Ecosocialist Horizons Hour
January 4th, 2014: South Africa and the soul of Planet Earth 

Today's episode of Ecosocialist Horizons Hour features a special extended discussion on South African politics and music as a revolutionary current for our times. As Nelson Mandela continues be praised by the forces of the Right and Left across the globe, EHH asks today: what is the true legacy of South Africa for building a revolutionary ecosocialist movement, what is the state of apartheid's dismantlement, and what does the living tradition of Black Atlantic music mean for modernity and its discontents?

Joining us in our studio alongside Joel Kovel and Ben Barson is Dr. Salim Washington, a distinguished specialist on African-American music and accomplished tenor saxophonist. Salim Washington has emigrated to Durban, South Africa, after many years of following the music, culture and history of that nation, starting in 1976 at the time of the Soweto rebellion. Finally arriving as a Fulbright Senior Scholar/Artist in 2009 (would not be an "honorary white" in the 70s, supported the boycott in the 80s, was raising children in the 90s) he experienced the great potential of this country. Salim has accepted a position in musicology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, but also teaches for the Centre of Jazz and Popular Music. He has led workshops in various townships, including Soweto, Thembisa, KwaMashu, and others, performed in various cities, including Grahamstown, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Irini, and leads a big band built primarily of orphaned youths at the Durban Music Centre. Washington will also be participating in the 8th Pan African Congress to be held in Joburg in January 2014. human rights law and environmental movements. He has lobbied on behalf of several Ecuadorean-based indigenous nations in the context of the ongoing oil extraction and rainforest destruction in the Amazon.

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour is your frontline report on the global ecological crisis and the struggle for a livable world. EHH is the only source connecting the dots between Empire, Capitalism, Ecological Collapse, and the movements to rebuild humanity’s severed connection with the natural world.

EHH is not meant for the faint of heart. Join us with courage, spirit, and a bit of humor that is needed to answer the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour 1/4/14: Dr. Salim Washington on South Africa and a New Humanity

Today's episode of Ecosocialist Horizons Hour focuses on that special country in the global economy and world history, The People's Republic of China. 

Even in "the desert of the real" that is Western media, one cannot argue that China's losses to environmental degradation is quite real: desertification costs it at least 50 billion dollars a year; Environmental Refugees are estimated in the hundreds of thousands to millions; Pollution statistics are staggering; the youngest child with lung cancer has recently been registered in this large nation. Despite this, there are "seeds" of an ecosocialist future buried in the desert of this destruction; and some of these nascent forces brought distinguished American ecosocialist Joel Kovel to speak in China. Kovel reports back from his journey, Quincy Saul shares insight about China's desertification and the attempts to regreen it; and Kali shares an excerpt from Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth." Labor / Community organizer Abraham Mwaura also joins us from Chicago. Ben Barson hosts while Prince Akeem engineers.

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour March 3rd, 2014: Sowing Seeds with China's Ecosocialists

Join Quincy Saul, Joel Kovel, and Kali for an uncompromising analysis of the Niger Delta, currently undergoing massive oil extraction, reaping little benefit and causing much devastation to the local populace and environment, thanks to destabilization campaigns made possible by the Western powers. We interview the prolific Nnimmo Bassey--a Nigerian architect, environmentalist activist, author, poet, and Rafto winner, who chaired Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012 and was Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. He shares not only the analysis from the ground but also some of his groundbreaking poetry, including the epic "We Thought it Was Oil, but it Was Blood." 

Find more information at ecosocialisthorizons.com/broadcast.

Ecosocialist Horizons June 5th, 2014: "We thought it was Oil, but it Was Blood" with Nnimmo Bassey

We Refuse to be Used and Abused! Composed by Fred Ho and performed by the Afro Asian Music Ensemble.

From the Fred Ho tribute on 10.5.14, titled "The Underground Railroad to Our Heart," at El Taller Latinoamericano. 

Personnel:
royal hartigan -- Drums and Chinese percussion
Wes Brown -- Bass
Matan Rubenstein -- Piano
Masaru Koga -- Alto Sax
Bhinda Kiedel -- - Soprano Sax
David Bhindman -- Tenor Sax
Ben Barson -- Baritone Sax

Recorded by Steven DeCastro. All Rights Reserved.

We Refuse to be Used and Abused! Composed by Fred Ho and performed by the Afro Asian Music Ensemble

Serve the People, Organize the People, All Power to the People! 
Composed by Fred Ho and performed by the Afro Asian Music Ensemble

From the Fred Ho tribute on 10.5.14, titled "The Underground Railroad to Our Heart," at El Taller Latinoamericano.

Personnel:
royal hartigan -- Drums and Chinese percussion
Wes Brown -- Bass
Matan Rubenstein -- Piano
Masaru Koga -- Alto Sax
Bhinda Kiedel -- - Soprano Sax
David Bhindman -- Tenor Sax
Ben Barson -- Baritone Sax

Recorded by Steven DeCastro. All Rights Reserved.

All Power to the People Composed by Fred Ho and performed by the Afro Asian Music Ensemble

Join the Ecosocialist Horizons Hour team as we discuss the breakdown of capitalism, the resurgence of the Chinese working class, and the fight for a livable planet with one of the world's leading scholars and activists on the subject: Minqi Li, a one time political prisoner of the People's Republic of China, and author of several books including "The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy." A fascinating and crucial conversation awaits you here on Ecosocialist Horizons Hour--your only source for connecting the dots between capitalism, Imperialism and ecological crisis!

