Continuing 20+ years of commissioning Bay Area artists, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival is thrilled to announce a spectacular group of 20 local artists selected to receive YBG Festival Seed Commissions. Inspired by our outdoor venue and the needs of artist communities in an unprecedented moment of time, these innovative commissions provide unrestricted funds as “seeds” for the creative process. The selected artists represent a stunning array of disciplines in theater, dance, music, new media and performance and were collectively nominated by 2020 awardees, artists Diana Gameros, Patrick Makuakane, Lalin St. Juste and YBG Festival staff.
The 2022 artists and their project descriptions are below.
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Project: Untitled
“I would like to use the commission funds to complete a song I began working on in early summer 2021 to be released spring or summer 2022. I have begun ideating, writing and creating melodies, and though not yet fully developed, Untitled is about my curiosity in the distance between all of my selves. My moments of loss and grief and sorrow sometimes bring confusion and with it, fear. In these spaces I can feel lost but I’ve found I always meet myself. I’m curious about the journey through the darkness between the stars. To be lost, to be found. To complete the song I’ll be using the funds for recording, mixing and mastering.”
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Project: Vulnerable
“Vulnerable is a bilingual five song EP in English and Spanish to be released in 2022. This project explores many different kinds of love one can experience – love of community, a romantic partner, friends and oneself. It is an invitation for introspection and openness to feeling emotions without judgement. The creation of Vulnerable began during the quarantine as a series of short self-produced songs from the space of solitude using loop pedal and electronic production in a way I hadn’t previously explored. It was a very emotional and internal process but I decided I wanted to let others in it. When I showed these demos to my now co-producer, the tracks started coming to life. The original computer-produced record now has grand piano, celesta and live percussion. These funds will allow me to compensate my collaborators for the time and care they are putting into the performance and recording of each of the live instruments, and finishing the final recording, including mixing and mastering. Finally, this will allow me to promote the record so that it reaches anyone who may want to come on a journey of vulnerability.”
Website
Project: Untitled
“My grandfather was a Buffalo soldier who was sent to the Philippines during the American occupation. It was a crisis of conscience for him and he spoke out about it, was court martialed and stayed in the Philippines to marry my lola and have fourteen children. I’m Afro-Filipino and I’m going to write a musical reflection on that, mixing traditional Filipino music with African-American music. It’s a way for me to deal with a world in which I never fit in and heard ‘you don’t look Filipino to me’. Being mestizo is difficult, coming to terms as a mixed race person in a country that wants to box you in. I’m very grateful to the Latino community that has embraced me in my mestizo-ness. For this project, I’m writing music that has Cuban influences from the Spanish colonial period along with old music that my mom brought with her from the Philippines in the 30’s, mixed in with African-American spirituals and traditional kulintang instrumentation. This is a way to deal with my background artistically and to finally write for myself.”
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Project: THE LOST ART OF DREAMING
“THE LOST ART OF DREAMING is a multi-year project that investigates and imagines expansive Futures for trans, gender-nonconforming and queer communities. It is ritual and spell, creation and conjuring. Me and my collaborators are undertaking / offering movement research, community DREAM LABS, dance films, Postcards From The Future, a Dictionary Of Joy and Pleasure, The Futurist Pledge and last but not least, a full-evening dance-theater production that will premiere in SF before touring the US.”
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Project: Untitled
“Funds from this commission will go towards workshopping ideas for a large project premiering in 2023. This project will continue the work of our organization, First Voice, to create and present the stories and music of people living between worlds and dedicated to multiracial people. Our core programming is creating, presenting, recording and producing multidisciplinary new work rooted in this mission.”
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Project: IKKAI
“This project, IKKAI, shares experiences of those illegally incarcerated during WWII and dares to dream of a collective future where this kind of injustice will never happen again. IKKAI means once: a transplanted pilgrimage is an installation dance project that weaves together modern dance and Japanese American obon folk dance (bon odori) movement languages and a compelling musical score with taiko drum to guide audiences through a first person narrative that explores the unjust internment of Japanese Americans, subsequent struggles for reparations and healing, and current and future solidarities with communities facing the violence of xenophobic policies. IKKAI is co-commissioned by the San Jose Japanese American Citizens League. I have been a Bay Area dance artist since 2000 and founded KAMBARA+ in 2015 as a vehicle to produce my choreography, focusing on creating dance performance experiences that cultivate a sense of belonging. IKKAI is also funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Hewlett 50 Award.”
