OneBeat 2016: Zvinorema

“… that is why people enjoy performances, because your mind is put at ease. You’re taken on a journey of your own emotions — not the emotions of the singer or instrumentalist, because the singer or instrumentalist is just connecting with what you’ve got in you — so when that happens, you find peace for a while.”  — Kirby Chipembere, OneBeat 2016 “Zvinorema” is a Shona word which connotes hardness, heaviness and burden. Perhaps fittingly, its exact meaning is “difficult” to translate admits Zimbabwean singer and OneBeat 2016 fellow Kirby Chipembere. Searching for a desolate location to record the song while on tour with OneBeat, Kirby settled on the frame of an abandoned structure in Southwest Chicago. A formidable dancer and choreographer in Harare, Kirby performs “Zvinorema” here nearly motionless in this industrial space, singing of a protagonist faced with hardships that “the world doesn’t understand and will never appreciate”. “Zvinomera” was created as a […]

OneBeat 2016: City You Dreamed

This video features an original song by L.A.-based singer songwriter Rosie Tucker, written during our residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. The video, filmed by Jacob Blumberg (masonjarmusic.com), illustrates the tension between connection and solitude through improvisational mirroring, and features New Dehli-based singer Tritha Sinha. About the song, Rosie shares: “I wrote the song entirely in the tiny library loft at ACA, a very nice nook with big windows (and not much to see but foliage). It rained nearly the whole time I was working, and I think that the combination of the greenery, of working so high up in a room full of art books, of the rain that sent everyone indoors and away from each other– I think these conditions gave rise to a weird little song about solitude. I was working alone but in some ways it was still a […]