Focus 580; From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey

Good morning this is focused 580 our morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack bright and very glad you're listening. Our producers are Harriet Williamson and Martha deal. And our director at the controls is Henry Frayne. During this hour of the show we will talk about a very interesting theatrical production multimedia production I should say from Tel Aviv to Ramallah. That will be performed tonight 7:00 o'clock at allon Hall which is 10 0 0 5 West Gregory drive in our banner on the University of Illinois campus. And we have three artists with us to Yuri Lane is described as a human beat box an actor. And it's the first time we've had a unity box on the show so I think that's that's pretty that's pretty special. Also serif as it is a computer visual artist and he contributes multimedia visuals to the production and Rachel have relocked is the writer and director of the presentation. They're with us this morning to talk about from Tel Aviv to Ramallah which is well let them describe it sounds like a very interesting. Concept and I think it's better to have them describe it than to have

me. But let me just tell you a little bit more about our guest Yuri Lane the human Be box an actor grew up in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood and began his acting career at age 12 he's an Equity actor and has a lot of experience in the theater and Sharif as it is a Egyptian-American multimedia artist based in San Francisco and Rachel have writer and director is a professor of Jewish and Diaspora Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. You know there's much more we could say about our guest and we'll talk with them more about their background and their work during this hour. If you'd like to join the conversation you can easily do so all you have to do is call us around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. Anywhere you hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and to all of you good morning good morning. Hello. Thanks for being here. So tell us about the production from Tel Aviv to Ramallah.

I read some very interesting reviews been written up on the New York Times The Washington Post you performing around United States and here you are in Champaign Urbana. Who wants to start from Tel Aviv from Allah is a one man beatbox show. I combine mime acting box and dance to take you on a sonic journey into the Middle East. The show is about everyday life. It's a day in the life of Khalid a Palestinian Internet cafe owner and Meir an aspiring deejay. And he delivers packages during the day. I go back and forth between both their lives and play 15 different characters. Both are family members and friends and I am body. The experience of both these men through the art of sports. Get a beat box. Each character has their own soundtrack their own individual rhythm melody or song and using movement and mime and dance. I take you on this journey in the in the life of these two

gentlemen that are very similar to each other. But there is a checkpoint and there is a invisible line that separates them and they live their lives and at a certain point they come together at the checkpoint at the end of the show and the show is high energy. It's funny. It has lots of amazing visuals. By my partner Sharif as he provides the visuals I provide the sound and the acting and my wife Rachel have a lock. She is the writer and director so we are a team. Very interesting. I read that this this particular production has had its origins in a trip that the two of you made to the Middle East Israel and the occupied territories back in 1999. You talk about that. Yes I when I was doing my graduate degree I began at Tel Aviv University and my second year of graduate school I spend years at

university near the Ramallah area studying at a Palestinian university. And I got to live in the dorm sit in the cafes go out in the city be with young people college age or in graduate school aspiring to careers and at the same time I got to see the way in which the conflict impacts that both in the fact that. Israeli students at any moment would be called up to do their military service that was a constant eruption and the traumas and difficulties involved with that. Also in the sort of fear of what can erupt on their city streets and in the case of the Palestinian students facing a very difficult future despite their ambitions would they be able to finish the degree. Would there be a closure of the University of their city. What careers could they aspire to what would they be allowed to do. Even more local questions would they be able to travel to a family wedding say in Gaza if they were living in Ramallah.

So and at the same time I got to have a lot of fun in the two cities and hear the music and the nightlife and the passion of the people and really witness firsthand the way that contemporary art forms like hip hop offer an outlet for young people under tremendous pressure and tension that these new mediums of computer are internet cafes. Hip hop electronic music became this way to vent those emotions. Yuri traveled with me both when I was a a student there and then again we took a trip right before the second intifada began in in 2000 and we traveled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Ramallah to peers that visiting friends and hosts on both sides of the Green Line. I had been asked a few different times to do something with my experiences of having been a student in the in the two places and I never wanted to

create an art form that was focused on me as a Western woman that wasn't the point of it. And that wasn't what I absorbed in what I was exposed to in my time. So traveling with Yuri at the end of each day he would play the day back to me and I would watch Yuri transform his body into the marketplace in Ramallah into the taxi stand in Jerusalem into the performance spaces of Tel of Eve and I saw that how he really. Absorb all of these different people and brought with it the sensitivity to sound and movement and to experience and and he's really funny and I'd be laughing hysterically about the occupation and the intifada which you know in and of itself is not a funny topic but humor is a great way to get at this. And also he was just picking up on the rhythms of the language. And I said OK this is the medium to tell the stories of these

