Fire Music: A Discussion on Revolutionary Songs and Sound led by Karl Evangelista

SFSU's Department of Race & Resistance Studies presents Fire Music: A Discussion on Revolutionary Songs and sound. Fire Music explores the link between social transformation and narratives in musical practice and innovation. The panel center on three musicians: Jon Jang, jazz pianist and cofounder of the groundbreaking Asian Improv arts organization, Palestinian-Syrian sound artist Leyya Mona lawil, and hip-hop pioneer M-1 (of Dead Prez). The event promises an insightful and thought-provoking examination of what it means to make music in times of turmoil. (Moderated by Karl Evangelista.)
 

Panelists
Karl Evangelista
Filipino-American guitarist/ composer Karl Evangelista ranks among a new wave of musicians pushing the traditions of jazz and experimental rock into the 21 st century, hailed by Signal to Noise magazine as one of the most original instrumentalists and composers of his generation". Working alongside the likes of Scott Amendola, Fred Frith, Ben Goldberg, Oliver Lake, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Trevor Watts, Asian Improv aRts, and longtime duo Grex, Evangelista explores multicultural concepts with sonic intensity and political fervor.
 

Jon Jang
During the past 50 years, composer-pianist-collaborator Jon Jang has been an ideamaker who "feels/thinks out of the box." As a legacy grandson of the excluded Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, Jang has composed immigrant suites and works
of the excluded for and with Max Roach, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Paul Flores, Genny Lim, Francis Wong, Kronos Quartet, Oakland East Bay Symphony and many others.

M-1
Mutulu Olugbala, better known by his stage name M-1, is an American rapper, songwriter, and activist from Brooklyn, New York. He is best known for his work as one half of the political hip hop duo dead prez with stic. man. His many notable accomplishments include the albums "Confidential" and "Can't Sell Dope Forever," as well as a central role in the feature film and drama "Broken Rhyme." M-1 is also a political activist for many black and left-wing causes, including advocacy for Palestine. He is also a co-founder of Urban Aroma, "a platform for cannabis, art, activism and social equity with editorial and charitable commitments." 

Leyya Mona Tawil
Leyya Mona Tawil, also known as Lime Rickey International, is an artist, composer, and cultural activist. She works in dance, sound art and hybrid performance practices. Tawil is Palestinian and Syrian; engaged in the world as such. Her works
have toured extensively throughout the states, Europe and the Arab region. Tawil has stewarded TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland since 1997 and is the founding director of Arab.AMP - a platform for worldbuilding artists from the Arab/SWA-
NA diaspora and our allied communities.