Come On In

10 tracks, 1989-2021.

Listening to Roger Lewis and Herlin Riley at the NOLA Sidebar July 14, 2020. It was my 70th-birthday party. Maryse brought balloons. Image from Carlos Germaine.

13 tracks from six albums, recorded in San Francisco and New Orleans between 1989 and 2018.

Including members of the Suspect Many and Rivers of Dreams bands; the GALLOP Trio of Don Paul, Alex de Grassi and Hamid Drake; duets with Hamid Drake; and a trio with Kidd Jordan and Morikeba Kouyaté. Available on Bandcamp.

Louisiana 1977, off-shore oil-rigs in the making along Highway 90. 'Like dark steel spars of fantastic armada.' From the 1982 book AmeriModern. 

Hamid, Alex and me (The GALLOP Trio) after a benefit show at the SPACE Theater in Ukiah, California, April 14, 2014. You can watch four of our performances that night in the 'Wings beyond Wings' video compilation.

COMMON GROUND, REBUILD GREEN, and the WESLEY UNITED DIGITAL ARTS & TRAINING CENTER were efforts that touched thousands in and outside New Orleans after 2005's "Federal flood."

Here I'm with Stanley Covington and O.C. Draughan at our house of Structural Concrete Integrated Panels (SCIPs) in the Upper 9th Ward. It's June 2007. "Sky of huge /  Billows and blue / ... " from the song "Louisiana Days, Louisiana Nights."  The photo is by volunteer Jaime Hazard.

The wider shot is of Home Builders Association apprentices and Mark Wilson of the Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons International. It's December 2009, our first month of notable progress in restoring the building that had been home to New Orleans' second-oldest African-American Church at 2517 Jackson Avenue in Central City. The photo is by the artist and teacher Jim Belfon, who gave the project many fine images.

STICKING UP FOR CHILDREN has gone forward from 2013 into now. Please check out our website. 

SUFC began an with an idea from Cyril and Gaynielle Neville to Maryse Philippe Déjean and me in February 2013. We've since worked with eight Schools in Haiti and New Orleans and most particularly with the Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants (FEPE) orphanage in Port-au-Prince. FEPE was founded by Madame MarieJo Poux in late 2009. 

Our current focus is called 'Lekol Toupatou!' in Haitian Kréyol--'School Everywhere!' in English. It's a project initiated by Madame Marie-Marthe Balin Franck-Paul, Principal at College Canapé-Vert since 1974 and a former Mayor of Port-au-Prince and Secretary of Education for Haiti.

Madame Franck Paul is author of a textbook for first-year students in Haiti, Mon Livre Unique.

She and her team of students, teachers and tecnnicians have COMPLETED the recording of ALL the textbook's 25 Modules and 243 pages. 592 hours of recording!

The hours will be transmitted across Haiti via mobile-phones, tablets and platforms  that will enable students to learn in four languages--Haitian Kréyol, French, English and Spanish. As Madame Franck Paul says: "Greetings! People everywhere, know the joy that School will come to you!"

Below is a piece from the September 2020 homepage of SUFC. David Amram joined Maryse and me via Zoom to record several contributions to the curriculim of 'School Everywhere!'.

David is now a glorious 90! Madame Franck-Paul comparably splendid as she starts, as she says, "the Route of 85." They're inspiraions for us all!

Always good fun with David Amram--here via Zoom in September 2020.

Below are stills from video shot by the  young artist Aristide Phillips. Aristide is born and raised in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and now lives in Atlanta with his wife Jessica. Aristide helped immeasurably on projects between 2013 and 2016. One was video for the "Soltiude / Raga Puriya Kalyan" track from Urna's album Journey To The Beloved, featuring Ustad Salamat Ali Khan. 

The stills below are from Kidd Jordan's and Morikeba Kouyaté's and my session for the album Women Center Earth, Sea And Sky at Rick G. Nelson's Marigny Recording Studio, July 24, 2014. We were into momens of creations.

Finally, a 2020 banner for the Rebel Poets' album Worlds Made Flesh that I produced in 1989.

And a photo of Herlin Riley and Roger Lewis of Rivers of Dreams after our performance last July 14. It was a very good time.

The painting is by Isabelle Jacopin of France and New Orleans.