people with whom I became really close as a as a student. And so that that really was the seed or the first moment we we got the idea to use performance as a way to tell this story the stories of young people living through this war and this occupation and you know this this time of political uprising. So you have the green line and you have these parallel lives Israelis and Palestinians you see many similarities in youth culture and what they're you know what they're aspiring to do and what their hope for their lives. Tremendous similarities. I mean to be at a club or cafe in Tel Aviv and hear the music and hear the political debates of young people even the cadences of the language and the kind of argumentative tone that that isn't necessarily argument but just a very vigorous debate. So the sounds. And the lifestyles on either side of the Green Line had tremendous parallels and we always say if it's from Tel Aviv to Ramallah had a sequel. Our

two main characters Khalid in Amir would likely meet in New York and start a business together or a cafe or a disco or maybe they would even produce a hip hop play. But that line is so indelible and so difficult to cross that young people Israeli and Palestinians are not seeing each other. Both sides there are very vigorous hip hop movements and similar divisions and that some Palestinian rappers are use rap and hip hop for an nationalistic direction. We definitely have the nationalistic rappers and hip hoppers on the Israeli side but hip hop is also becoming a protest medium for both sides. So a lot of the disaffected youth of Israel are really speaking out against the government against the occupation through hip hop bringing people together. Also the kind of frustration about the occupation as well as the. Corruption and slowness in the Palestinian Authority that's also coming out and Palestinian music and

and hip hop so I think and the similarities of of really the precarious nature of dreams on both sides that people do not know what's coming more in the case of the Palestinians their future is more unclear. But in both cases young people don't know what to expect next year or next month in 10 years. So it's very difficult and we take it for granted here I think that we can have ambitions and achieve them as long as we follow certain routes and that's not the case there. So there's a need a real need for art as this instant medium of expression. During the Oslo years many Western artists went to the Palestinian West Bank or to Israel to perform when the end of Fatah erupted. That stopped effectively. So what I've seen since since I've been back during the Intifada is is that a whole local native on both sides are coming up to offer

people consolation in in the midst of the uncertainty and the chaos. But it's very interesting. You know I was I was thinking as you were talking about this that we don't see reflected in the media ordinarily the ordinary lives and aspirations of the people affected in these these areas of conflict. I mean we we get the extremes we get the most dramatic images because it seems to be what the media specializes in. But we don't see the people. I'd certainly say that we are seeing ideological reflections in the reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict something we're quite aware of in our play Sharif's visuals have this kind of gritty texture of almost a newspaper article. And our idea is that this play it takes the audience through the headlines and through the newspaper articles into the actual place and daily lives of young people and their friends and family. And I think there's tremendous

hunger in the United States and throughout the West to understand what these people are like. We've actually done the show in urban areas I'm thinking particularly particularly of a show we did in Cleveland and for teenagers that didn't know so much about the topic and we said young people are dying every day over these invisible lines. And it was a mix but. But largely African-American teen audience and they got it right away. The daily life made them see the similarities between their lives and the lives of Palestinians and Israelis and there was this identification I think a lot of the reporting that we see pushes people away and they think there's a bunch of hot blooded fanatics over there killing each other over. Religion and land but we we're we're not seeing what it's like to live there and what the people are like so we're very committed and our performance to depicting daily life to finding those those

subtle issues that people face to show the similarities and and also in using hip hop and multimedia in the show it's also a way for young people such as those on a college campus to say oh my gosh it seems so remote to me the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but look there are these kids in Ramallah and they're using hip hop as a way to express themselves and they're in Tel Aviv there are these big dance clubs and it also enables a kind of identification with the conflict and I think creates more sensitive readers of the news in the end. Interesting. Let me turn to Sharif and ask you to talk about the visual element of the production. How do you go about doing what you do. How do you add visually to what's going on theatrically in an otherwise sound wise. Sure well I started working with Yuri about four years ago on another show called soundtrack City San Francisco which was sort of a tour through the different neighborhoods of San

