Three Days. Two Locations. One Love!

Women Who Rock “Making Scenes, Building Communities” welcomes the fourth annual (Un)Conference, Film Festival & Oral History Archive “Honey & Healing” with a series of events from Thursday, April 24th through Saturday, April 26th. Children and families are welcome.

Invitation to  “Honey & Healing.”  All events are free and child-friendly.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

 Evelyn Harris has dedicated her voice to giving depth and meaning to an extensive array of musical styles, creating stirring interpretations of African-American traditional and contemporary material, freedom songs from around the world, jazz, pop, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and blues.

Her 18-year tenure with the internationally acclaimed Black women’s acapella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock guided her studies as an artist, performer, arranger and composer. Her compositions include State Of Emergency (1988 Grammy nomination), and My Lament. With Sweet Honey, she recorded and co-produced ten albums on the Warner Brothers, Redwood, and Flying Fish labels.

Evelyn relocated to the Pioneer Valley in Fall 2002. For over 3 years, she directed the choir at the North Hadley Congregational Church and facilitated writing and singing workshops with teenage mothers through the Springfield, Mass YWCA. With an emphasis on the social, political and economic conditions of Blacks in America, she has taught “Introduction to African-American Music” at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School, MacDuffie School, Stoneleigh-Burnham School, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College and Westfield State College among many others. Evelyn currently directs “The Ku’umba Women’s Chorus” at the Northampton Community Music Center and uses singing as cognitive therapy with dementia and Alzheimer’s patients in several nursing homes in the area. During the summer, she is a vocal instructor at the Jane Hanson Vocal Music Academy and the Institute for the Musical Arts Rock ‘n’ Roll Girls Camp. She has enthusiastically shared the stage with The Safari East Jazz Trio, Hip-Hop performance poet Lenelle Moise, singer-songwriter Pamela Means, pianists Miro Sprague, Jeff D’Antona, Stephen Page, Joel Martin and Jerry Noble as well as saxophonist Charles Neville. Earlier collaborations with a diverse spectrum of artists include Odetta, Holly Near, Glory Van Scott, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Horace Boyer, Art Steele, Jane Sapp, Zap Mama and Take 6.

Evelyn will be accompanied by Janice Scroggins.  Janiceis one of the most in-demand pianists in the Northwest today. She’s on a ton of albums, not just on Flying Heart, but on this label she plays on Eddie Harris’s album, Tom McFarland’s first album, all three Esquires albums, and her own album of Scott Joplin rags. This was for many years the only recording on which Janice Scroggins is the named headline artist. A newly remastered pressing was released in 2010. Furthermore, Janice is all over our 18-song Portland Blues sampler, “A Taste of the Blue Rose,” playing with practically everyone on the project, in a kind of “house band” that included Randy Monroe on bass and Carlton Jackson on drums. Writing in the November 1998 Two Louies, S.P. Clarke describes Janice as “the very model of the perfect side musician, utilizing space in her keyboard delivery, leaving plenty of room for the other players, while glistening in her moments to shine.” That assessment is as accurate today as ever.

Janice has a new CD out called Piano Love and released in 2014 on Michael Allen Harrison’s MAH label. This is the album we’ve all been waiting for! It is a thing of beauty

THE UNCONFERENCE AND FILM FESTIVAL

Festivities kick off on April 24^th at 5:00pm at Washington Hall (153 14th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122) with “Afrolatinas Who Rock: Warming Up the Honey,” an event honoring Afrolatinas in the arts.  This first event is organized by MÁS: Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle and includes films, discussions, music and dance performances.

On April 25^th, the Women Who Rock (Un)Conference begins at 3:00pm at Washington Hall with a community altar and calavera building workshop.  Legendary singer, songwriter, composer and educator Evelyn Harris, formerly of the Grammy-nominated Black women’s a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, will provide the keynote and perform (8pm).  She will be accompanied by Janice Scroggins. The theme of “Honey & Healing” is to acknowledge the sweetness we allow ourselves as women who resist, survive and practice resilience, demonstrating how women have brought community together to heal through the arts and create beauty out of oppression. This theme is embodied in the Green Bodies “The Mix” Market featuring local art & goods by entrepreneurs, healers, artists, and snack geniuses.  We invite vendors to this massive mix of creators of healing (See Green Bodies link below for more information).  The event includes a film festival co-sponsored by Native Voices (5:30pm), and community cypher & jam featuring Seattle Fandango Project, Yakima Fandango Community, Women’s Caribbean Steel Pan Project (6:30pm) and 206 Zulu Malika Jam with hip hop artists Julie C & Sista Hailstorm along with b-girls to close down the evening (9:15pm).

