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In an effort to continue expanding our digital footprint, National Sawdust has launched a brand new, three-part podcast, produced by Nya Hughes, that’s centered on the artist's experience of using our space.

Throughout August 2019, the main performance hall at National Sawdust was closed for the installation of the Constellation® acoustic system and Spacemap®, a state-of-the-art, three-dimensional spatial sound system brought forth through a partnership with world-renowned Berkeley audio manufacturer Meyer Sound. Designed with 102 speakers carefully placed throughout the walls and ceiling of the main hall, this technology allows for the creation of multiple sonic environments within one room. Artists can now architect spatial sound experiences, easily controlling the quality, characteristics, and placement of their music with the touch of a button.

In this podcast, which is an immersive sonic dream, we have a chance to hear artists’ first encounter with Constellation® as they build spatialized sound compositions in real time, as well as a series of performances from the opening of National Sawdust’s fifth season.

Photo: Jordan Rathkopf

Constellations: Explorations of Sound in Space | Part I: Elevation

Before Miyamoto is Black Enough had a name, Andy, Jeff, and I were already messing around with a few tracks. We arranged Andy's 21 together with my Greatest arranger of pan is an Indian, to come up with what is now 21 for Jit. We played with a couple other tracks. I was yet again in my life deeply heartbroken by the senseless death of a black person by vigilantism and beliefs of white supremacy. Trayvon Martin was on everyone's lips. But I had lived through, and marched on behalf of countless before that. With the acquittal of Trayvon's murderer still a fresh wound, John Crawford was shot and killed in Ohio and Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Among the things my writing has always done, is respond to the time, and in 2014 I wrote Excerpts from the Elegba treatise which wondered about what I might do now, 'I' being me, being blackness, being those of us still in the streets. Black songs and poems and rhymes are meant sometimes to conjure, to ninja, to seem to appear one place and crop up elsewhere. Black songs and poems are still songs and poems made in captivity and so they are still quilt-map, and sweet chariot. The 'treatise' was/is a poem/song in and about grief. It wants us to stay in the cut, prepare, and live. It wants us to create space by raising space, by razing – space(s). It recognized (in 2014) that a cleansing was necessary. To find a place where we can start anew, where we can build, we must burn.

Again, I wrote this 6 years ago. The song/poem's moment has come. The burning is a cleansing and already new phoenices of understanding are arising out of those fires. Juneteenth, is arguably America's most important black holiday. It recognizes both our freedom, and what extraordinary measures were employed to keep that freedom from us – what extraordinary measures we have had to employ to keep it for ourselves. A six year old track is ready today to go to school for us, to take us (even the composers) to school, to a discovery of what we might make new for ourselves. Juneteenth is the right time. We are the right time. Miyamoto is Black Enough is the right time. Burn. Build.

Roger Bonair-Agard for 
Sean Dixon
Andy Akiho
Jeffrey Zeigler

Burn / Build – Miyamoto is Black Enough

National Sawdust (NS), an unparalleled, artist-led, non-profit venue, is a place for exploration and discovery. A place where emerging and established artists can share their music with serious music fans and casual listeners alike.

In a city teeming with venues, NS is a singular space founded with an expansive vision: to provide composers and musicians across genres a home in which they can flourish, a setting where they are given unprecedented support and critical resources essential to create, and then share their work.

National Sawdust

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