Francisco through the converging past of several different characters over the course of a day. And I realized right away that I wanted to do something visually that would not take away from your His physical performance that was really important to me to have something that. Could sit somewhat in the background but tell a parallel narrative a story that would complement the rhythms and the actions that your is producing on stage. So immediately I pulled out full motion video I ruled out colored all the images are still images in black and white. But I built a visual display engine using Macromedia Flash that allows me to change the variables of the display through keyboard commands throughout the show. So I'm actually performing live along with Yuri and mimicking the rhythms that Yuri produces with his mouth through the rhythms of the visuals the visuals the still images are caused to sort of grow and reverberate in response to the rhythms that Europe produces. So it's a very kinetic show but it. You know it's all based on a rhythmic exploration of the of this experience of these

places and in the staging of the show to actually we took this into consideration so that the stage is actually divided between the two sides when half the show takes place on one side of the stage in Tel Aviv and the other half in Ramallah on the other side of the stage. And there's actually there's no physical barrier on the stage there's an implied barrier which actually begins to show you he says this is a security wall. And you know we show images on both sides and and you throughout the show here he is crossing back and forth over that that barrier and there's a transition a visual and audio transition that accompanies that. But it's not really there you know it's a construction that you know that the audience participates in through you know through the narrative of the show and I think that's a really powerful concept that this this border is is very much a construction of our collective imaginations as well as being you know very obviously of very prominent and physical barrier in Israel in Palestine. But I think that encourages us to think of this barrier and other barriers and other borders as

as human constructs you know they're not they're they're they're much more fluid than we often imagine them to be. And. Hopefully we can use that idea to re-imagine the landscape and to reimagine those borders and those identities are interesting. We have a caller talk with listen to them. Let me just reintroduce our guests real real quick we were just we're just hearing Sharif Izzat He's a computer visual artist in this production from Tel Aviv to Ramallah. Also Rachel have relocked is the writer and director whose voice you heard a couple of minutes ago and also we have your Elaine the human beat box an actor who is key to the actual performance as well. And we're talking about the production of Tel Aviv to Ramallah which will be performed tonight at 7 o'clock at Alamo Hall which is a 10 0 5 West Gregory drive in Urbana on the campus of the University of Illinois and that's free and open to the public and sponsored by the only program for research in humanities and also co-sponsored by the programme in South Asian and Middle Eastern

Studies and the program for the Study of Jewish culture and society. So props to them. We do have a caller waiting and time for others if you'd like to join us around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. So in Champaign County line number one. Good morning. Hi there. I guess one of the most recently you're discussing the splash file that you have. Assume I probably could have just googled the title and gotten some of your visual art do you have any of the std displayed on the web. Yeah actually he has an excellent website which which I built. You're Elaine dotcom. Just like it sounds. And there's a video actually we just put up a promo video of that you can view on the site. There's also a lot of audio and video clips from his other work that you can view on the site as well. Excellent. Some people can get a little preview. I wanted to ask about sort of the trade. Out in San Francisco I think the Mime Troupe

has actually a show tonight we have a rich tradition of this kind of theater but there's also like a living newspaper and your discussion earlier provoked me to ask about how you see your antecedents other than hip hop. But the other thing is more substantive is. I mean it's a challenge to put into artwork something else you know tragic as an old man dying at a checkpoint waiting for health care or a person losing a baby a woman dying and childbirth because of the rules of you have to wait in line and three seven hours in etc. etc. which I'm just wondering how you you know approach. Saying that kind of tragedy in the midst of you know hip hop thing which is you know typically a kind of celebratory or irreverent kind of tradition and opening up and

listen. OK. Thanks Michel. Well I'll answer the question about your you made reference to the Mime Troupe and of course I grew up in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco in the 70s. So I was exposed to people of all walks of life and I took in all the sounds of my neighborhood and began to beat box. At the age of probably seven or eight and of course sixth grade really bad at math and in class I just wasn't getting it. I wasn't getting the fractions. So I started. And the teacher was like turn that radio off now. And I knew I had something there. Of course I didn't get a good grade but my classmates they said hey he's got a funky bee. And it was a great way of avoiding getting beat up. And of course you can't see

me but I don't look like someone that would necessarily bust a beat box. And I've been beat boxing ever since. And my uncle was a mom and he worked with a very famous improvisation group called the Committee. He studied with Marcel Marceau and he would come to visit and he would do really crazy of on guard mime for us. And I was incredibly inspired by it. So he taught me some moves. I began acting at an early age. But I had this epiphany after college. I was rehearsing for another show and I started beatboxing. It started to move at the same time and I said this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to combine mime acting and dance and beat box to tell a story. To use sound as a narrative to take you on a journey through the streets of San Francisco through the streets