 On April 26^th (10am-12pm), the festivities close at The Bush School (3400 E. Harrison Street, Seattle, WA) with “Spiking the Honey,” a discussion,  and performance unpacking the power of the female in the punk rock world featuring punk legend Alice Bag, Night Train & Jessica Mills.

Guest scholars & critics:  Mary Pat Brady, Daphne A. Brooks, Mako Fitts,  Martha Gonzalez, Kate McCullough, Gaye T. Johnson, Sherrie Tucker, Ann Powers, and Deborah Wong. 

Our goal is to generate dialogue, build and strengthen relationships between local musicians and their communities in collaboration with educational institutions.  We emphasize community involvement in the event and encourage attendees to participate in creating dialogue.

All events, especially April 25th, are D.I.W.O. (Do It With Others).  We encourage participants to bring instruments, paintbrushes, beats, ideas, recording tools, your singing voice, knitting, art supplies, jarana, and dancing shoes to add to the “mix” of the market, altar, and jam sessions!

———————————————————————————————————————————————

All events are free and open to the public. Children are welcome.

INVITE YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS: https://www.facebook.com/events/1450836495153679/

♥ Free advance  registration @ https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/mhabellp/224598.  Please register!!!  Registration will also be available on the day of the event.

Please help spread the word by inviting your friends, FB or in person!

Check for updates @ womenwhorockcommunity.org
Tumblr @ womenwhorockconference.tumblr.com
Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/womenwhorockcommunity
Twitter @womenwhorock206(#WomenWhoRock206)
E-mail: womenwhorockproject@gmail.com
=======================================
SCHEDULE:
——————————————————————-
Thursday, April 24 || Doors Open at 5PM
@Washington Hall (153 14th Avenue, Seattle)

“WARMING UP THE HONEY: Afrolatina Women Who Rock – honoring Afrolatinas in the arts”

Organized by: MÁS Movimiento Afrolatino seattle
Films, discussions, goods for sale, music and dance performances.

Details at: movimientoafrolatinoseattle.blogspot.com or movimientoafrolatino@gmail.com
Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/1410270119235297/?ref=br_tf
—————————————————————–
Friday, April 25 || 3:00 PM – 10 PM
@ Washington Hall (153 14th Avenue, Seattle)
“HONEY & HEALING”

3:00 Green Bodies “THE MIX” Market, Community, Altar and Sugar Skull Workshop with Jacque Larrainzar , Slow Food, Music. (Bring cash for vendors).

5:30 Film Festival

6:30 Community Jam Session – Featuring:
Cypher lead by Julie C.
Seattle Fandango Project
Yakima fandango Community
The Seattle Women’s Steel Pan Project

8:00 Keynote: Evelyn Harris formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock, with Janice Scroggins

9:15 Performance – 206 Zulu Malika Edition
—————————————————————–
Saturday, APRIL 26 || 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
@ the Bush School (Community Room) (3400 E Harrison St, Seattle)

“SPIKING THE HONEY”

With special guests: Alice Bag, Jessica Mills, & NighTrain
Unpacking the Power of the female in the punk rock world
Contact: jabali.stewart@bush.edu

Dear Everyone!

Can you feel it?  That slight tingle that suggests there’s something afoot…cuz there is.  It’s time to spike some honey!

The Occasion:

This is the final installment of the Bush School Intercultural Speaker Series, and it is being done in conjunction with this year’s Women Who Rock (un)Conference.

Saturday, APRIL 26 || 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM @ the Bush School (Community Room) 3400 E Harrison St, Seattle.  Admission Free.

“Unpacking the power of the female in the punk rock world.” Although perhaps better stated: “Unpacking the power of punk rock women in the world.”

The Panelists:

Alice Bag is a punk rock singer, musician, author, educator and feminist archivist. She is most famous for being a member of The Bags, one of the first bands on the L.A. punk scene. The Bags were notable for having two female lead musicians, and for pioneering an aggressive sound and style which has been cited as an early influence on what would become the hardcore punk sound. Members of the Bags appeared as the Alanna Le Swirlice Bag Band in director Penelope Spheeris’s landmark 1981 documentary on the Southern California punk scene, The Decline of Western Civilization. Bag went on to appear and perform in other Los Angeles based rock bands including Castration Squad, The Boneheads, Alarma, Cambridge Apostles, Swing Set, Cholita – the Female Menudo (with her friend and collaborator, performance artist Vaginal Davis), Las Tres, Goddess 13 (the subject of a KCET/PBS produced documentary, “Chicanas In Tune”) and Stay At Home Bomb. Bag’s memoir, Violence Girl, From East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage – A Chicana Punk Story, was published by Feral House in Fall 2011. Bag maintains a blog, Diary of A Bad Housewife and a digital archive of interviews with women who were involved in the first wave of the Southern California punk scene in the 1970’s.

