Sound.Out.Radio presents
Recoder: a new sonic event series where we relook and listen to recover and recode with creative reparative action.
Lori Goldston & Swil Kanim performing a live score to Heaven & Earth Magic
With a dynamic mix of sincerity and irony, Seattle composer Lori Goldston and violinist, native storyteller, Swil Kanim present original cello and violin score to films by Harry Smith in honor of his birth centenary year, inspired by his work as framer and amplifier of the sublime craft and beauty of organic indigenous, folk and underground cultures.
Harry Smith on Heaven and Earth Magic
“The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel, Montreal and the second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Muller on the day Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London.”
Time & Location
December 3rd, 2023
Doors 4:00, Show 4:30 – 7:30
Fairhaven Auditorium, Fairhaven College
Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, 98225
WHO WAS HARRY SMITH AND WHY SHOULD WE CARE
Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923 – November 27, 1991) was an underground influencer of 20th century music, art and film. He grew up the Pacific Northwest (Bellingham & Anacortes), then left in the late ’40s to participate in the San Francisco Beat and Greenwich Village creative communities. Smith’s impact on American culture continues, and has accelerated since his death in 1991, with numerous books, music events, museum exhibits, albums and documentaries devoted to his work.
A Grammy winner for lifetime achievement, he was “famous everywhere underground,” in the words of Allen Ginsberg, who recalled: “He was given a moment to make a speech and said very briefly that he was happy to live long enough to see the American political culture affected and moved and shaped somewhat by American folk music, meaning the whole rock-n-roll, Bob Dylan, Beatnik, post-Beatnik youth culture.”
From the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2023 Harry Smith exhibition: “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: the Art of Harry Smith”
“Over the course of fifty years, Smith made renegade and innovative use of the changing recording and distribution technologies, from his voracious approach to record collecting to experiments with early tape-recording systems to groundbreaking manipulations of abstraction and collage in film. Smith was an innovator in collecting, organizing, and sequencing images and artifacts that structure the ways we understand and share culture and experiences today. He created a life and practice largely outside of institutions and capitalism, offering an eccentric model for engagement with a society today even further dominated by these systems. Vitally, Smith brought to light and wrestled with—sometimes imperfectly—facets of America’s rich histories, tracing and sharing underappreciated veins of culture often invisible to mainstream society. Very much outside of his time, Smith nonetheless created his own rich vein of American culture that says more about this country, its arts, and its diverse creative communities than nearly any other artist of his time.”
PROGRAM:
Doors 4
Show starts 4:30
Begin with a Student Showcase from the Departments of Music and Studio Art, then a Conversation with Artists and Scholars on Harry Smith, life and work, Followed by an expanded cinema performance by Lori Goldston and Swil Kanim.
Light refreshments will be available.
ARTIST BIOS:
Lori Goldston is a cellist and composer from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist draws connections between far-flung ideas and explores timbral thresholds of her instrument, driven by a restless curiosity and informed by a long, widely varied history of collaborations with bands, ensembles large and small, composers, film makers and choreographers including Earth, Nirvana, the BBC Scottish Symphony, Mirah, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Helms Alee, Jim Fletcher, Christian Rizzo, Maya Dunietz, Jherek Bischoff, Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, Ilan Volkov, David Byrne, Lonnie Holley, Stuart Dempster, Shelley Hirsch, Ghedalia Tezartes, Ellen Fullman, Lynn Shelton and many, many others. Referred to by UK’s The Quietus as a “ a hugely important character in contemporary music history”, she performs in the US and abroad, and has released recordings on on Sub Rosa, Woodland Fauna, Marginal Frequency, Yo Yo, K Records, Second Editions, Sub Pop, Mississippi Records, Eiderdown, Substrata, Ed Banger, PIAPTK, SofaBurn, Broken Clover, and No Sun.
Swil Kanim is a US Army Veteran, classically trained violinist, native storyteller and actor, is a member of the Lummi Nation. Because of his unique ability to inspire audiences to express themselves honorably, Swil Kanim is a sought-after keynote speaker for conferences, workshops, school assemblies, and rehabilitation centers. He travels extensively throughout the United States, enchanting audiences with his original composition music and native storytelling. Swil Kanim considers himself and his music to be the product of a well supported public school music program. Music and the performance of music helped him to process the traumas associated with his early placement into the foster care system. Swil Kanim’s compositions incorporate classical influences as well as musical interpretations of his journey from depression and despair to spiritual and emotional freedom. The music and stories that emerge from his experiences have been transforming people’s lives for decades.
Bret Lundsford is an American vocalist, songwriter, guitarist, author and founding member of the influential band Beat Happening and D+. In addition to his own musical endeavors, Lunsford owns and operates Knw-Yr-Own Records, an independent label based in Lunsford’s hometown of Anacortes, Washington, and manages What the Heck Fest, an annual music festival featuring independent and local musicians. He is also a writer of cultural criticism, and author of Images of America, Anacortes. From 1990 to 2005, Lunsford was the owner of The Business record store in Anacortes. In 2021, Lundsford’s book Sounding for Harry Smith: Early Pacific Northwest Influences is a biography of Harry Everett Smith (1923-1991) that explores the mysteries of his Salish Sea youth during the Great Depression years in Anacortes, Washington, was published.
Felicia Youngblood received her PhD in Musicology from Florida State University in 2019, where she was a member of the Fellows Society, a Krebs Scholar, and a graduate assistant with the Program for Instructional Excellence. Her current work evaluates how music sustainability efforts can be used to reclaim traditionally underrepresented voices, for which she received a Presser Foundation Graduate Music Research Award in 2017. In particular, she collaborates with the Club per l’UNESCO di Galatina to analyze how the contributions of women to a centuries-old Southern Italian ritual, known as tarantism. Dr. Youngblood’s research explores how the Club’s tarantism festival and reenactments highlight the voices and essential roles of these women as cornerstones of Apulian identity. An article on this topic, “On Un-Silencing Voices: Tarantismo and the Gendered Heritage of Apulia,” was published in the journal Folk Life in March 2019. Youngblood is associate professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology, Musicology Area Coordinator at Western Washington University
Mark Y. Miyake is Assistant Professor of Music and Society at Fairhaven College and leads the program in Audio Technology, Music, and Society at Western Washington University. He also currently serves as the Chair-Elect of the Board of Trustees of Humanities Washington (the WA state humanities council), on the Board of Directors of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, on the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, and holds a rotating executive position with the Northwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology. More locally, he is also on the boards of the Center for Washington Cultural Traditions (the Washington State agency charged with supporting community and traditional arts in the state), Make.Shift Art Space (Bellingham’s primary non-profit all-ages space for music and art), and Bellingham Girls Rock Camp. He has also recently served on several major awards and grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtsFund, the Washington State Department of Commerce, and most of the organizations listed above.
Moderated by Sasha Petrenko, Associate Professor of Sculpture and Expanded Media at Western Washington University in Bellingham. where she also runs Sound.Out.Radio with amazing student TAs and volunteers
Hi. How can I acquire tickets in advance?
Thanks.
The concert is free. And no reservations are available. Doors open at 4. For best seats arrive then. Thank you!
It says “free with a Western ID.” I’m not a student (or affilliated with Western), but would very much like to attend. Is this open to the public?
Yes, open to the public! Free.