of Tel Aviv but with sound. Certain people they see the world and they paint it. I paint a picture with sound with the beat box. Everyone has a rhythm. Everyone has a heart beat certain people's beat is faster. And certain people just maybe have that one sound. Maybe they just have that heartbeat. So I have been using beat box as a narrative. I consider myself a beatbox actor. And I think there's a real new genre of theatre. People like to call it hip hop theater. I try to make hip hop theater by using the elements of hip hop like break dancing like beat boxing like and seeing but to use that to tell the story. Certain hip hop theater that you see is about an MC or about a group of break dancers. I'm using the elements of hip hop to tell a

story you know hip hop is all about taking recycled pieces of music and also taking other art forms and making it into something new and that's what really got me when I first started listening to hip hop because I would listen to hip hop and hear jazz influence and I would hear soul and R&B and gospel and funk and that's what brought me into this world of hip hop and confusing these two things together. And then the other question about the you know the sensitivity of the subject of the Middle East. I think it's very important for people to laugh and to enjoy the two cultures the Palestinian culture and Israeli culture because people are having fun and not everyone is incredibly serious it's a very passionate society. Everyone has a lot to say. It's fast pace. People are drinking lots of coffee. There is lots of dealing going on but people are

having fun and they're and they have dreams and aspirations like Khaled who is this Palestinian Internet cafe owner. He wants to create this big business. But it's difficult during the conflict and it's hard for him to put his his business out there. No Amir. He's a deejay he wants to be a superstar deejay he wants to go to New York he wants to go to Amsterdam and but he's got to go to he's got to go to work. He's got to deliver packages during the day. And both are alive are very similar and they are not really interested in the politics but the politics get in the way. And they meet at the end of the show I won't give that away but they are two brothers you know sort of a modern retelling of Isaac and Ishmael they are two brothers that are separated by this invisible line or but also by of course as this barrier this security fence. And I

think it's important for people who see the show that they are similar and they have a lot more things in common than you'd think. Now the show is told in beat box and we're thinking how is he going to get up on stage and just you know with a microphone just beatbox the entire show. No. Now every character has their own rhythm of their own melody. So I think I should sort of do a little a little more little intro to the show. Yeah Tel-Aviv to Ramallah Tel-Aviv to Ramallah Tel Aviv to Ramallah. This is your Tel Aviv. Ramallah. Twenty one in the morning. Funny funny funny. I am Khaled.

How do you mean. I and then me. Shuttle. To Tel Aviv to Ramallah Tel Aviv to Ramallah. This is her only need. Wow your Elaine plays a gentleman. You know the caller also mentioned

something about. You know the appropriateness of hip hop to address this fairly you know serious situation and one thing I think it's important to mention is that you know as your you indicated hip hop art forms are capable of expressing the full range of human emotions from you know celebratory sensation to you know frustration and anger. Obviously you know we hear some of that in American hip hop too but I hope and despair all of those emotions are able to be expressed very powerfully through through the art forms of hip hop which I think this show you know does a great job of demonstrating you know in this fairly new art form. Right. And to to take up his the caller's final question about how we can depict the checkpoints you know with with the full range of human experience and tragedy we're very committed in this play to depicting life. A lot of the art and film that comes out of Israel

and Palestine focuses somewhere in the plot there is inevitably a tragic death. And we wanted to invert that a bit and really look at how do people live through this and what is foreclosed and what's possible in life. So the audience does visit a checkpoint. At certain points in the show and does see the nature of that and what that means particularly for our main characters Khalid and Amir. But by the time we get to that checkpoint they are not in on a mess. The audience is invested in them so we get to that place and we depicted very much again and again focus on the aspect of the living through it. And in that I mean where we are not. Being deceptively hopeful. But in that you know we show that the longing of young people to get through this conflict and to live. So these are the

the the drive for living through the conflict through staying alive is very strong. Throughout the show we're little past our midpoint. We're talking about the production of from Tel Aviv to Ramallah and the performer Yuri Lane is with us the visual artist computer visuals. Sharif is OT and the writer director Rachael However lawk are with us during this hour focus 580 if you want to join our conversation in the time remaining the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Welcome back to the well I'm not sure I'm going to ever understand how you actually do that but I did want to follow up on what Rachel was just talking about. The idea of exploring culture you know and you've made the observation that there are very many similarities between the culture of the youth culture especially hip hop culture in Israel and in the occupied territories.

