendy is prepared for that. She plays recordings of Lulu alongside the live music. Because the performance is happening in a public park, many people are just here to walk their dogs or lie in the grass.

These park sounds intermingle with ambient bird. And for Wendy, these sounds are not interruptions. But part of the reason she loves performing in these kinds of spaces and surprising the people that come here, like Joe Silver. I mean, it’s,

Joe Silber: she’s stumbled into this with her kids. I think it’s a human bird collaboration.

We were watching our kids, you know, our kids have that confused look, and we were thinking that, like, this song is, like, what’s always happening in their heads.

Julia Haney: And though they weren’t paying attention to the performance, for a moment, the kids became part of it.

Wendy Reid: That’s exactly what I want in this piece. I want that ambient sound of people just living their lives as this odd little piece goes on. Today at the Creek, Wendy doesn’t mind the audience. At this point now, I’m pretty much as if the audience wasn’t there, you know. I’m kind of exploring and not letting um, the audience inhibit me too much.

I was kind of like always wanting to explore new things and so if somebody thought it was stupid, I, that wouldn’t have any effect on me.

Julia Haney: The kids, the dogs, the water, the cars whizzing by, the wind in the trees, it’s all part of Wendy’s composition. It also feels like a celebration of her relationship with Lulu.

and of the liminal human bird world that they’ve created together.

Shereen Marisol Meraji: Like composer Wendy Reid, Andre E. Preston refuses to put limits on his art. He’s the creator of a graphic novel series and accompanying live performance called the Universal Film Festival. Funk opera. The show features the funky heroes aliens who live in various parts of the universe. Reporter Holly J. McDede says, the result is a fun, magical, and otherworldly journey inside the imagination of a modern renaissance man.

[students talking The grass can be made out of candy canes. Oh, that’s a great idea.]

Holly McDede: Comic Book Club is in session at the Montclair Elementary School Library in Oakland. That means Andre E. Preston and his students are about to create a fictional world together.

Andre E. Preston: Okay, boys and girls, listen to our story so far. Once upon a time, there was a sugar loving kingdom called Sugarville.

What’s next?

Holly McDede: A small group of kids sit up excitedly and swivel in their chairs, like they’ve got so many ideas, they could burst.

Andre E. Preston: I see light bulbs popping up overheads.

Classroom Kids: Everything. Everything.

Andre E. Preston: Okay.

Holly McDede: The comic book club is a democracy.

Andre E. Preston: We got three votes for gummy worms as grass. Four or five votes. Okay, all in favor of gummy worms for grass, raise your hand.

Holly McDede: Once the brainstorming is complete, the kids start sketching their characters. In a few months, they’ll have a complete book. Seeing these students draw and create is also a source of inspiration for Andre in his own work.

Andre E. Preston: It just keeps it going. It keeps it alive for me. Here I am a published author of comic books. You can find my books in the store. You can take A story and bring it to life on a stage.

Holly McDede: The books are just as imaginative as what his students are creating. Books about aliens and a UFO sighting in an effort to save planet Earth.

Andre E. Preston: There’s all sorts of possibilities that you can do with your art and here’s a place to start. You know, if you have an imagination, you can just start with that imagination and just build it, you know, just into this garden of ideas.

Holly McDede: And like his students, Andre’s own love for comics goes back to when he was a kid.

He would make comics with his friends in elementary school. But his other love was music. Growing up, Andre would pick up objects around the house and tap them like drums.

Andre E. Preston: In kindergarten, me and about three of my friends pretended to be the Beatles. We pick up the little blocks, you know, in the classroom, and go sing to the girls our little Beatles songs.

We meet at each other’s homes and practice and things like that.

Holly McDede: He performed in a church youth choir, and when he moved to California, he played in Berkeley High’s jazz band. He remembers one day in school when a new principal gave a speech to students in the auditorium.

Andre E. Preston: He says, OK, but I have bad news.

You guys will no longer be allowed to have radios on campus. Now, we’re talking about the boombox era, and we walked around campus with boomboxes all day. We had breaks to go out on the yard, and so he outlawed those.

Holly McDede: So Andre decided to create a comic where a group of aliens called the Funky Heroes come to Berkeley High to meet with the principal and they give him a shot of the funk.

Before the story went to print in the school newspaper, Andre went to meet with the principal.

Andre E. Preston: So I showed it to him and told him the story. He goes, Andre, I love it. I said, you’re not, you’re not mad? He said, no, no, no.

