Songs for the Ancestors: Poetry & Music in Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide

Charming Hostess
Jewlia Eisenberg’s Charming Hostess has been a groundbreaking mainstay of the avant-ethnic music scene for over two decades. The group is known to feature “voices and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. Their work grows from diaspora consciousness: both Jewish, Mid-Eastern, and African. Stylistically, Charming Hostess incorporates doo-wop, Pygmy counterpoint, Balkan harmony along with Andalusian and Sephardic melodies. Contemporary influences on the band include Meredith Monk and Reinette l’Oranaise. The music often explores existing text and overlays the composer’s (Jewlia Eisenberg) own questions of authenticity, montage, and the effect of music on non-verbal languages.”
charminghostess.com
Kugelplex featuring James Baloian
The members of the Bay Area’s own Kugelplex (Dan Cantrell, Jason Ditzian, Max Baloian, Lila Sklar, and Eric Pearny) specialize in their own original brand of Klezmer, East European,Mid East, and Modern Chamber music. In honor of the April 24th Armenian Martyrs Day, they have teamed up with the spoken word of James Baloian for a brand new collaboration. James Baloian is a poet who for over fifty years has been writing and publishing poetry that explores the beauty, cruelty, dreams, fears, turbulence, and serenity of human existence and the natural world around us. A selection of his works has been set to original and traditional music that pays homage to the far-reaching tragedy and trauma of the Genocide as well as the love and perseverance of the Armenian people.
kugelplex.com
James Baloian