You know we had a very interesting conversation a few years ago with the American philosopher Richard Rorty and he's concerned with human rights and you know when you read his philosophical writings you know it's very dense. I have a real hard time understanding this stuff because it is so dense but he says something very very interesting which is that the most important people in the stablish ng humanity human rights and really peace and prospects for civilization are the artists and the novelists and the people who are really just showing people each other. You know so that we can imagine each other as human beings. I think that our is the space of intersection and collaboration. It's also the imaginative space open to us to envision and revision the spaces of our lives. So it's a wonderful way to refigure and reimagine one's world. We're not presenting a vision of

how the conflict could be solved. That would be somewhat presumptuous and some of the greatest minds in international relations are quite stumped by this one so we really are working much more in terms of representation of the cultures there that we've visited and had the opportunity to have firsthand knowledge of. But at the same time we are a Jewish-Arab performance team. And this piece in its developed form really reflects our dialogue and our working together. So in a way this piece which represents and is really dedicated to the young people who are dying and living in the Israeli conflict it's also has been our mode of collaboration of dialogue of coming together. And since we opened the show in the fall of 2002 we've taken it to theatres and campuses across the country. And this has been a wonderful opportunity for Jews and Arabs and

Muslims and Christians and people from all backgrounds to come together to recognize something about themselves in the show and also to open up that dialogue. We're very excited on this campus that the production is also co-sponsored by the Muslim Student Association and the Jewish student organization Hillel. And so we in a sense this is our vision of collaboration of communication of looking at issues from multiple perspectives of challenging people to step outside their own frame of reference to a wider one that includes more perspectives. So so in a way we're not so you know creating a sunny sky or utopian version of what's going on or really representing it in its in its gritty reality but at the same time this this medium has been a coming together for us and thereby a coming together of our backgrounds and traditions. And along the way I think that we've been bringing a lot of people together through the performances and the talkbacks around the

show. It's interesting to hear we were having a conversation with some students last night and one of the things that we realized in that discussion is that the three of us actually got together working on an earlier show like you mentioned centric city San Francisco and. I think it's interesting that that we started this collaboration with a show that was that was you know based on the city where we all lived at the time you know and then in organically progressed to this show from Tel Aviv to Ramallah which is about an issue that we all care deeply about but that the collaboration was already pretty well established from just having a shared project that we that we started with and just building on that momentum. We do have a new show in Chicago it's soundtrack City Chicago and it's playing at the viaduct theater. And Western and Belmont of course you can find out about the show through my website. Yuri Lane dot com. And it's it's a show that takes you through the neighborhoods of Chicago. It's

about gentrification it's about the neighborhoods changing rapidly. But how Chicago is rich with music and culture and the rhythms that are specific to Chicago. And we're we've we've opened the show and we've had some great reviews and we're excited to continue this collaboration. Of working together as as a crew I want to also talk of just a more about hip hop and and how hip hop started it started really in the 70s and in New York and the arts funding have been cut. So kids that were you know were going to you know practice their piano no more piano no more trumpets no more theater no more dance. So they started doing it on the streets started doing graffiti art and beatbox started on the corners. They didn't have an instrument so someone started. And they started to MC and beatboxing became the instrumental part of

it. And right now we were living in this time where our funding for the arts are being cut rapidly. And I think that response hopefully it will just be like it was in the 70s that people are going to get back in the streets and begin to use their lips and use their bodies to express themselves artistically. Now hip hop is a universal language now. We have MCS in Poland. We've got incredible break dancers out of Helsinki Finland. Sharif and I were actually just in Helsinki Finland at the herb Festival which was a dance festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art. We were the spoken spoken word part of the festival. The response from the Finnish audience was incredible. They have a really rich culture in terms of breakdancing graffiti art. I mean the rap that we heard in Finnish was was unbelievable. So of so the rest of the world has

