VIA PRESS RELEASE | ArtHyve is pleased to announce the launch of a new series of panel discussions called Record to Record: An overt homage to vinyl audio recordings, especially of musical content, as this is a media format with myriad concomitant subcultures whose significance has long been too readily dismissed due to the misperception of it being of a merely fleeting, often fad-like nature.
When words/ideas are transmitted through that primordial auditory channel using nonverbal kinds of instrumentalized stuff, it makes language become fully alive — as its unequivocal, intense, and raw emotional qualities are expressed with pitch, tone, stress, intonation, volume, etc. using various inventive vehicles involving organic, analog, digital, etc. media.
This offers a definite sense of a magical and/or religious experience that more readily accesses the mind, body, and spirit; and it is a fervor that has been both addictive and contagious. So much so that the vinyl recording could be considered to have transformed (often reinvented) the very concept of musical expression on every level: creation, selection, organization, presentation, consumption, and preservation.
Other formats, such as cassettes, compact discs, digital download formats (like mp3), and streaming services will easily come and go… yet the vinyl record stubbornly persists. This alone makes it seem vital in many ways. As such, this effort could be considered even more timely and crucial — especially considering how the more traditional, retail-based endeavors like mom-and-pop record stores continue to be fraught with extinction.
As an archive, we often think of the idea of the “record” or what will be “recorded” as an imprint in history, but this program is also about our records that exist as careful and intentional works of sonic art more readily dismissed by conventional institutions of art history and preservation. We often ask the artists we work with in our programs and archive to muse on what albums they were listening to when they created a piece or body of work. We want to recognize inspiration on every sensory level.
This effort is intended to combine the intellectual, usually more esoteric, atmosphere of a book club discussion into the typically less didactic world of music subcultures including, but not limited to, punk/indie rock, hip hop, jazz, and so on…
Accordingly, we overtly strive to invite the voices of local BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists and musicians in our beautifully intersectional community (who are often more readily marginalized and disenfranchised by more traditional outlets), as we dive deep into an album that has resonated with them and that has inspired us to create. As such, participants are explicitly invited to explore the selected album’s cultural, political, artistic, and/or historical impact.
This first installment of Record to Record will take place at 7:00 PM (Mountain Time) on Thursday, October 29, 2020. It will be hosted by Colorado Public Radio’s Indie 102.3 host Bruce Trujillo.
Alicia “Bruce” Trujillo (above) is a Chicana feminista from occupied Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe land, in what is now called Colorado – raised on the Western Slope, and currently in Denver. Bruce has been working in community and public media since 2012, with a mission to highlight underrepresented creatives with a focus on independent and locally made music and art. She currently hosts nights on Colorado Public Radio’s new music service, Indie 102.3, and is the creator of Especial, a weekly, hour long dive into new and independent Latin-made music from around the Western Hemisphere and en Colorado.
Other guests for this panel will include:
Maria Elena Buszek is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Colorado Denver where she teaches courses on Modern and contemporary art and design. Her many noteworthy scholarly publications include the books Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture and Extra/ordinary: Craft and contemporary art. A lifelong record collector and music fan, her current book project Art of Noise explores the ties between contemporary feminist art and popular music since the 1970s.
Lisa Gedgaudas has been recognized for her outstanding leadership and progressive advancement of arts and culture with the City of Denver for over ten years, serving as the Manager for Create Denver, a City initiated program within Denver Arts & Venues. Lisa has the privilege of supporting the city’s culturally diverse creative sector through socially engaged programming, forging collective leadership and funding opportunities, art and cultural special district development, grant development, research, policy, and advocacy with an equitable lens and intent to disrupt the status quo.
Plus members of the amazing local Denver band, Ramakhandra (pictured above): four gifted dreamers known as Annastehzaa, Clato, Ness, and Nobahdee who met in a series of coincidences that could be called fate in 2018. Sharing songwriting duties on all songs, their individual personalities combine into a singular mighty music Megazord that draws its influences from anime, nature, video games, food, and the modern world around them.
They wield this sonic lens to recontextualize the major issues bearing down upon humanity such as climate change, inequality, and social & environmental injustice. Mixing together vocals, harp, synth, drums, & bass into a sonic potion all their own, it’s hard to classify them into any particular genre. Upon listening, it’s difficult not to close your eyes, and allow your imagination to run rampant.
Tickets can be purchased here.