Jessica Mills is a punk rock saxophonist, author, educator, and activist who has played with various bands including Less Than Jake, and Citizen Fish. She has taught English and journalism in high schools, and is also a long time punk-parenting columnist for Maximum Rock and Roll. Disappointed by run-of-the-mill parenting books that didn’t speak to her experience; she set out to write a book tackling the issues faced by a new generation of moms and dads. The result is a parenting guide like no other. Written with humor, extensive research, and much trial and error, My Mother Wears Combat Boots delivers sound advice for parents of all stripes. Amid stories of bringing kids (and grandparents) to women’s rights demonstrations, taking baby on tour with her band, and organizing cooperative childcare, Jessica gives detailed nuts-and-bolts information about weaning, cloth vs. disposable diapers, the psychological effects of co-sleeping, and even how to get free infant gear. This book provides a clever, hip, and entertaining mix of advice, anecdotes, political analysis, and factual sidebars that will help parents as they navigate the first years of their child’s life.

The women of NighTraiN were brought together as a concept band for an original stage play production called “Hot Grits.” In a process that was projected to take nine months, the women were to learn their assigned instruments, write songs and begin performing in the Seattle underground music scene in preparation for the play. The Band and their music were very well received. Although, very diverse in experience, age and backgrounds, the original women developed a profound friendship and connection in the music and decided to reunite after the stage play ended to form NighTraiN (NtN). NighTraiN offers a fresh take on the garage, punk, and rock genres, and they are constantly discovering their ever changing voice. The fluctuating ages of the group and their individual experiences genuinely affect the outcome of their music. Exposed to different viewpoints, they stick to their own truths; therefore, NighTraiN’s music is never stagnant or stuck within one genre due to their non-traditional approach. NighTraiN’s sound is a heavy engine hum formed by the blunt bass rhythms of Selena “No Pick” Whitaker-Paquiet. It is a heartbeat held steady by the percussive stylings of Taryn “Hot Legs” Dorsey. It is dark heat strummed from the guitar of Nicole “Jaja Juicy” Peoples and accompanied by the steam whistle wail of Rachael Ferguson.

The Moderators:

Monica De La Torre is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her scholarship bridges New Media and Sound Studies by analyzing the development of Chicana feminist epistemologies in radio and digital media production. A member of Soul Rebel Radio, a community radio collective based in Los Angeles, she is specifically interested in the ways in which radio and digital media production function as tools for community engagement. An active member of the UW Women of Color Collective and the Women Who Rock Collective as well as a HASTAC scholar. She co-curated the Women Who Rock Digital Oral History Archive, along with members of the Women Who Rock Collective.  She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Chicana/o Studies from University of California, Davis and an M.A.in Chicana/o Studies from California State University, Northridge; her master’s thesis was entitled “Emerging Feminisms: El Teatro de las Chicanas and Chicana Feminist Identity Development.” She received a 2012 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, which recognizes superior academic achievement, sustained engagement with communities that are underrepresented in the academy, and the potential to enhance the educational opportunities for diverse students.

Iris C. Viveros Avendaño was born and raised in Mexico. She is a first year Ph.D. student and a McNair Scholar whose academic interests and projects emphasize the integration of third world feminist approaches to analyze the impact of colonialism in present-day systems of violence. To this effect, she focuses on the role of social structures and state-mediated technologies of power and domination in perpetuating violence against Latin American women. In addition, Iris’s scholarly work focuses on the connection between cultural production—in the form of communal music, dance, literature, and performance—and practices of resistance, recovery, and healing from trauma. A major source of Iris’s academic and personal inspiration comes from her involvement as a bailadora/dancer in the Seattle Fandango Project, a community dedicated to forging relationships and social activism through participatory music, poetry, and dance.

Raised on L.A. radio, Michelle Habell-Pallán grew up in Downey, California. She is a professor of Chicana/Latina Studies in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and adjunct in the School of Music and Communication at the University of Washington.  A respected cultural critic, digital archivista, and exhibit curator, she authored Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana/Latina Popular Culture (NYU Press) and coedited Latino/a Popular Culture (NYU Press).  In her role as public scholar she is a curator of  the award-winning bilingual and currently traveling exhibit American Sabor:  Latinos in U.S. Popular Music hosted by the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).  As a digital feminista that seeks to transform digital humanities through community engagement, she co-founded and co-directs the University of Washington Libraries Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities Oral History Archive.  Habell-Pallán is  recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Research Award as well as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Research Award for her innovative research on gender, popular music and culture.  She has been awarded a 2014 Digital Commons Faculty Summer Fellowship, sponsored by the Simpson Center for Humanities to support the Women Who Rock:  Making Scene,  Building Communities Oral History Archive. She makes community &  music with the Seattle Fandango Project and is a member of the Fembot Collective|Gender, New Media & Technology. Her article, “‘Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism’: Alice Bag’s Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk,” appears in Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012) and her new manuscript Beat Migration: Transmediating “American Sabor” for the Digital Humanities is in progress.

