Filastine
Grey Filastine | |
|---|---|
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
|
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Labels | Post World Industries, Muti Music, Jarring Effects, Soot Records, Tigerbeat6, CrimethInc., ROMZ, Uber Lingua |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | filastine |
Grey Filastine is an American-born musician, multimedia artist, and activist, based in Barcelona but working internationally. He is the co-founder of Arka Kinari along with Nova Ruth.[1]
Career
A former taxi driver raised in the United States, Filastine studied music directly from traditional masters, apprenticing with carnival batucadas in Brazil, folk musicians in North India, batá drummers in Cuba, and sufi brotherhoods in Morocco. Filastine’s first music project was the industrial percussion performance group ¡Tchkung!. After the dissolution of ¡TchKung!, he founded the marching band Infernal Noise Brigade to disrupt the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.[2]
From 2004, Filastine began touring as a DJ and producing electronic music. In 2006, DJ /rupture discovered and released Filastine’s first electronic album, Burn It!. XLR8R described it as "Middle Eastern music, fused with breakcore, hip-hop, and general beat trickery [..] filled with both jagged edges and moments of sad sweetness.[3] 2009's Dirty Bomb was reviewed as "polyrhythms, harmonies and instrumentation [that] take in Spain, France, North Africa and the Middle East."[4] 2012's £00T was reviewed as a "compelling fusion of technology and multicultural musical influences [which] achieves the rare feat of making politically charged topics sound musically memorable."[5]
Filastine is foremost a performing artist, at independent venues, cultural institutions, and festivals internationally, including Sónar (ES), Downtown Cairo Arts (EG), Decibel (US), MUTEK (JP), SKIF (RU), Les Vieilles Charrues (FR), Foreign Affairs (DE), WOMEX (UK), Holland Festival (NL), Indonesia Dance Festival (ID), and MONA FOMA (AU). He is known for live performances which include visual projections controlled by a custom-designed software[6], the use of a shopping cart as a percussion instrument[7], and often featured live cello and the Indonesian vocalist Nova Ruth.
Filastine's audiovisual creations have been supported and awarded by the Film Maker Support from the Kindle Foundation (The Miner, 2015)[8], Aide à la création Multimédia Expérimentale from Arcadi (4RRAY, 2014), and the Southeast Asia Environmental Media Prize from UNEP (Colony Collapse, 2012).
In December 2015, Filastine and Nova performed at the Calais Jungle refugee camp, an unorthodox venue described as a "logical call for an artist who prefers to perform with his live setup wired to a shopping cart as a critique of globalization and consumerism".[9]
Arka Kinari
In 2018, Filastine and Indonesian vocalist and environmental activist Nova Ruth conceived the Arka Kinari project, a sailing ship that would be a multimedia performance platform, to "reinvent live music for a world facing the existential threat of climate change".[10] The name combines Latin for “vessel” and the Sanskrit word (kinnara) for a half-human, half-bird musician.[10] The intention was to perform directly to small audiences of people who are directly affected by climate change, "staged from the deck of a traditional sailing ship, which imagines life after the carbon economy."[11]
In 2019, a 70-ton sailing ship was acquired and a crew was assembled in Rotterdam. The initial plan was to traverse the Canary Islands, Mexico, and Panama, then cross the Pacific to Indonesia. In September of that year, the ship launched, and in October it had its first performance in Santa Cruz de Tenerife to around 150 people. The ship crossed the Atlantic, and in January 2020, performed for the indigenous community of Kuna Yala, an autonomous zone of low-lying islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama already threatened by rising seas. In February 2020, they performed in Puerto Ángel, Mexico. “It was the best gig so far, the kind of unusual mix of people we want to bring together — fishermen, locals, Mexican modernos from nearby towns, some expats,” Filastine said.[10] However, by March 2020, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the project and crew, as national borders closed.
In April, Filastine negotiated emergency visas for the international crew to quarantine and re-supply in Hilo, Hawaii.[10] The ship left quickly and found itself without any port or country that would allow landing.[12] Finally, on June 30, Arka Kinari received permission to land on Guam, where it secured a month of provisions and repaired its diesel motor. In September 2020, Arka Kinari entered its home waters of Indonesia and was able to tour and perform in that country.