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour January 2nd, 2015 : Minqi Li on the Chinese Working Class

August 7th, 2015: Ecosocialist Horizons Hour returns with Daro Behroozi as host, interviewing writer and activist Ali Issa. His recent book "Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq" documents interviews with, and reports from, Iraqi feminists, labor organizers, environmentalists, and protest movement leaders. In doing so, "Against All Odds" presents the unique voices of progressive Iraqi organizing on the ground. Dating back to 2003, with an emphasis on the 2011 upsurge in mobilization and hope as well as the subsequent embattled years, these voices belong to Iraqis asserting themselves as agents against multiple local, regional, and global forces of oppression. Ali Issa speaks to the book and the work of organizers to consolidate sometimes the contradictory demands of a robust grassroots movement in Iraq, and what this means for an ecosocialist future.

Ali Issa is the National Field Organizer with War Resisters League, where he is co-coordinator of a campaign to end police militarization. He is originally from Iowa and holds a Master's in Arabic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq (Tadween, 2015). His literary translations have appeared in Banipal, the PEN World Atlas Blog, and Jadaliyya where he is a contributor on Iraqi social movements

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour August 7th, 2015: Interivewing Ali Issa

August 10th, 2015:
Daro Behroozi and Joel Kovel interview the great pianist and theoretician Connie Crothers, who shares her connections between music, energy, consciousness, and struggles against capitalism and for a better world. The question at hand, among many others: does changes in music precede changes in consciousness, and from there, changes in social relations (revolution)? Tune in to find out. 

From her website: 
CONNIE CROTHERS, pianist, has lived her musical life as performer, recording artist and teacher releasing the feeling—her source—into the music which realizes her range of expression, her virtuosity based in her love of the instrument and her desire to discover everything she can hear and imagine through spontaneous improvisation."
http://www.conniecrothers.net/bio.html

Ecosocialist Horizons Hour August 10th, 2015: Connie Crothers on Music, Improvisation, & Revolution

A song dedicated to the struggle of the future: artists-revolutionaries who surrender to the power of the artistic imagination to see new worlds and new possibilities within the everyday (surrealism), but who are not afraid to fight to make this a reality (insurrectionsts). This movement of the future will be, and is currently, being led by [indigenous] women, so the -ista suffix seems more than appropriate. This song is written by Ben Barson with lyrical contribution and deep soulful collaboration with spiritchild.

Lyrics written by spiritchild and Ben Barson.
www.xspiritmental.com/

Insurrealista

With the 2017 superstorms of Harvey, Jose and Maria as a catalyst, the Triclone Suite intends to capture the historical legacy of colonialism and genocide in contemporary inequalities of power and human devastation. The work suggests that continuities exist between these eras, and hopes to propose strategies for living in in the Anthropocene with dignity. The pieces "Maria" and "Harvey" attempt to create sonic worlds that relate to the cultural and geopolitical logic within which these catastrophes unfold. 

In "Harvey," Texas's former status as a mesoamerican outpost and Mexican national territory is remembered through a poem set to lyric voice written by the great poet-king Nezahualcoyotl. The lyric is interspersed with jazz "scat" signing and blue progressions, suggesting an unfinished liberation movement based on an Afro-American and Indigenous alliance. The poem touches on the impermanence of human regimes, an apt lesson for a state whose political class nihilistically relies on the propagation of fossil fuels. 

"Maria," conversely, suggests that true tragedy in the modern age is not simply the existence of catastrophe but United States's ongoing reproduction of destruction through relief efforts, or the lack thereof. There real disaster is not the superstorms but the genocidal policy of the American state. The piece hopes to suggest the hope of resistance against these forces in community mobilization, with roots in African and Indigenous Taíno traditions.

Triclone Movement 1: Maria

Triclone Movement 2: Harvey

Movement 3 of the Triclone Suite zooms in on Cuba and its process of healing and the weathering of mulitple storms as it experienced the man made disaster of Hurricane Jose. Attempting to fuse Cuban clarinet acrobatics and syncopated rhythms with the resiliance of the island's people, this piece conlcudes the suite with a pondering of the implications between ecology and social relations: Is speed and efficiency in production social goods? Or have they become, in fact, another social evil in our long era of ecological apocolypse?

Triclone Movement 3: Jose

With libretto by Ruth Margraff and composed by Benjamin Barson, the work continues the multi-genre, epic operatic spirit of Fred Ho in a decidely contemporary context: based on interviews with living revolutionary women from migrant-sending regions (Syria, Mexico, and Tazania) the piece suggests that voices from the global south have solutions and visions for withstanding climate change and creating alternatives to the destructive capitalist world-order.
released February 12, 2019 

Lead Vocals:  Gizelxanath Rodriguez, Marina Calendar (voice actor) and Drew Bayura (voice actor) 
Chorus: Morgan Hawkins, Jason Gordon, Katharine Carlson, Gizelxanth Rodriguez 
Saxophones: Ben Opie, Patrick Breiner, Roger Romero, Ben Barson 
Strings: Jin Yang (Pipa) Aidana Yntykbayeva (Kobyz) Claudia Quintana (Violin) Ahmer'e Blackman (Cello) 
Rhythm Section: Beni Rossman (Bass) Samuel Okoh-Boateng (Keyboard) Seth Yoder (Keyboard) Bernard Grobman (Guitar), Brian Riordan (Electronics) 
Percussion: Julian Powell, Hugo Cruz, Jeff Berman 
Conductor: Federico Garcia-De Castro 
Composed by Benjamin Barson 
Libretto by Ruth Margraff

Mixed by Mac Inglis 
Mastered by Boone McElroy 
Recorded live by Angela Bauman at the New Hazlett Theater in Pittsburgh, PA, as part of CSA Season 6 

For more, see 
afroyaquimusiccollective.com/mirror-butterfly/
license:
all rights reserved

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