The Audience:

YOU!!!! Hope to see you there…

Be Well,

Director of Intercultural Affairs

The Bush School

—————————————————————
SPONSORS: Women Who Rock Collective, Uzuri Productions, Greenbodies, 206 Zulu Nation, Real Colored Girls, MÁS – Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle, De Cajón Project, Seattle Fandango Project, Yakima Fandango Community, The Seattle Women’s Steel Pan Project, Queering the Museum Digital Storytelling Workshop, Dia De Muertos Seattle, The Bush School, Social HeARTistry Educators (S.H.E.), City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, EMP Pop Conference. University of Washington Sponsors:  Simpson Center for the Humanities, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, American Ethnic Studies, The Graduate School, Native Voices, Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, Diversity Research Institute, Communication Department,ASUW, Women Who Rock Student Club, Beyond HB 1079, College Assistance Migrant Program, UW Libraries Digital Initiatives. Special Thanks to Dr. Nancy “Rusty” Barceló for keynote sponsorship.

To request disability accommodation, contact Washington Hall at 206-595-5886

♥

Women Who Rock Community supports, develops, and circulates cultural production, conversations and scholarship by cultural producers and faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates across disciplines, both within and outside the University, who examine the politics of gender, race, class, and sexuality generated by popular music. Our goal is to generate dialogue and provide a focal point from which to build and strengthen relationships between local musicians and their communities, and educational institutions.

For more information, to volunteer with us, to learn more about the project, learn about accessibility of buildings and space, and to contribute your stories to the Women Who Rock Oral History Archive (hosted by the University of Washington Libraries), please visit:http://womenwhorockcommunity.org and/or email: womenwhorockproject@gmail.com.

 

For information about the Women Who Rock Archive:http://content.lib.washington.edu/wwrweb/

For information about “Afrolatinas Who Rock: Warming Up the Honey,” contact movimientoafrolatino@gmail.com

For information & to participate in the Community Jam Session and the Green Bodies “The Mix” Market, contact green.bodies.seattle@gmail.com .  Tables are $25.00, to be one of the vendors, click here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xWzgqpbvi_OctBf_jG4WBLjDBK9C9Jcqaz_H_aTQHpo/viewform

For information about “Spiking the Honey,” contact jabali.stewart@bush.edu

INFORMATION ABOUT FEATURED KEYNOTE AND ARTISTS 

Evelyn Harris :www.evelynharris.com (with Janice Scroggins: http://home.teleport.com/~flyheart/fhjanice.htm)

Alice Bag: http://www.alicebag.com/

Julie C: http://julie-c.com/

Sista Hailstorm: http://bgirlmedia.com/hailstorm

Festival de Dia De Muertos Seattle: https://sites.google.com/site/diademuertosfestival/

NighTrain: http://nightrain-seattle.com/

MÁS: Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle: http://movimientoafrolatinoseattle.blogspot.com/

Native Voices:  Indigenous Documentary Film: http://www.com.washington.edu/nativevoices/

Green Bodies & Uzuri* Productions: https://www.facebook.com/UzuriConsultingandProductions

Seattle Fandango Project:http://sites.google.com/site/seattlefandango/206 Zulu:www.206zulu.com

 

PARTICIPANTS AND ORGANIZERS

Christa Bell –  2014 organizer. Christa is an award-winning spoken word poet, performance artist and feminist culture creator from Seattle,Washington. She is an MA candidate in Cultural Studies with a designation in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, a member of the Women Who Rock and Fembot collectives and a founding member of Real Colored Girls. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion and her work includes the one-woman show CoochieMagik: A Spoken Word Musical Comedy, commissioned by the National Performance Network, 1001 Holy Names for Coochie, a 24-hour endurance mantra and performance art installation, which premiered at the Seattle Art Museum as part of the opening events for Elles: Women Artists From The Centre Pompidou; and SHEism: The Woman Worship Workshop, a performance- lecture and workshop that explores the spiritual politics of female bodies.  Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, as a TEDx Talk, and on afterellen.com and she has performed, by invitation, at over 100 universities, colleges, festivals and performance venues internationally. Her performance work is primarily concerned with feminist imaginings of the divine as well as how women’s spiritual self-esteem impacts their participation in the political processes that govern their lives. Her research interests include black feminist theory and genealogies, feminist cultural production, performance studies and cultural intersections of race, gender, culture and theology. Her current performance work is scheduled to be included in theWhitney Museum of American Art: 2014 Biennial as part of a global collective.  Her essay “Shall We Begin Then?” a meditation on future/present ancestral bodies, will be featured in the 2014 Biennial catalogue.

