Stranger Sounds: Curated Playlists from Around the World
Over the past few years I have curated over a dozen Spotify playlists for ASME Award winning travel and literary magazine Strangers Guide. Each one has been a deep and profound musical journey into the city, state, country or region covered in each issue. Enjoy.
A few years back, Strangers Guide magazine invited me onto their Editorial Board. Among other things editorial including research, story ideas, and connecting writers with story editors, I curate the Stranger Sounds Spotify music playlists for each issue.
Each issue is about either a region, a country, a US state, or a city which presents a unique and formidable challenge. Where to begin? How broad or deep should I go, knowing that far more great music will be left out than can be included? With this in mind, I asked myself “what artists, songs, and styles—famous or unknown—serve to collectively form to the soundtrack of that place or the myth of it, what do I personally dig, what is available on the streaming platform, and what is the middle ground between these worlds.
I hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I enjoyed researching and curating them.
25th Anniversary of Antibalas: Two nights at Brooklyn Bowl
Just recovering from two nights of sublime and intense music in my old stomping grounds of Williamsburg Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Bowl. We had DJ Rob Castillo from Caracas via CDMX, Kaethe Hostetter and her magic violin (fri) and Stuart Bogie’s Magic Hands (Sat) for support.
The Band: (both nights)Trumpet: Jordan McLean; Trumpet: Andrew McGovern, Tenor sax: Drew Vandewinckel, Baritone sax/flute/percussion: Martín Perna; shekere/vox: Marcus Farrar. congas: Reinaldo deJesus; drums: Kevin Raczka; guitar: Timothy James; guitar: Bryan Vargas; keys: Jake Pinto.
Guests night 2: trombone: Raymond Mason; tenor sax: Max Kassoy; Tenor sax: Stuart Bogie;
From the Dap Kings: percussion: Bosco Mann, percussion: Elizabeth Pupo-Walker; trumpet: Dave Guy; tenor sax: Cochemea Gastelum; from Skatalites/Frightnrs: Anant Pradhan; From Havana, Cuba on congas Pellito el Afrokan
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.
Remedios show at C3A Cordoba with Courtney Desiree Morris
A shot from the altar built by my partner Courtney Desiree Morris at C3A in Cordoba, Andalucía Spain. More shots soon.
In the meantime, an interview with us in El Diario and more pics from the show.
4 National Magazine Award noms for Stranger’s Guide
Stranger’s Guide, a magazine for which I serve on the editorial board, has been nominated for four ASMEs this year in the following categories:
• General Excellence, Literature, Science and Politics
• Best Single Topic Issue: Stranger's Guide: Ukraine
• Columns and Essays: "Acid Church" by Courtney Desiree Morris
• Best Service and Lifestyle Story: "Turning A Look" by Léone Julitte
These are the most prestigious awards in the magazine industry, and for the third year in a row this small but mighty ad-free literary travel journal is named in the same breath as the giants.
Besides contributing story and content ideas and research, I curate the Stranger Sounds music playlists for each issue.
Jazz Ish: A DJ Night in SF
Starting in March, some of my dearest friends and I will be hauling our records across the Bay Bridge on Wednesdays to tickle your ears and soothe your soul. Jazz is the jumpoff but if you know me I can find the jazz in just about anything, so expect some surprises. I’m excited to share some of my favorite music and most treasured finds from my nearly 30 years of collecting (and making) records.
See you there.
NEW ALBUM: Martez "DRONE POEMS" out 2/17/23
The Drone Poems series represents meditations, feelings and moods expressed through expansive breathy textures. These pieces reflect a radical aesthetic departure from the Lamentos series, which primarily features wind instruments (flutes, saxophones) as the primary engines of sound.
I composed and recorded Behind the Veil and the other pieces on Drone Poems over the summer of 2022 and early 2023 in Oakland and Berkeley, California during what we now call fire season, when a barbecue spark, a misguided bottle rocket, or a random lightning strike can set off a chain of ignitions to poison every breath with smoky air for days on end. Fortunately last year wasn’t that bad, but each day nonetheless began with the anxiety and dread and the question: “Is today gonna be the day?”
The daily news: Russia brutalizing Ukraine, government fuckery, ongoing plagues, colonization of space, schools shot up, cops gone wild, catastrophic storms and everyone stressing about money.
Drone Poems is the effort to bear witness to the world while remaining connected to the eternal.
ROBERTA: Theatrical Premiere at DocNYC Fest, Airs on PBS 1/24/2023
“Roberta” a documentary about Roberta Flack, had its theatrical premiere at the DocNYC fest last month and will be airing nationwide on PBS “American Masters” series on 1/24/2023 and subsequently in Europe on ARTE.
I composed and performed the score for the feature-length documentary and am now on to my next scoring project, an episode of PBS Frontline with investigative journalists Daffodil Altan and Cristina Ibarra which will air in the spring of 2023.