What Our Grads Are Up To: Body Empathy & Touring On The Sly

From leading Body Empathy writing workshops in San Francisco to touring with drummers and a Ghana dance troupe through the Rockies, our graduates are rocking the real world.

On Nov. 13, Jen Cross, IMA-TLA who focused on erotic writing as a pathway to reinhabit the body, will co-present with Alexandra Cafarelli a workshop called "Body Empathy." Here's their description: "What if we could truly experience empathy for our bodies as they are – and then, by extension, for ourselves, as we are? As queer, genderqueer & trans survivors with a wide array of backgrounds and identities in a sexuality-/gender-restrictive culture, our self-protective tendency can be to “check out” by detaching mind from body to such great degrees that it can be dangerous. Physical activity and writing are two ways to check back in with your embodied self.
With deep respect for the privacy and variety in our personal experience of gender expression and our individual histories, this workshop will create safe space for participants to embrace our bodies as they are, and to write the stories our bodies have been wishing to speak, while allowing possibility for the integration of identity and physical presence. Using brief writing exercises and low impact body mindfulness exercises derived from improvisational theater, Zen meditation practice, and the internal Chinese martial arts, participants will have the opportunity to fully embody our gender complexity in a healing and playful environment." For more information, visit Jen's website, writingourselveswhole.org.

Griffin Brady, a recent graduate in world music, cultural studies and ethnomusicology, has been touring with his group, On the Sly and the SAAKUMU Dance Troupe of Ghana, West Africa, heading toward the Rocky Mountains to drum and dance in the new year. In between gigs, Griffin and the community he's coalesced run the Slyboots School, offering workshops on Rhythm Study, Harmony Study, Melody Study, Improvisation Study and Composition Study. He also organizes the annual Slyfest each August. Listen to some of the music and check out one of the coolest, most whimsical and edgy websites around at www.onthesly.orghttp://onthesly.org/

Lorraine Hammond: Bringing the Song Back to the Source

Lorraine Hammond – a well-known folksinger and songwriter with decades of experience performing and teaching Americana roots and folk music – came to the IMA program to study traditional music in her homeland, the Northern Appalachian region. “I grew up in a community where we sang the old songs, and I was the child of a farm family.” She not only sang, but learned to play the Celtic harp and 5-string banjo, and also became the foremost exponent of the Appalachian dulcimer.

Hammond's career teaching and performing takes her to festivals and folk schools around the country, including the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the John C. Campbell Folk School (NC), the Mountain Collegium of Early Music (NC), the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop (WA), the Augusta Heritage Program (WV), and Summer Acoustic Music Week (NH). Yet over years of performing, she became increasingly concerned about the disconnect between this music's scholars, founders, performers and audiences. “There was a huge disconnect. Folk music is interesting to the upper class as something to be studied; it's interesting to academics as a form of literature; and it's interesting to the people who play and sing it because it's their vital expression of their lives and community. As I wrote the thesis, I was actively examining my own place in these three levels,” she says.

Having grown up learning folksongs from the likes of Oscar Degreenia, one of the original old time singers of this music, Hammond was in the unique position of coming from the very tradition she was studying. By employing an ethnographic approach, Hammond was able to combine a scholarly unfolding of the history of this music's origins with a discussion of the class issues, ethical dimensions, sense of place, and her own experience. She also bridged class issues that have historically denied early performers of folk music access to archival materials. Degreenia's daughter, Dolly, who is now in her mid-70s, hadn't heard her father's singing since his death because Middlebury College denied the family access to the songs collected by Helen Flanders on the grounds that they were now the property of Middlebury College. After negotiations, Hammond secured copies of Degreenia's singing, and she brought the tapes to Dolly, who heard her father's voice for the first time in 50 years.

In bringing the music back to its source, Hammond also found her own gifts as a scholar. “I have acquired a sense of competence that is the very reason I came in the first place. I really know my literature now. I know my sources. I understand how the important pieces of history fit together and have led up to the situation I find myself in,” Hammond adds.

Photos: Hammond with a rental mustang; Indian Neck Folk Festival, 2007. Dave Kiputh and Phil Zimmerman standing, Lorraine and husband Bennett seated; Folksongs with pre-schoolers, Soule Rec. Center, Brookline, MA 2007