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Project: Foils
“YBG Festival’s support will help fund the production costs for the visual aspects of my next release, a body of work tentatively titled Foils. This collection of original songs is designed as an antidote to erosive psychic landscapes created by narratives of loss and trauma into which Black queers are so often circumscribed. Foils acknowledges the overburdened, healing through pain by detailing imagined, lived and anecdotal experiences of loss to and triumph over fear of prosperity and intimacy. It is written and shared in the spirit of collective wisdom with hope that it will be received by all in a like manner.”
Long Live Love Website
Project: Watering My Roots
“This commission will assist the completion of Watering My Roots, a project that pays tribute to my ancestors and the greater ancestry of residents from southern states like Texas to California. The funds will help support the self-production of WMR and the opportunity to collaborate with other notable artists in doing so. I will create and share sonic and visual works that reflect my musical influences, including blues, roots, gospel, alternative R&B, hip-hop and rock, to cradle messages of love, ancestry, resilience, self and community empowerment, social justice and healing after traumatic times. I’m inspired to create and share my unique and purposeful voice as a composer, songwriter, musician, instrumentalist, Earth steward, artistic director/collaborator and co-founder of my family’s community healing garden and non-profit organization Long Live Love. Lastly, it’s the utmost honor to also feature production and musical collaborations in the spirit of my late father David McCarter and brother Immanuel Dickey McCarter, a Mission High School graduate whose life transitioned after an unjust traumatic encounter with law enforcement. I intend to make space for and share the depth of healing that blossoms from creating and expressing the authentic truth to power in art therapy with the sole purpose of experiencing deeper personal and communal healing in the medicine of the arts.”
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Project: My Grandfather . . .My Mother. . . Me. . .
“This commission will help fund my new research project: My Grandfather . . .My Mother. . . Me. . . , as I begin preliminary research of dissecting my family tree as it traces back to decades of unanswered questions about my family’s journey from El Salvador to the Mission District of San Francisco. Bay Area Cultural Art has provided me with a space to study many different types of dance and music from around the world. However, there are limited accessible resources and opportunities to openly study and celebrate Salvadoran folklore, language and street dance in the Bay Area. This project will allow me to research my family tree and history in El Salvador, interview Salvadoran cultural ambassadors and 1st and 2nd Generation Bay Area Afro Salvadoran youth, queer and femmes about their cross cultural experiences and hardships and begin sharing the oral history of Salvadoran culture through a Bay Area creative lens using dance, music, mixed media and storytelling as the hybrid. The objective of this research will be to remove the lack of identity for 1st and 2nd generation Afro Salvadoran youth, queers and femmes and open the door for all Bay Area Salvadorans to wholeheartedly practice their own creative expression without fear of being rejected.”
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Project: This Too Shall Pass
“House/Full of Blackwomen is a is a multi-year, dance theater project that addresses the displacement, well-being, and sex-trafficking of Black women and girls in Oakland. Performed as a series of ‘episodes’ in public spaces throughout Oakland since 2015, House/Full asks the question, ‘How can we as Black women and girls find space to breathe, rest, and be well within a stable home?’ The funds from the YBG Festival Commission will support the creation of the final episode of House/Full of Blackwomen titled, This Too Shall Pass – a durational performance set to take place throughout the streets of West Oakland in the fall of 2022. The intention for this project is to end it with the establishment of an actual space for Black women to dream and find space to rest and breathe.”
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Project: Untitled
“These funds will be used for the recording, production, and distribution of my next recording project. It is a soul and blues inflected meditation music project that will use both electric and acoustic instrumentation. I have begun gathering a series of meditations, affirmations and other prose that will inspire the music. I will compose pieces and will hire a band as well as an electronic producer to further render the works. Possible outcomes are an EP or full album, most likely for digital release only. I am also contemplating complementary artwork/video for each piece.”