been listening to hip hop. I think that we can learn a lot from hip hop from around the world because as Rachel was saying it is a reaction a lot to what's happening in their society a way to protest what's going on in their own neighborhoods and using this language of hip hop that everybody understands. And I think it's past couple years the the level of musicianship and the level of the art of hip hop has really taken off. And I think American hip hop community can learn a lot about reacting to an experience through hip hop and you know we have hip hop in everything on television we we have commercials now I hear a beat box which I like which is good. So it gets it out there but I want I want more social issues to be brought up. And of course we hear a lot of bling bling and a lot of you know money and the material things that we all want but. Hip hop to

me is best when it talks about identity and it talks about the experience and where I come from and who my family is. And this is the story I want to tell through three deejaying through beatboxing through the spoken word of slam poetry now which is as a real hip hop feeling and which is great because kids are getting up now and writing stuff down and getting in front of a microphone and speaking their mind through this language of hip hop. It's also become a big hot topic in academia. People are writing dissertations on hip hop and I think that's great. Yeah. And I think it's very important that we continue to focus on the identity of hip hop. It's important that we begin to go back to making people laugh through hip hop. You know it's humorous too and it's not well known. The same See I'm the best beat boxer in the world which is fine because you got to have bravado you gotta have you gotta have an

ego. But making people laugh is important too. And hip hop is funny. A lot of the hip hop you know culture comes from sampling you know and re mixing and essentially reusing snippets of found sounds or culture or cultural elements and so forth which is always been the case with music. I mean music builds on music. Yeah I mean you know but now everything is so fast and easy to sample and remix that of course with the technology makes it easy to do but I was going to ask you as you're not using any technology except your own body. Yes I'm using my nose yeah. Which is the melody and then I'm using my lips. Yes as the percussive part of it and then I'm using my diaphragm to generate the breath control to really use all the things that you know my diaphragm my throat my nose my teeth. And it's human. There's no computer chip inside my brain. I don't use any effects during my show. There are lots of sounds

that you think that's just not coming out of his mouth. It's impossible. And that's what's great about the box is because it's kind of like magic. You can't see where it's coming from and hearing the box is one thing but seeing it live is another. And you're moving while you're doing this. Yes right. So it's a real high energy show I had a gym instructor come up to me and say What an amazing workout and how do you do it. We need to have that sort of have a beat box movement workout. And I thought that was quite funny just sort of me get in front of you know 15 people and do a little beat box movement workout. Actually in one in one of my shows I have a gym instructor. Who takes you want a little bit of a journey through or through movement and sound so Beatbox is something that you can teach yourself how to do. You can also teach other people how to beat box. I've taught kids in kindergarten to adults. Toddlers love the beat box because they're just listening to sounds.

And third graders love the beat box and the older generations. They understand it. You know you'd think someone who who doesn't understand anything about hip hop. But when you go back to as far back as vaudeville people were using sound to tell stories and and I think that you know when we talk about hip hop and we talk about beat box it goes back to Cab Calloway goes back as far as the oral tradition to the back to Africa where the language of the drums the way to communicate. And of course each language is very different with English. And you know we hear in the streets of New York we hear lots of. Right but in other countries the be the. That sound that you hear is not in the language. So if you go to different countries there are different sounds and different the boxers because they just they form words in a different way. And I get emails from the boxers from all over the world and each beat box or has their own distinctive sound.

Everyone can make a sound that no one else can make certain people say oh I don't know anything about the box. But then I catch them making sounds. They don't have the right word. You know it was like sort of an extension of on I'm on a piano but taking it to another level. So I speak in a rhythmic language and sometimes Rachel wants me to speak the language of English and not so much the language of beatbox. My mom is a violinist and she would come home from a night of Beethoven and the last things she wanted to hear was. But she now recognizes it as as an art form and she gives me great pointers as a musician and I'm learning more and more about music. My sister place a stand up bass so we have a real rich history with music in our family. But I didn't have the music theory down. I had the rhythm down so I'm still a student of music and I'm continuing to learn more and more by listening to lots of different types of music not

just hip hop jazz folk electronic music I try to listen to everything to listen to what's going on around you. A lot of people don't listen when they walk around you know and a normal day. A lot of people put on their headphones and look straight ahead and read their newspaper. But if you just one day say OK I'm just going to listen to the sounds of my neighborhood walk down the street and take it in. And it's a very different perspective. And I think you can learn a lot about society through the through listening. So you do in this performance called Soundtracks to Chicago and Chicago that's the theory of the divided theater Western and Belmont where Chicago sounds like what is Chicago so yeah like just do it. Door is closing. Next stop. Damon Green from the south. But a body.

