Suns of Mothers (Live) 12-29-2024

The second installment of the trio I’m part of with Tommy Guerrero and Nino Moschella. Performing live at Little Hill Lounge, El Cerrito California 12-29-2024. (Free)

We spent two days in the studio last week to record some ideas and shape together some songs. It has been quite liberating to play in a small ensemble with so much space for texture, silence, and rhythm. We just started playing together a few months ago but we have spent decades drinking from a lot of the same musical fountains and when we get together, things just flow.

Videos: Sulah Jordan “Museé Melancolique” & "Jasmine"

The Sulah Jordan “Ladybug” album came out a little while ago. I was invited to perform tenor saxophone and flutes on some songs. It was fun to record and a delight to listen to. Now there are videos. Enjoy.

This happened....rocking with Togetherness Ensemble at Gray Area Mission SF

My plan was to have had this post up before this happened, but it was a crazy week. So it’s in past tense. On 10-26 I performed with the Togetherness Ensemble as part of an emergent composition in four movements. the first three movements featured eight different musicians and we all got together for the fourth. You had to be there. I met a lot of really wonderful people, most of whom for the very first time. It feels good to be part of a musical community again.

The Togetherness Ensemble is convened on occasion by Zekarias Musele Thompson to hold space for communal resonance through collective improvisation. Prompted by the historical and contemporary creative sensibilities of African and African diasporic peoples, and the possibilities of emergent composition as the scaffolding for recognizing ourselves as free.

The Togetherness Ensemble made its debut interpreting James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, during closing performance of Possible Dialogues: Vol 1 in July 2023 at the BAMPFA.

For this fifth iteration we will explore Togetherness in three parts with a new composition titled RE-EDUCATION. Inspired by the current moment, the ecstatic motions of Alice Coltrane’s 1972 epic Lord of Lords, as well as Floating Points' and Pharoah Sanders' 2021 collaboration, Promises.

RE-EDUCATION

Movement 1: A Curiosity

Movement 2: A Recognition

Movement 3: A Promise

with: Salimatu Amabebe, Matt Brownell, Gabriele Christian, Roco Córdova, B Dukes, Christopher Robin Duncan, Mary Graham, Cat Lauigan, Phillip Laurent, Amina Malika, Micah Morris, Maya Nixon, Jasmine Nyende, Martin Perna, Justin (Hongry) Robinson, Benjamin Rodgers, Joel St. Julien, Zekarias Musele Thompson, David Wilson, Josh Wismans, and Gaia WXYZ.

Oñi Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness

It has been a pleasure to collaborate with my partner Courtney Desiree Morris, finally, on more big art things that put our heads and talents together. Below are shots from Oñi Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness, a multi-modal performance art piece she designed/directed and performed in. The multi-channel video piece and altar installation just went up at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Below are shots from the performance of the work at Berkeley Art Center. I did live sound and sound design in collaboration with sound artist/scholar SA Smythe.

Oñí Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness (dir. Courtney Desiree Morris, 2023)
live performance programmed for Rabbit Hole (exhibition feat. Courtney Desiree Morris)
Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California, USA
Curator: Adrianne Ramsey
all photos © Carla Hernández Ramírez

The Yoruba term oñí ocan is typically applied to initiates of Oshun, the orisha of rivers, freshwaters, sweetness, and everything that makes life worth living. Like all orisha she operates in duality: she is the divine embodiment of abundance, sensuality, fertility/pregnancy, wealth, pleasure and good fortune. She is also an orisha who has experienced grief, disappointment, abandonment, rejection, and loss. Because of this complexity, Oshun is known as a healer who works with honey and cool water to restore the body and bring mental clarity and self-awareness through the use of her mirror. She is also the patron orisha of sex workers and LGBT practitioners. Oñí Ocan is a multimedia performance ritual that focuses on the use of honey as a material and metaphysical healing modality, as well as a way to honor current and former sex workers and pleasure activists. It is composed of a five-channel experimental film as well as live performances of honey rituals.

The Honey Drippers (actors): Arianne Benford, Kendall Benford, Kiara Brown, Monica Canilao, Odaymar Cuesta Kruda, Rachel De Souza Bolden, Ashara Ekundayo, Dillon Gardner, Sura Hertzberg, Ignacia, Alie Jones, Aja Lenae, Janelle Luster, Sam McGinnis, Pi Palomo, Callan Porter-Romero, Kiara Sample, Savannah Shange, Annie Sprinkle, Undine, & Avery Zeus

Support for Oñí Ocan provided by: The Panta Rhea Foundation, The City of Berkeley, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, & the Foundation for Contemporary Art

Film shot on location at Toro y Moi Studios in Oakland, California
Liver performance at the Berkeley Art Center in Berkeley, California
all photos © Carla Hernández Ramírez

New album: Martez "RIVERS" out now on Bandcamp / Streaming 6/15/23

The sound of my life as my family and I experience displacement due to flooding and atmospheric rivers. Travels around the world - some rivers swell as some shrink. Meditations on rain, rivers, and love.

New Music: Martez "Shattered" (Lamentos Vol. 3)

Over the past two years, I’ve continued a practice of sonic mourning rituals in a musical container called LAMENTOS. Here is the latest in the series called “Shattered”, a collection of melancholy, raw and plaintive pieces on woodwinds, piano and other assorted instruments. Recorded February-April 2022 in Oakland, California.

New song: Ocote Soul Sounds "Blues for Ukraine"

How to fully express the deep grief in watching the slow motion buildup of aggression, the growing carnage, the racism that seems to emerge even within crises that should unite? Sometimes peace feels like further away than ever. Yet we persist.

1/21/2020: Live in Los Angeles at Hodgepodge

This Tuesday 1/20 I’ll be at Apotheke in Los Angeles with my man Todd M Simon and friends for his Hodgepodge musical night. I’ll be playing saxophones, flute, percussion and who knows what else.