Website
Project: Untitled
“To address the many scars left over from the Khmer Rouge Genocide, I will create a short dance film exploring how the Cambodian Diaspora is working to co-exist with their dark past through acceptance and renewal. The YBG Festival Commission will support Part One of the film, allowing me to travel to Cambodia where I will create short dance pieces, accompanied by live traditional Khmer music, at select sites still scarred by genocide, illuminating the physical/spiritual trauma of place. This work will give the necessary context for Part Two that will eventually be filmed in Cambodian communities in California.”
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Project: Ghost Girl
“The YBG Festival commission will help with the research and development phase of my project Ghost Girl. Ghost Girl is an online music licensing tool helping women composers license their compositions directly to content creators effortlessly while keeping 100% of the income. Ghost Girl was born during the Covid 2020 lockdown, when I and all my musician friends lost more than half our yearly income due to cancelled live performances. The only gigs I continued to book during lockdown were for film composing and scoring for online media. From this place, a lightbulb clicked on in my head: Build an online platform to empower music makers (particularly women composers like myself) to generate income through music scoring and licensing, an income stream not dependent upon live venues.”
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Project: Our Song + Your 10 Words
“When the shelter-in-place occurred in March of 2020 and artists turned to streaming shows, I started Our Song + Your 10 Words Song Series, where I took 10 words from 10 individuals and would write a new song based on those words. From March until early this year, I wrote 18 songs. Some were reflective of the times: the first week of shelter-in-place, feelings of gratitude when I moved into my apartment after being homefree for nine years, the political climate, Black Lives Matter, justice for George Floyd and the wildfires. I have been wanting to record some of these songs and release an EP. With the commission funds I’ll be able to start this project and use it for production costs.”
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Project: “Green”
“I’m recording & releasing a song called “Green” about high gas prices, corporate greenwashing and the devastating impacts “big oil” has on the planet. The song was written in frustration, when barrels were under $100 and oil companies posted record profits. ”
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Project: Esotérica Tropical
“My full-length debut LP, Esotérica Tropical, celebrates a universal sense of resilience, rooted in the notion that to heal is to decolonize.The music blends Latin American electronic landscapes with bomba, folk harp, and lyrics that are feminist, political, alchemical and affirming of deep ecology — songs that are prayers to both our ancestors and our future selves. The funds will support post-production, the making of a music video and release strategies for a 2022 release. The first single, Huracán, is an electro-bomba fusion that addresses colonialism, vulture capitalism, and femicide. It features bomba percussion by Jesús “El Tambor Mayor” Cepeda of the Cepeda family, the legendary Afro-Puerto Rican bomba culture keepers. Most songs in the album were produced by Luis Maurette (Uji/Lulacruza), except the groovy and polifonic, Alquimia, produced by Heidi Lewandoski (Kaleema). Adam Partridge (Atropolis) produced Realismo Mágico, featuring Merrill Garbus from TuneYards. The song Silencio mixes harp and voice with a quartet arrangement by composer Juan Ignacio Serrano. This album is a collaborative labor of love, made possible with the support of my community. Thank you YBG Festival for investing in artists.”
Social Media
Project: Untitled
“I will use these funds to support my quintet band project, to be determined. Inspired by bands like Fort Apache led by brothers Gerry and Andy González, this band explores experimental sounds and blending different genres with Afro-Latin rhythms. I am currently working towards a recording with this band, as well as creating a video and promo material.”
Work and Social Media
Project: Untitled
“My intentions are to create a score for an original web series I am developing. Based off of improvised songs I created, the goal is to produce an EP and visual components to be aligned with the webseries addressing issues related to Black mental health and trauma.”
Website
Project: Untitled
“My project would be to finally re-launch my entertainment company and blend it with my current projects, Maya’s Magic Shop and Maya Songbird: The Live Experience, as a film festival/annual festival. A trinity of some sorts. Intentions are to inspire. The creative process would be a magical evening. Possible outcome would be a masterpiece.”
Website
Project: Untitled
“As part of my project celebrating the untold stories of African peoples who helped shape Hawaiʻiʻs early history, I will compose a song for Alice Ball, an African-American chemist who developed the first successful treatment for Hansen’s disease (leprosy). Ball died at the age of 24 before seeing the full impact of her discovery. The president of the College of Hawaiʻi, Dr. Arthur Dean, continued Ball’s research without giving her credit, even claiming her discovery for himself.
There will be a live debut of the composition during the second quarter of 2022.”