Mary Pat Brady is an Associate Professor at the author of Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature and the Urgency of Space (Duke University Press, 2002), which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Prize for the Best Work of Latina/o and Chicana/o Literary and Cultural Criticism. She is also an associate editor of the sixth edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (Cengage 2008-2009). An earlier essay, “The Contrapuntal Geographies of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” (published in American Literature in 1999) won the Norman Foerster Prize for the best essay published in that journal for 1999. She has also taught at Indiana University, UC Santa Barbara, and UCLA; she has also served as the Director of Cornell’s Latina/o Studies Program. She is currently working on a project that examines the relationship between neoliberalism and Latina/o literatures and cultures.

Daphne A. Brooks is professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University where she teaches courses on African-American literature and culture, performance studies, critical gender studies, and popular music culture.  She is the author of two books: Bodies in Dissent:  Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke UP), winner of the The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR and Jeff Buckley’s Grace (New York: Continuum, 2005).  Brooks is currently working on a new book entitled Subterranean Blues: Black Women Sound Modernity (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).  She is the author of numerous articles on race, gender, performance and popular music culture such as “Nina Simone’s Triple Play” in Callaloo; “This Voice Which Is Not One: Amy Winehouse Sings the Ballad of Sonic Blue(s)face Culture” inWomen and Performance; “The Write to Rock: Racial Mythologies, Feminist Theory, and the Pleasures of Rock Music Criticism” inWomen and Music; and “‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’: Surrogation & Black Female Soul Singing in the Age of Catastrophe” inMeridians. Brooks is also the author of the liner notes for The Complete Tammi Terrell (Universal A&R, 2010), winner of the 2011 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing and Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia (Sony, 2011). She is also the editor of The Great Escapes:  The Narratives of William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and William Craft (New York:  Barnes & Noble Classics, 2007) and The Performing Arts volume of The Black Experience in the Western Hemisphere Series, eds. Howard Dodson and Colin Palmer (New York: Pro-Quest Information & Learning, 2006).  Brooks is the recipient of 2010-2011 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship. She is the past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship Program, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.  She has also held residence at U.C. Berkeley as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and at Harvard University as a W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute Fellow.

Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter  –  2014 organizer (pronounced Loose-b-min-dah ooh-zir-e car-pen-ter) aka Lulu, works for Historic Seattle as the Caretaker at Washington Hall and a Co-Coordinator at the Racial Disparity Project of The Defenders Association. In 2008, she founded Uzuri Consulting & Productions and a collective called Green Bodies with other fierce womyn of color and KnowMades (a youth solidarity organization). She serves on community advisory boards, such as Women Who Rock Community, Zenyu Healing and Allyship.  Carpenter has worked with Hidmo, Ladies First Collective Organizing Committee (an anti-rape collective), Pinay sa Seattle-GABRIELA around issues of art & cultural work to support movements. Carpenter has built trainings, programming & curriculum with womyn of color, trans & queer, and LGBTIQ communities around intersectional oppression, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and transformative justice within the Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA) and recently through YouthCare. She has honed her passion and skills for working with “marginalized” youth including formerly incarcerated, gang affiliated, trafficked, homeless, immigrant, & refugees for the past 8 years through the following organizations: YouthSource, YouthCare James W. Ray Orion Center Drop-in & Outreach Team, Franklin High School Political Science & Public Service Academy, the Service Board,Seattle Young People’s Project, and Seattle YouthSpeaks.  As a bridge builder & community organizer, Carpenter believes in the power of art & cultural work to heal & transform lives individually & collectively.

Alaia D’Alessandro –  2014 organizer.Comparative History of Ideas student Alaia D’Alessandro has received a Mary Gates Research Grant and will be traveling to Puerto Rico in April to continue producing her travel show Phonic Earth which explores community and social relationships to sound and music in different parts of the world. This will be the second episode of Phonic Earth, the first being completed in The Faroe Islands this past summer. The first episode of the project Phonic Earth: When Islands Sings that was centered in The Faroe Islands has recently been publically released on youtube and has received over two thousands views in a couple days. The film starts off by diving into a scientific exploration of the links between sound waves and history, explaining how culture is physically preserved in timbre, rhythm and melody. Overtime these elements are transmitted through landscape, animals and people and gradually form dialects, music and other phonic customs. This magnificent process is demonstrated through the Faroe Island’s music culture. Grotto concerts, national festivals, interviews with musicians and more take the audience on a one of a kind trip through the sounds of the Faroe Islands. Go to youtube,www.facebook.com/phonicearthsound or phonicearth.com to view the documentary.