Discography
- Judas Goat / Palmares (Soot Records) 2004 7” vinyl
- Burn It (Soot Records, Jarring Effects, ROMZ, Crimethinc) 2006 CD & 12” vinyl
- Dirty Bomb (Jarring Effects, Soot, Romz, UberLingua) 2009 CD
- Hungry Ghosts ( Disboot) 2010 7” vinyl
- Extra Dirty Bomb (Post World Industries) 2011 12” vinyl
- £00T (Muti, Jarring Effects, Post World Industries, ROMZ) 2012 CD
- £00TED: Circulate False Notes & Other Remixes (Jarring Effects, Post World Industries) 2013 12” vinyl
- Aphasia (Jarring Effects, La Chusma) 2014 10” vinyl
- Drapetomania with Nova Ruth as “Filastine & Nova” (Jarring Effects, Post World Industries) 2017 CD & 12” vinyl
Soundtracks for Film, Installations, and Festivals
- Disobedient Objects Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum (2014)[13]
- Theatrical production Manifesta for FiraTàrrega Festival (2015)[14]
- Idrissa, Chronicle of an Ordinary Death (2018)
- Dance/installation piece Xhe for Esplanade Singapore and Live Works Sydney (2018)
- Dance and full-dome projection performance Liminality created for SAT Montreal and the Wales Millenium Center (2019)
DJ Mixtapes
- Lost & Stolen Goods (Sonar Calibrado, with Maga Bo), 2005 CD[15]
- The Mud, The Blood, and the Beer: A Mixtape Fistfight with the Near East (2007)[16]
- We Are Experiencing Turbulence, 2010 radio broadcast and streaming[17]
- LAWANLUPA - A Mixtape Response to The Act of Killing, 2014 cassette & streaming[18]
- Crowned - A Quarantine Mixtape, 2020 streaming[19]
External links
- Filastine discography at Discogs
- KEXP, live performance on YouTube
- "Music Is a Weapon - Filastine's Nomadic Sonic Rebellion". the Stranger. April 9, 2009.
- "Past And Present Meet In Filastine's Political Puppetry". NPR. March 12, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
References
- ↑ "Filastine & Nova, sailing across the world to share music and environmentalism". lifegate.com. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Veteran anti-capitalist noisemaker Filastine is back in Seattle for a secret show". Seattle Globalist. May 17, 2016. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
- ↑ "Filastine - Burn It". XLR8R. June 1, 2006. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
- ↑ "Filastine - Dirty Bomb". Exclaim!. Mar 24, 2009.
- ↑ "Filastine - £00T". Exclaim!. April 3, 2012.
- ↑ 4RRAY: A New Audiovisual Performance by Filastine on YouTube
- ↑ "Filastine And The Cathedral Of Junk". NPR. April 4, 2012.
- ↑ "Kindle Project Fund - Grey Filastine".
- ↑ "Meet the Barcelona DJ Who Played a Set at a Refugee Camp in France—And Nearly Sparked a Riot". Vice. January 8, 2016. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 "How the Pandemic Left This Experimental Act Stranded on a Ship in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean". Pitchfork. July 13, 2020. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
- ↑ "Spotlight: Arka Kinari". New Internationalist. April 22, 2021.
- ↑ "In mid-Pacific with nowhere to land". BBC. May 31, 2020. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
- ↑ "The Bike Bloc Sound Swarm".
- ↑ "FiraTàrrega to celebrate multiculturalism hosting premiere of 'Manifesta'". August 26, 2016.
- ↑ Filastine at Discogs
- ↑ "DJ/rupture & Filastine". Tiny Mix Tapes.
- ↑ "We Are Experiencing Turbulence".
- ↑ "LAWANLUPA: The Act Of Killing Mixtape".
- ↑ "The 11 Best DJ Mixes of April 2020".
This article "Filastine" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Filastine. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
