We did it! Here’s a little selection of shots (by the talented Nyle Leddy) of our ‘Sanctuary’ arts event Friday night in Takoma Park.
Sanctuary was conceived by my friend David Fernandez, currently the town’s official poet laureate, as an outgrowth of our Vocal Takoma efforts. VT, as you may recall from previous posts, was that popup thing we did last fall to bring poems and songs out into the public realm, to show artists activating, visibly doing something. Normally it would be just a few of us at the downtown Takoma clock tower on a Sunday morning near the farmers market. We’ll be started up again shortly. Sanctuary expanded to a mighty lineup and brought it to the community center auditorium stage, as a benefit for CASA, a immigration advocacy and assistance organization based in Maryland.
I helped organize but the heavy lift was thanks to David leveraging his laureate status to get the city to help us. With a few exceptions, generally he found local poets and I found musicians, mostly from Takoma Park. We wanted to nurture and add to the town’s long reputation as a creative, socially conscious hotbed, and make it a strong platform to showcase local creative expression. The city not only let us use the stage, they promoted the event, ran sound/lights, and recorded the show. Brendan Smith, the head of the arts commission, was a great ally as always.
In dangerous times, the idea was to create a sense of sanctuary through art, a kind of sacred space of community, safety, and solidarity.
It was kind of a speed-round format, each performer was given basically one song/poem - ok, a few pushed it a bit - and we had the performers on stage the whole time while waiting their turn. It created a nice feeling of the performers being together with each other, and with the audience. Los Locos provided between-act ‘bridge’ music.
David and I performed a little chunk of our recent experimental hybrid, merging one of my songs and his poetry. (We did an extended 20-minute version recently at Musica Viva, my neighbor’s long-running classical music house concert series in Takoma Park.)
I had been hearing it was going to be a full house and it was indeed! I think the capacity is 150 and some people were standing.
A shout out to all the amazing poets and musicians who donated their time. No one was getting paid.
Nyle, the event photographer, took my recent six-week photo workshop. He’s a thoughtful guy and tremendous emerging photo talent. Definitely consider him if you’re looking for event coverage, as you can see he did a great job at capturing the vibe. Looks like The Last Waltz or something! We agreed he would shoot in black and white. Thanks Nyle, great job.
They are coming for culture, fam. But we are at the barricades defending it, helping art do its work of bringing us together. Starting where we are. And this was the first one but won’t be the last!