Monica De La Torre -2014 organizer. Monica’s scholarship bridges New Media and Sound Studies by analyzing the development of Chicana feminist epistemologies in radio and digital media production. A member of Soul Rebel Radio, a community radio collective based in Los Angeles, Monica is specifically interested in the ways in which radio and digital media production function as tools for community engagement. She is an active member of the UW Women of Color Collective and the Women Who Rock Collective. Monica earned a B.A. in Psychology and Chicana/o Studies from University of California, Davis and an M.A.in Chicana/o Studies from California State University, Northridge; her master’s thesis was entitled “Emerging Feminisms: El Teatro de las Chicanas and Chicana Feminist Identity Development.” Monica received a 2012 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, which recognizes superior academic achievement, sustained engagement with communities that are underrepresented in the academy, and the potential to enhance the educational opportunities for diverse students.

Mako Fitts Ward – 2014 organizer. Mako is a feminist educator, writer, activist and mother and currently teaches in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Dr. Ward’s research focuses on intersectional analyses of hip-hop cultural production and urban community organizing using hip-hop as a tool for social justice activism. She is co-founder of the online writing and organizing project, Real Colored Girls,and co-founder of Women Who Rock, a digital archive project at the University of Washington and collective of musicians, media-makers, performers, artists, scholars and activists committed to documenting the role of women in popular music and the formation of cultural scenes and social justice movements. Dr. Ward has been a contributing blogger for Ms. Magazine and has published popular and scholarly essays on body ethics and aesthetics among women of color, media and gender images, women in hip-hop, gentrification and cultural displacement, and Black women’s social movement organizing in the early 20th century.

Martha Gonzalez is Assistant Professor at SCRIPPS/Claremont College in the Intercollegiate Chicana/o Latina/o Studies Department. She was born and raised in East Los Angeles and is a Chicana artivista (artist/activist), musician, feminist music theorist and academic. Gonzalez earned a PhD from the Gender Women Sexuality Studies (GWSS) department at the University of Washington Seattle. As a Fulbright (2007-2008) and Ford Fellow (2012-2013) she has published extensively on Chican@ music and popular culture, and music as social movement. Her academic interest in music has been fueled by her own musicianship as a singer and percussionist for East L.A’s Quetzal for the last 18 years. Quetzal has made considerable impact in the East Los Angeles Chicano music scene. The unique blend of Los Angeles sounds as well as the social justice content in the work has sparked dialogue and theoretical work among various artist communities, culture theorists, and scholars across the country, Mexico and Japan. The relevance of Quetzal’s work has been noted in a range of publications from dissertations to scholarly books. As a result, the U.S. Library of Congress and Kennedy Center extended an invitation to perform and speak in September of 2011 as a part of their “Homegrown” music series. In addition, the traveling exhibit “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music” sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute, featured Quetzal as leaders and innovators of Chicano music. This feat coupled with their 2013 Grammy Award winning album on the Smithsonian Folkways informs Gonzalez’s academic work.  http://marthagonzalez.net/

Michelle Habell-Pallán – 2014 organizer. Raised on L.A. radio, Michelle grew up in Downey, California. She is a professor of Chicana/Latina Studies in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and adjunct in the School of Music and Communication at the University of Washington.  As a feminista cultural critic, digital archivista, and exhibit curator, she authored Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana/Latina Popular Culture (NYU Press) and coedited Latino/a Popular Culture (NYU Press).  In her role as public scholar she is a curator of  the award-winning bilingual and currently traveling exhibit American Sabor:  Latinos in U.S. Popular Music hosted by the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).  As a digital feminista that seeks to transform digital humanities through community engagement, she co-founded and co-directs the University of Washington Libraries Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities Oral History Archive.  Habell-Pallán is recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Research Award as well as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Research Award for her innovative research on gender, popular music and culture.  She has been awarded a 2014 Digital Commons Faculty Summer Fellowship, sponsored by the Simpson Center for Humanities to support the Women Who Rock:  Making Scene,  Building Communities Oral History Archive.  She makes community &  music with the Seattle Fandango Project and is a member of the Fembot Collective|Gender, New Media & Technology. Her article, “‘Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism’: Alice Bag’s Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk,” appears in Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt(Duke University Press, 2012) and her new manuscript Beat Migration: Transmediating “American Sabor” for the Digital Humanities is in progress.  Contact her at mhabellp@u.washington.edu.

