Generation Equality Forum Music Collective
FSN x GEF
Over the years, Found Sound Nation has been fortunate to work with a robust network of artist leaders from around the globe. So many of these artists are leading transformational work in gender equity -- empowering women, girls, female-identifying and non-binary voices in every region of the world. This work is central to Found Sound Nation’s mission and reflective of our belief in collaborative music and sound creation as a way to build stronger and healthier communities.
We are honored to be a part of the 2021 Generation Equality Forum, which recognizes the value of presenting perspectives and approaches to gender equity work from around the world. This summer, Found Sound Nation was invited to create a program to highlight the work of a small group of these artists, placing this work on a global stage in this first of its kind event.
The GEF Music Collective is an international collective of socially engaged musicians from Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya and South Africa convened by Found Sound Nation to produce a series of creative digital performances, conversations and artist profiles that explore issues of gender equality and justice for the 2021 Generation Equality Forum (GEF). The artists invited for this showcase reflect a range of talent and experience, and are only a fraction of the incredible artists that Found Sound Nation hopes to amplify, who are deeply committed to gender equity throughout the world through their music and creative voices.
This work premiered at the Forum's global gathering in Paris, France in Summer 2021.
Inaugural GEF Music Collective artists include:
Kasiva Mutua, Drummer
Nairobi, Kenya
Dumama, Artist & Sonic Researcher
Cape Town, South Africa
Poetra Asantewa, Poet & Vocalist
Accra, Ghana
Jenn del Tambó, Percussionist / Percusionista
Barranquilla, Colombia
Sandunes, Producer
Mumbai, India
Follow On Work
GEF Music Collective artists continue to build on their gender equity work in their communities. This year, a small grant will support the continuation of these projects:
Kasiva Mutua
Kasiva will continue to support MOTRAMUSIC, a program that gathers and supports women drummers across Kenya, with GEF Music Collective funding. She aims to work with the collective to compose and produce an EP that highlights the stories of African women and their role in community building and development. The EP will be composed from carefully guided workshop sessions led by Kasiva and will feature a range of female instrumentalists in the Kenyan music scene.
Dumama
Dumama plans to start an immersive residency program that brings together black femme identifying musicians and educators. The Still Hear residency will be grounded in explorations of process and healing while cultivating various modes of easeful practice and care. This residency process will serve as a generative and restorative space for deep listening and experimentation; a space to shake off fears and projected expectations; a space to address how the capacity for imagining freely has been devastated by various forms of intersecting oppressions and suppressed responses, particularly prevalent in the historical contexts of South Africa.
Poetra Asantewa
Poetra will continue her work with Black Girls Glow, a growing collective of artists & an annual residency program for women creatives in Ghana. This funding will specifically support You Are Cared For, a project that seeks to use art and creative expression as a tool for sexual health advocacy. Poetra plans to conduct research and analysis as a first step to creative age-specific, culturally-inclusive materials that will be accessible to girls, young women and older women across all classes in Ghana. This funding will also support a media/art pilot to launch the project and help to acquire continued support for the project.
Jenn del Tambó
Jenn will build on her June 2021 event that virtually brought together more than a hundred women from around Latin America for traditional drumming workshops, strengthening and empowering a network of women drummers across the region in response to a statement from the National Festival of Bullerengue that “women should not play the drum.” Her next step will be to co-design & film a music video for a song by her partner Orito called “Soy Guerrera, Soy Tamborera,” which will bring together many women from a network of tamboreras, feminist collectives, and other allies to participate by playing drums and raising their voices in song & protest together in their respective cities.
Sandunes
Sandunes aims to continue her work in the Western Ghats of India by developing a short film/pilot illustrating the Sounds of the Western Ghats, told through the stories of the farmers, coffee growers, artists, environmentalists/naturalists, educators, and other inspiring people for whom the Western Ghats is home. The pilot will also touch upon listening as an act of rebellion, and the potential of listening as a source of activism in preserving our wild spaces. Sandunes also plans to create a bank of samples (or soundscapes) of sounds from the Western Ghats and invite sound artists, music producers, and musicians to collaborate with these sounds. Through storytelling and reportage, Sandunes aims to encourage dialogue around the urgent need to protect our biodiversity hotspots and all of the diverse sounds found therein.