Holly McDede: The principal didn’t change the boombox rule, but that didn’t stop Andre and his friends from bringing boomboxes to track meets.

When it came time to graduate, Andre didn’t want to choose between what he loved. His stepfather told him he was doing way too much, comics, music, having a girlfriend.

Andre E. Preston: I think that was what motivated me even more, it just lit a fire under me, and I was, you know what, I’m gonna do all of it.

Holly McDede: He started working at Montclair Elementary in 1989, and he’s run the comic book club there for more than a decade.

And outside the classroom, he never stopped drawing and making music.

[ Soul Destiny song – So, destiny, don’t show me the future you can’t see. So, destiny, come take me and set me free. So, destiny. ]

He published the first book in his graphic novel trilogy, Welcome to the Universe, a few years ago. It’s inspired by a real life story. where his friend said she saw a UFO. In the book, a character named Willis Osiris sings the song, Soul Destiny, and comes to believe the planet needs more unconditional love.

It was his wife, Lisa Lynn Preston, who suggested bringing the graphic novel to life. They met while performing with Samba Funk. A collective of dancers, musicians, artists, and community members.

Lisa Lynn Preston: You know, we just saw something in each other, spiritually, that we just felt comfortable with and interested in.

And then one day we had too much honey wine, and we got together.

Holly McDede: With his wife’s support, Andre set out to bring the graphic novel to the stage and get a band together. The band is called The Funky Heroes, a nod back to his high school days. Lisa is also in the band.

Lisa Lynn Preston: For him, I was like, okay, let me pick up the saxophone, I’ll try and play some horn lines.

And what? Oh, am I stilt walking? Oh yeah, I’m also a stilt walker. But I say stilt dancer because I don’t walk on them, I dance on them.

Holly McDede: And she designed the costumes. Her own costume is like a pink and gold nebula, the birth of a star. And she bent wire in the shape of a dolphin for her headpiece.

Lisa Lynn Preston: This music and the story is bringing just kind of, like, something to wonder about that’s not just our regular music.

Regular human life reality that we see every day, but this is to keep your mind wondering about what else could be out there in the world, you know, and it’s nice to have that opened up.

Multimedia experience.

Funk Opera MC : Get ready to get funked up. Get ready to get funkified. Get ready for the good, the bad, and the

funky

funky.

Holly McDede: On a Sunday night this fall, the Funky Heroes performed the Universal Funk Opera at the Eastside Arts Alliance in East Oakland.

Funk Opera MC : But once in a while, their soon to be ex cosmic neighbor freaks out and panics at the first sight of their alien would be rescuers. This is that story.

Holly McDede: The audience sits facing the stage. Some bob their heads or sway to the music. Others get up to dance. Andre plays the drums, wearing a costume inspired by his favorite superheroes, Spider Man and Batman. He is playing G Funk, an alien from planet Woe. Jambi Borens is a keyboardist and he plays a wizard called the Moon Child.

Jambi Borens: It was so worth it. Anything I had to go through in order to play this part.

Holly McDede: He wears a headpiece that looks like a moon with sunglasses.

Jambi Borens: I just imagined what would the moon be doing if, you know, listening to this music. I’d say he’d be grooving and bouncing his head. So that’s what I just kept trying to do, is move and bounce my head.

I, uh, you know, just tried to be, like, kind of spontaneous. Celestial with it.

Holly McDede: Aliens, young love, a prayer to the universe. It might seem wacky, but that’s the whole point. Borens says funk music brings people together

Jambi Borens: Looking outside the box and to find a whole community of people who were looking and thinking that way. as a way of creating revolution and like you can dance your way to that.

Holly McDede: The audience and band members admire Andre’s vision. He’s created something you probably can’t find anywhere else. A show that combines multiple art forms and multiple worlds.

Andre has no plans to stop now. And every week at Montclair Elementary School, his students are building their own fun, imaginative, and funky universes. The Tree Stumps are brownies, the licorice is grass, the gummy worms are crawling around and nothing is off limits.

Shereen Marisol Meraji: In Oakland, I’m Holly J. McDede. Thanks for listening to this episode of Northgate Radio. These stories were reported by students who are in my advanced audio class at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Julia and Holly’s stories first aired on the show Cross Currents for NPR affiliate station KALW in San Francisco.

I’m Shereen Marisol Meraji. Peace.