Project:Reversible

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

P:R Meet & Greet 10/30

We've scheduled our latest P:R wine-and-cheesy Meet and Greet for this Thursday evening. We'll be bringing together a strategic mixture of participating artists, press representatives, potential fundraisers, and "the base". The goals are three:

(1) update everyone on where we've been, where we are, and where we're going leading up to our live event in Dec;

(2) create a synergetic environment for our guests to meet each other and help propel P:R forward;

(3) drink some wine, eat some food, and have a good ol' time!

Also, Barack Obama will also be dropping by.

If you're interested in attending, please leave a comment here and we'll get in touch!

alldaybuffet covers P:R performance, Jal

In recapping the cornucopia of goodness that was The Feast, the people over at alldaybuffet have mentioned Kyle and Barrett's performance to Joshua's song "Reversible". We're still tracking down video of the performance; once we get it we'll post it here.

At the Feast, Jerri and Michael also decided to pump up the crowd by playing the Emmanuel Jal music video "War Child", which excited us because Jal is one of our biggest inspirations (see "P:R Inspiration" on the right). He's living proof of the ways music (and art generally) can spur a uniquely emotional connection to activism. This is the essence of creative entrepreneurial idealism (CEI): using art toward social or activistic ends.

CEI has such great potential within the realms of Social Entrepreneurism and civic engagement because, in a world overrun with causes and advertising, saying "look at what a big problem X is!" just doesn't cut it anymore. Causes need to stand out from others, and activism needs to be made fun. CEI tries to do that, and in the process draw a wider audience to the mission. For the detailed CEI pitch, see its home base, The Ideabox.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

P:R debuts at The Feast

P:R-affiliated artists performed on Thursday at Alldaybuffet's amazing Feast, the first annual conference on Social Innovation here in NYC.

Kyle and Barrett performed a joint dance and viola performance to a recording of Kind Monitor's "Reversible", the song that inspired Joshua to start P:R. The performance was well-timed to welcome conference participants back into the auditorium after the hour long lunch break. Kyle, a professional dancer, mesmerized the crowd while Barrett's accompaniment provided a beautiful live complement to the recorded song.

The reaction was wonderful. A few people who knew I was working with P:R remarked that the effect of Josh's song, the live music, and Kyle doing his thing was quite powerful. We'd agree: there are many great causes out there, but there is nothing like the power of live music and dance to rile up the emotions. Hopefully they'll use their P:R flyers wisely, check us out online, and buy tickets for the live event!

All in all, it was a short performance but a great step forward. We're honored to be a part of such a meaningful conference, and we hope to give lucky audiences a little taste of things to come a few more times before the big show in December.

What will YOU reverse?

Project:Reversible Inspiration

The inspiration for the project from the creator, Joshua Guthals:

I saw a film called "War Child" a few months ago, it tells the story of a Sudanese "Lost Boy" who survived his childhood environment of murder, rape, and social horror to become a touring rapper speaking out about the terrible situations he survived. He committed himself to raising funds for rebuilding the school-houses destroyed throughout the Sudan during the genocide through his musical performances. It was a profoundly moving film that ended up winning the Tribeca audience award.

Watching this film led me to re-evaluate my own social commitments that are a part of my music-making and realize that my making and sharing of music does indeed have social/political elements that could be strengthened for the greater good.

Specifically, a large portion of my music explores people's isolation in our accelerated and fragmented global society, and more specifically, a song I wrote called "Reversible" explores those topics on a very personal level. I wrote the song for a gay black friend who was abused as a child and who's homophobic father threatened to kill him for being gay, leading my friend to throw himself out of a second story window one night in terror.

He survived the fall with two broken arms, ended up in the foster care system and has struggled as an adult with feelings of alienation from his own cultural identity as an orphaned gay black man. When he told me this sad tale, I wrote him the song "Reversible" that expresses the sentiment: you are not alone in this world even at your worst moments.

During the original song-writing of Reversible, I took as an inspiration in writing the song a performance of 'Imagine' I saw on TV by Tracy Chapman as a teen-ager that deeply affected me, her and a piano simply singing such a beautiful song. I recorded a very simple version of Reversible just me and a piano and gave the recording to my friend.

A few months ago, I drew together my own (projected) understandings of the refugee-like experiences this close friend of mine must have experienced as a teen-ager and likened it in some ways to the atrocities occurring in the Sudan (displacement, violence, horror) and decided to take a stab at socially conscious community mobilization using my song "Reversible" as a foundational point.

I think the heart of the project's 'statement' is found in the tag-line we developed for Project:Reversible: "What will you reverse?" Meaning, it is our own stands that we take out in the world that creates positive changes for all of us.

Because the song and the background of the song and the inspiration points for this community project dealt with swirling issues of suicide, homophobia, and racism, I began working through those topics by seeking to re-design the song Reversible as a celebration of joy, diversity, and acceptance by building a team of musicians from all walks of life to be a part of the song's recreation (e.g., all ages, races, sexual orientations, genders). I felt this approach would also work to heal my own painful fears that people can't all work together across our differences and help me to 'be the change I want to see in the world'.

I also began reaching out to my friends in non-musical fields and asked for their support and engagement to making the project grow and become something larger than myself so that it could reach larger audiences and affect more people's understanding.

A lot of amazing and powerful people have signed onto the project, and we collectively got excited about the project potential and somewhere along the way it got dubbed 'an indie rock We are the World' ... the idea became thus to have a web-site called "Project:Reversible" with photos of the people who have donated their talents to the project along with a personal statement from each person answering the question "What will you reverse?" where each person involved in the project could talk about what matters to them and how they make differences in little and huge ways in their own lives.

Also, we started working on putting together a compilation CD of local indie artists and more established humanitarian-friendly musicians to raise awareness and funds for social causes working to end genocide, suicide, and homophobia.

Last, we have started planning out a live event where we will invite socially-conscious people to come eat, listen to live music and watch live dance, and raise money for these social causes and celebrate a world rich in diversity.