Yesenia Navarrete Hunter – 2014 organizer  is a Mexican mother who lives in Yakima with her family. She was born in Mexico and came to the United States when she was just a little girl. Yesenia is number 13 of 17 children and traveled with her family as migrant farm workers.  Her passion for her art and her writing comes from sharing stories with her children.  Her life is filled with love, laughter and lots of grace. Yesenia is a student with aspirations of earning a degree in family studies and education. She lives with her husband and children in Yakima, Washington.

Gaye T. Johnson (WWR EMP Panelist) Gaye Theresa Johnson is a mother, a partner, an activist, and an academic.
An Associate Professor of Black Studies with affiliations in the Departments of History and Chicana/o Studies at UC Santa Barbara, Johnson writes and teaches on race and racism, cultural history, and political economy. Her first book, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles, published by the University of California Press, is a history of civil rights and spatial struggles among Black and Brown freedom seekers and cultural workers in LA. Johnson’s second book, entitled Women in Hip Hop: A Radical Herstory, is under contract with Haymarket Press. Johnson is a Founding Partner of Sol Sisters Rising, a collective dedicated to elevating women of color in film.  Twitter: @LaDoctoraGTJ. Website: http://www.solsistersrising.com

Kait LaPorte – 2014 organizer. Kait is a queer poet pursuing a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. LaPorte’s poetic life started to take shape when she self-published a book of poems she wrote while studying abroad in Peru. Finding the two styles of writing somewhat inseparable, LaPorte’s academic and poetic work both deal with social justice issues. More specifically, LaPorte utilizes queer and feminist frameworks in order to challenge sizeism, femme invisibility, nationalism, and the gender binary. In addition to writing poetry, LaPorte also enjoys playing classical piano and singing. Her poem “Bulldozer” is being published in the forthcoming zine In Passing.

Jacque Larrainzar – 2014 organizer.  Human and Civil Rights Activist. Jacque is passionate about justice. She believes that working with social justice issues is a way to restore our humanity and create checks and balances against institutional power.  “Art, including music, painting and dance, gives us tools to express things that otherwise we would not be able to share with each other, and in doing so, it allows us to share the uniqueness of our individuality as human beings with each other and create community . Art allows you to see who I am and connects my personal experiences to how you see the world and who you are.” Jacque has served on numerous boards and committees in the areas of civil and human rights, immigrants’ rights, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights. As an important member of Seattle’s Latino cultural activist community, Jacque was part of the Casa de Las Artes “Day of the Death Celebration.”  Jacque is also honored to be part of the “Seattle Guealguetza Celebration” an annual celebration of indigenous Oaxacan Culture and support Immigration and refugee, women and LGBT organizations by offering music and song to their celebrations. From 1999 to 2001 Jacque performed with the only Cuban Charanga Orchestra in the North West: Charanga Yerbabuena. As a musician she has performed with Lalo Guerrero, Pete Sieger, Richard Egues, and many other internationally known Musicians.  Her music is part of the Smithsonian’s “Woodie Gutrie: Music of Protest in the Americas Collection,” FolkLife, and EMP.  She has been included in the encyclopedia of popular music, and the “who’s who: American Women’s Dictionary.

Carrie Lanza –  Women Who Rock unConference Organizer.  Carrie is a doctoral candidate in Social Welfare at University of Washington School of Social Work and a member of Seattle Fandango Project. Her work explores participatory arts and media production in community-based practice and research. She teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at University of Washington, Bothell.

Kate McCullough is Associate Professor of English at Cornell Univeristy. Her book, Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women’s Fiction, 1885-1914 (Stanford University Press, 1999) examines the contribution of women’s fictions to cultural discources of national identity and offers a comparative analysis of the impact of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and region in this fiction. She is currently working on a project on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and diaspora in twentieth-century fiction.

Angelica Macklin  –  2014 organizer. Women Who Rock Film Festival Curator and Videographer.  Angelica is a PhD student in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. As a filmmaker and digital film educator she has taught courses in Video Production, Women Who Rock Oral History Production, and Study Abroad Transnational Media Methods.  Her research is in digital film praxis and its role in building community, supporting social movements, and making more visible the work of women in cultural production. Angelica has served on the organizing committee for the annual Women Who Rock Conference since 2011, and is curator of the annual Women Who Rock Film Festival.

Shann Molly

LeiLani Nishime – University of Washington; Assistant Professor of Communication, Adjunct Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture (University of Illinois Press, expected fall 2013), articles in the journals Cinema Journal, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Communication Theory, and co-editor ofEast Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture (New York University Press, 2005).

