Line Breaks Hip-Hop Theater Festival

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Issac Westburg

The band Tilla.

Tilla

Each spring, the UW Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives hosts Line Breaks, showcasing work by students in the First Wave program along with special guests. The festival begins this year with a performance of Can a Song Be a Revolution (7:30 p.m., April 11, Play Circle), which reimagines the songs of Indian poet Gaddar in a jazz and hip-hop context, performed by Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program artist Sri Vamsi Matta, First Wave students and local musicians. First Wave showcases take place at 7 p.m. April 12-13 at Overture Center; Friday’s concert is preceded by a reception at 5:30 p.m., and Saturday’s concert ends with a performance by the band Tilla, featuring Hip-Hop Arts Residency Program guest artist Taylor Scott. Performances are free, but register at eventbrite.com.

media release: OMAI’s Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival consists of performances, lectures and discussions by First Wave artist-scholars and invited professional artists engaging with the Madison community, on and off campus. Inaugurated through OMAI’s sponsored Interdisciplinary Arts Residency with Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the spring of 2007, the Line Breaks project culminated in a final performance of student work called “Just Bust!.” Now running for 15 years, “Just Bust!” has evolved into an open mic.

April 11, Memorial Union-Play Circle

7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Can A Song Be A Revolution? by Sri Vamsi Matta 

Can a song be a revolution? Gaddar is a poet, singer, performer, intellectual, a creative mind associated with people’s resistance movements in India and most importantly he is a revolutionary! But to many peoples’ movement he is a revolution, a cultural revolution. In the exercise of telling the story of this revolution, we came to ask a question, can a song be a revolution? This is a love letter or actually a letter of love to that song… to that revolution! An experimental storytelling piece that brings Gaddar’s songs and reimagines them in jazz and hip-hop genres for the American audience. This piece will talk about caste, art, and cultural revolution. It is conceived by Sri Vamsi Matta and performed by Sri Vamsi Matta, First Wave Students, and Musicians from Madison.

April 12, Overture Center:

5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Line Breaks Opening Reception

7:00 PM – 7:25 PM First Wave 16th Cohort Showcase by The 16th Cohort of First Wave

The First Wave 16th Cohorts show is a culmination of their work created through the First Wave First Year Interest Group curriculum, spearheaded in their FW101 course with Faculty Creative Director, Mark H. The work is in response to the course’s four main themes which are Power, Beauty, Migration, Otherness. The work is an intervention and revisionist work that is in conversation with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The 16th Cohort uses their talents to imagine an answer to the question of “How do you restore power to the powerless?”, while reimagining ways of dealing with external and internal conflict to create a sustainable future for their community.

7:25 PM – 7:40 PM The Mountains that No One Will Name by Maria Freese

The Mountains that No One Will Name is an investigation into the nature of womanhood and the role aging plays into the woman’s understanding of their personal and societal value. The work is meant to engage the audience in conversations surrounding womanhood by using a framework of an intergenerational dialogue. By weaving together poetry, movement, and a series of interviews with women across different backgrounds and stages of life, Maria seeks to encourage these conversations to become more commonplace and less isolated. Creating a reflection that works to name and share the collective knowledge of women across all stages of life not only generationally, but in the present; to bring these conversations to the forefront and not have them be relegated to the mysticism of ancestry or the wonder of youth, but a part of the fabric of the world of the living.

7:40 PM – 7:55 PM All of My Very Own by GG Christensen

All of My Very Own is a film as well as a memorial. Overdoses (particularly from fentanyl) are the no. 1 cause of accidental death for young adults in the US. All of My Very Own aims to not only bring awareness to the opioid epidemic but raise money for the National Harm Reduction Coalition. Supplementary material on Naloxone/Narcan to be distributed at Linebreaks. Rest in peace Bere (16), Goose (19), and Victor (20).

7:55 PM – 8:05 PM Bars is Back by Jason Hill

Bars is Back details the journey of Jason from Philadelphia, to the University of Wisconsin Madison. It addresses issues of loss, grief and struggles of acceptance, and presents us with how to deal with these issues using gratitude, and patience. By using spoken-word poetry, and rap, Jason works to promote messages of peace, positivity, and prosperity. “Bars is Back” will use Jason’s journey to illustrate the way these themes and issues have shaped him and offer the audience a perspective into the way they can find them and utilize them within their own lives.

8:05 PM – 8:25 PM Planet 88: A Faded Halo, Shadow Boxing, and A Black Girl Somewhere Else. by Kyla Pollard

Planet 88: A Faded Halo, Shadow Boxing, and A Black Girl Somewhere Else. is an exploration of the self, and hyper awareness of mortality. It is a world built across mediums, time, memory and presence. It is both a resurrection and a burial, an ode to Niggas everywhere, in every world. It is at its core an Afrofuturist work, it is a revision, and reimagining of the past and a place “somewhere else” to envision potential futures. Through this multidimensional, interdisciplinary work Kyla not only examines, but creates the reality that she and the work exist in, by pairing presence with absence she contends with the benefit and setbacks of mortal awareness

8:25-8:55PM Talk Back with Artists moderated by Eric Newble Jr. 

April 13, Overture Center:

7:00 PM – 7:25 PM First Wave 16th Cohort Showcase by The 16th Cohort of First Wave

The First Wave 16th Cohorts show is a culmination of their work created through the First Wave First Year Interest Group curriculum, spearheaded in their FW101 course with Faculty Creative Director, Mark H. The work is in response to the course’s four main themes which are Power, Beauty, Migration, Otherness. The work is an intervention and revisionist work that is in conversation with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The 16th Cohort uses their talents to imagine an answer to the question of “How do you restore power to the powerless?”, while reimagining ways of dealing with external and internal conflict to create a sustainable future for their community.

7:25 PM – 7:40 PM Talk Back with Artists Moderated by TBA

7:55 PM – 8:40 PM Heaven’s Inside by Tilla

Heaven Inside is an original musical production written and performed by the Madison-based band Tilla. With poetic scenes, bluesy vocals, and a robust musical score, this 50-minute show is carefully curated to speak to the current moment. Tilla’s poignant lyricism encompasses themes of black identity and diaspora, existentialism, interpersonal relationships, and spirituality. Each song creates a distinct world that the audience shares in, and encourages listeners to reflect upon the ubiquity of the human experience. Heaven Inside features performances from the legendary Kongolese percussionist Papa Titos Sompa and Mount Zion’s esteemed choir director Leotha Stanley. Together their musical contributions help make this project as delightfully ethereal as it is grounding.