Stephan Said Monthly Residency

#TAHRIR2#MADISON-BUILDING A GLOBAL MOVEMENT APRIL 14 @ DROM

Please join Stephan Said, GritTV host Laura Flanders, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, Actress Najla Said, and more for Stephan's next concert with the Magical Orchestra at Drom "Tahrir to Madison, Building a Global Movement." Together with co-sponsors OR Books, FEN Magazine, Helo Magazine, The Mantle, the New Jersey Outreach Group, and WeTheWorld, join us for this amazing event!

Tickets will go fast. $10 advance, $15 at the door! Anyone who buys 5 tickets or more (only $50!) will get a free autographed copy of The Bell, with liner notes by the late Howard Zinn, DJ Spooky, Dean Ween and more.

Doors are at 7pm, Showtime 8pm.

The show begins with a musical incantation of selections from OR Book’s upcoming acclaimed book “Tweets From Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as It Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It.” Already Featured in The New Yorker and New York Times.

Every 2nd Thursday of the month a host of artists, visionaries, media personalities and organizations join Iraqi-American singer, writer and activist Stephan Said and his Magic Orchestra each month for his residency at Drom to connect the various struggles for freedom and equality worldwide in a call to build a global movement. May 12, DJ Spooky and other guests TBA will be joining Stephan.

The residency builds towards the June 7 release of Stephan's new album, difrent, produced by Hal Willner, with The Orchard Group.

STEPHAN SAID & REV. BILLY, LAURA FLANDERS, NAJLA SAID, OR BOOKS IN ‘#TAHRIR2#MADISON - BUILDING A GLOBAL MOVEMENT’ APRIL 14 @ DROM

- Special guests join Iraqi-American Artist-Activist Said each month for his residency at Drom. New album with Hal Willner out on June 7 with The Orchard Group.

- April 14, special reading of OR Books upcoming “Tweets From Tahrir” set to music with special guests. May 12 with DJ Spooky and others.

- Website difrent.org builds momentum as “world’s leading source for music and culture for social change.”

A host of artists, visionaries, media personalities and organizations join Iraqi-American singer, writer and activist Stephan Said and his Magic Orchestra each month for his residency at Drom to connect the various struggles for freedom and equality worldwide in a call to build a global movement.

On the heels of helping build the freedom movement across the Middle East and North Africa, and supporting the demonstrations they inspired in Madison and elsewhere with songs, writing, and via difrent.org, Stephan’s new album with Grammy Winner Hal Willner has been moved up from September to a June 7 release.

For the April 14 show Said will be joined by GritTV Host Laura Flanders, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, Actress Najla Said, OR Books, FEN Magazine, Helo Magazine, The Mantle forum, the New Jersey Outreach Group, and We The World for an event themed“#Tahrir2#Madison-Building a Global Movement.”

Stephan’s concert will include a preview reading by special guests of OR Book’s upcoming acclaimed book “Tweets From Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as It Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It.” Already Featured in The New Yorker and New York Times, the book is set to be released April 21, in a feat of near real-time publishing.

In January, Said released a new version of the Egyptian civil rights anthem “Aheb Aisht Al Huriya,” (“I Love The Life of Freedom”), spearheading music’s role in building the freedom movement in the Middle East and North Africa. His statement for TED Winning NGO MidEast Youth, and feature in Madison-based The Progressive Magazine “Taking the Arab Freedom Movement Global Through Song” helped bring the movement to a global audience while promoting other artists.

2011 promises to be a banner year for Said, whose sound fuses pop, rock, hip-hop, and world folk music with a universal message of unity. Called the “troubadour of the Altermondialiste (‘next world’) movement,” (L’Humanite) and called “this generation's Woody Guthrie” by Billboard, Said’s songs have inspired the movement from its infancy in Seattle, 1999, to Tahrir Square, today.

For the 3^rd show in the residency, May 12^th, Stephan will be joined by DJ Spooky, who collaborated with Pete Seeger, Dean Ween, and others on Stephan’s antiwar hit “The Bell.” Additional guests and theme TBA.

The Orchard Group is also releasing Said’s entire back catalog this spring, including The Bell, New World Order, and his last album for Artemis Records,Slash and Burn. The collection is a musical history of the rise of the global generation. His 2002 song "The Bell," which was “the first major song against the War in Iraq” (The New York Times) became the first viral protest mp3 and music video in history (Billboard).

“My entire career and life have been lived at the precipice of my generation’s biggest conflict. I’ve always known peace could only come for me personally, and for my family, when we as a human race live more equally together. So, at this point in my career I didn’t want to just release another song for another cause. I wanted to address systemic change. That’s how difrent was born: an album and website taking a stand for an international movement for equality.” Said is working on a manifesto to accompany the release.

Said is also busy working with a staff of volunteers, music industry, and international development professionals to take difrent, the one-stop for music and culture for social change, to scale. To get there, events like April 14 embody his philosophy of bringing together numerous groups and voices so that a broad based movement can coalesce. Said’s vision is to create a place where the currently artists and organizations working for a better world can come together in an integrated movement.

Plans are afoot for a large-scale difrent: concert surrounding this year’s United Nations International Day of Peace, in September. At the same time, Said plans to launch Said’s previously unreleased 2001 sophomore album, Proclaiming Jubilee, with multi-platinum producer John Alagia (John Mayer, Jason Mraz) that he says was “a musical attempt to stop 9-11 before it happened.”

Said headlined the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Awards gala this past fall, where he announced the launch of difrent. In December, he received the 2010 Meyer Risk Taker’s Award from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the organization that spearheaded Jewish support for Nelson Mandela in the early 1990’s.

Official Site

Reverend Billy

A student of the writers Charles Gaines and Kurt Vonnegut, Talen has staged experimental plays, published essays and poems in Philadelphia, New York and California. At Life On the Water, a theater in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Theater, Talen presented artists such as Spalding Gray, Mabou Mines, David Cale, B. D. Wong, Holly Hughes, William Yellow Robe, the Red Eye Collective, Reno, John Trudeau, and Danny Glover reciting the works of Langston Hughes. This experience in producing led him to the confessional monologue. After studying with the cleric Reverend Sidney Lanier, Talen invented “a new kind of American preacher.” Lanier, the cousin of Tennessee Williams and subject of the work Night of the Iguana, was familiar with the re-staging of biblical narratives.

Talen moved to New York City in 1994, where the experimental preacher began his career with the other sidewalk preachers on Times Square. Specializing in exorcisms of sweatshop companies, and opposing the Disneyfication of the neighborhood, he set up his portable pulpit at the door of the Mouse. Soon, “moral soap operas,” also called “Retail Interventions” were staged inside the chain stores, principally Disney, the GAP, Nike, and Starbucks. The preacher was soon accompanied by singers, and began staging whole “Worships” in the tradition of ritual-based interactive plays of the day such as Tony and Tina's Wedding, Late-Nite Catechism, Blue Man Group and de la Guarda. The Reverend's developing theology became the “Church of Stop Shopping,” founded on a resistance to consumerism and a defense of independent shops, community gardens and local economies.

Under the direction of Savitri D, the Reverend and Choir have toured in Europe, Africa, South America and throughout North America. William Talen has won the OBIE Award, The Dramalogue Award, The Historic Districts Council's Preservation Award (for leading demonstrations to save Manhattan's Poe House) and has been jailed more than 50 times.

Official Website