Ann Powers  NPR Music’s critic and correspondent. She writes for NPR’s music news blog, The Record, and she can be heard on NPR’s newsmagazines and music programs.One of the nation’s most notable music critics, Powers has been writing for The Record, NPR’s blog about finding, making, buying, sharing and talking about music, since April 2011. Powers served as chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times from 2006 until she joined NPR. Prior to the Los Angeles Times, she was senior critic at Blender and senior curator at Experience Music Project. From 1997 to 2001 Powers was a pop critic at The New York Timesand before that worked as a senior editor at the Village Voice. Powers began her career working as an editor and columnist at San Francisco Weekly. Her writing extends beyond blogs, magazines and newspapers. Powers co-wrote Tori Amos: Piece By Piece,with Amos, which was published in 2005. In 1999, Power’s book Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America was published. She was the editor, with Evelyn McDonnell, of the 1995 book Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop and the editor of Best Music Writing 2010. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University, Powers went on to receive a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of California.

Sonnet Retman –  2014 organizer. Sonnet teaches African American literature, culture and performance at the University of Washington and she is the author of Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression (Duke 2011).  She is one of the organizers of Women Who Rock.

Elizabeth Ramirez Arreola is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.

Marlen Rios-Hernandez is a Ph.D. student in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. Her undergraduate senior thesis entitled “Dominatrix Women and the Modern Day Work Song” analyzed the intersection of gender, post-punk music, sexual agency, and the sex industry. Her current research revolves around women of color in the early Los Angeles punk rock scene of the late 1970s through the early 1980s. She aims to analyze issues of gender and sexuality in relation to the stigmatization of women as passive participants or sexual objects in music. Marlen’s goal is to raise questions about the private/public sphere in relation to women of color in a genre like punk in the United States.

Noralis Rodriguez-Coss  is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Noralis excelled from an early age as an activist, poet and actress. She moved from Puerto Rico to the United States in 2007 to continue her graduate studies after identifying academia as one of the places where she could create new initiatives to help eradicate violence against women. She obtained a M.A. in Women’s Studies from Southern Connecticut State University. Her master’s thesis is titled “Challenges of the Third Wave: Mobilizing Young Women to the Feminist Movements in Puerto Rico.” Currently, she is working in her dissertation, which explores the feminist cultural production of radical performances that denounce violence against women in Puerto Rico. Other interests are women of color feminist theory, theater as an educational tool, and women in science. Her activism within academia directly impacts the growth of her research as well as her understanding of social movements and collaborations. Chief among these is her work with the Women of Color Collective (WoCC) at the University of Washington where she co-organizes annual conferences and workshops, annual writing retreats, and other events to create opportunities for graduate women of color to support each other while navigating academia. In addition, she was the graduate student project manager for the Women Who Rock Community Project, where she co-organized the project’s 2013 annual unconference.

Monica Rojas, Ph.D. (Lima, Peru) –  2014 organizer. Monica is an artist and activist. She recently combined her academic work in Anthropology with her artistic skills to launch and direct her own arts organization called DE CAJóN Project to promote and educate about the cultural contributions of the African descent people in Peru.

Karen Stringer

Paulette Thompson

Sherrie Tucker (Professor, American Studies, University of Kansas) is the author of Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Duke, 2000) and co-editor, with Nichole T. Rustin, of Big Ears:  Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies (Duke, 2008).  She has recently completed a book entitled Dance Floor Democracy: the Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen (forthcoming Duke University Press). She facilitates the “Improvisation, Gender, and the Body” section of “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice,” a Collaborative Research Initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and is a founding member of the Melba Liston Research Collective.

Iris Viveros Avendaño  –  2014 organizer. Iris was born and raised in Mexico. She is a first year Ph.D. student and a McNair Scholar whose academic interests and projects emphasize the integration of third world feminist approaches to analyze the impact of colonialism in present-day systems of violence. To this effect, she focuses on the role of social structures and state-mediated technologies of power and domination in perpetuating violence against Latin American women. In addition, Iris’s scholarly work focuses on the connection between cultural production—in the form of communal music, dance, literature, and performance—and practices of resistance, recovery, and healing from trauma. A major source of Iris’s academic and personal inspiration comes from her involvement as a bailadora/dancer in the Seattle Fandango Project, a community dedicated to forging relationships and social activism through participatory music, poetry, and dance.

Deborah Wong is an ethnomusicologist and Professor of Music at the University of California, Riverside. She specializes in the musics of Asian America and Thailand and has written two books. She served as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 2007-09 and is very active in public sector work in the arts at the national, state, and local levels. She recently became an editor for Wesleyan University Press’s Music/Culture series.

—————————————————————