Mix tape beat by Key Wane and Young Chop. Mixed by Galen Silvestri & Moonbeam

Growing up in a mixed race family in one of the most diverse cities on earth provoked many inquiries into identity at an early age. I didn't know a single person who shared my exact ethnic background, so i created my own culture from the tapestry I was immersed in. This led to many beautiful innovations, but the downside was that I never truly felt at home anywhere.


In 2015, I was blessed to find Friends of Roots, an organization that helped me track down the ancestral village of my father's father in the Guangdong province of southeast China. With a group of 10 others, I located and visited the home where my grandfather was born, in a village where my ancestors likely lived for over 500 years. I have never felt more at home than during the sacred moments I spent in that place, communing with my grandfather's spirit and contemplating the lives of every generation that cultivated a deep and sustained relationship with the land. My journey of searching for home and finding it in the soil where my grandfather nearly died as a newborn baby changed me on a foundational level and instilled me with a genuine confidence and resilience that was previously unknown to me. For a more thorough account of my experience you can read this blog post and watch this short video. 

http://rootshml.tumblr.com/search/gino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0V7-cIctRY&list=PLyIB6Bsbh7oedKj_DRBxZHWoufnurVujk&index=6


Questions to consider:
* How did you come to understand your identity in the context of where you were raised?
* Where do you feel most at home and why?
* How do the challenges in your life connect to the adversity that your ancestors survived?

Remember the Source (feat. Jewel Love)

InstruMental One, was born and raised in Oakland, California, and his first love was Hip-Hop music.  He was initiated in the late 90's through endless freestyle ciphers huddled over park benches and crammed in parked cars. His music is an offering of gratitude for the ancestors, and strives to connect unique, individual experience to universal Truth.

Remember the Source (feat. Jewel Love)

IM1