Well I. Joe Joe. My name is stiffening. Can I act. I like to dance. But Russia does not blush like it's not. Well sound is Chicago. Yeah OK well to see more you have to see the show right. That's right. OK. Well we just have about maybe six or seven minutes left during this hour focused 580. If you're listening would like to join us in the time remaining better get in quick. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. That's around Champaign-Urbana. Elsewhere 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and by the way the website you mention you're Elaine dot com that's why you are i l and e dot com. You know I got up here on the screen very interesting and Sharif was the designer of that.

It's a flashlight. Yeah it is for us. So you've also I failed to mention that you've been in residence at unit one on the campus of the University of Illinois for the past three days so giving workshops and that's the place where the performances tonight will mention that again ELEANOR HALL seven o'clock that's free and open to the public. So ELEANOR HALL The campus here is 10 0 5 was Gregory drive. So you know if you're interested which I imagine you you would be should be then you could attend that as well. So what where do you go from here back to Chicago. Right we are excited for the performance tonight. You will be heading back to Chicago where we're continuing to put on soundtrack City Chicago at the viaduct. And it's actually rare that I'm along for the tour. Usually Yuri and Sharif are traveling across the country this summer as as was mentioned they were in Helsinki Finland and they take the show to various regional theaters to campuses they perform.

We are starting I'm not going to say anything specifically yet but we're starting to think about our third show. We now have soundtrack city this idea of capturing the urban environments and the way in which all of these different characters compete in the urban space. Also meet each other accommodate themselves how they are transformed by the encounter. We have soundtrack cities for San Francisco New York and now Chicago. The brand new show that's really looking at this issue of the competition over urban space as cities are popular again and are changing. But we remain really committed to Tel Aviv to Ramallah because there simply isn't anything like it out there and I think the hunger to explore this issue remains and to see this treated in a creative way. We were speaking a bit about about hip hop and from a theoretical perspective exactly as you were saying that that hip hop really takes pieces of culture recombines

them recycles them and combines them with really the Zeit Geist or the spirit of the time that very much if I may say also characterizes Sharif's work who's pulling things from different historical moments creating visual languages and taking his individual perspective. And his family's history and bringing that together with everything that he sees Yuri's out there in the world and he you know really is the human beatbox in that he's pulling from the music and the sounds of the streets and recombining it in his body. And then the two of them get up on stage and you know and bring this medley together and create a new whole and a larger whole out of out of these these smaller bits so it's a very dynamic collaboration. The three of us work in sort of parallel realms I'm working on the writing Sharif on the visual dimension. Yuri on the on the sounds and the musical dimension. And then we come together it's another bringing together of these different strands of artistic

experience and perspective and tying it into a whole so I think we've got something good we're going to keep going we're trying to build up our group a little bit we've recently found a lighting designer and you know always looking for new people to contribute to learn from to support us but we're we're going to keep going with this. We are pioneering the genre the show continues to stay relevant. And I think it bridges dialogue. And sometimes when we when we finish the show we have talkbacks and we get lots of really. Just great questions and and a lot of people. They it is. It warms them too. Sometimes Palestinians and Israelis come see the show and when they hear specific sounds or names of streets or type of Ice-Cream in Ramallah they get excited because as we were talking about before we see headlines we see people screaming in and people mourning but there's also the

parts that make people happy and and and that you know Palestine and and Israel is are two incredible places and it's important to focus on daily life people trying to you know make their dreams come true. And our dream of bringing these two cultures and two people together the two brothers together is. And we want to continue to do this show for audiences all around the world. We have one last call I want to try to include them real quick before we run of time let's do that one over one of the banner. Good morning. Hi. I have a question for Yuri. OK my you mentioned that it's a really good venue for preschoolers and I was wondering if you could if you had a reference answer because I think that I think you're right that it is a great they're really into the sound. Yeah. Well I've been teaching at different

schools and sound is a great way to learn language kindergarteners. I when I was substitute teaching in San Francisco I would listen to the kids making sounds and developing language through sound effects and I think it's a great way to learn to learn how to speak through through sound and to to listen. And and I am always interested in working with small children and I have a children's show called Solomon builds a temple. And king Solomon speaks the language of the animals and the kids are part of the show I bring them up on stage and they become the animals and communicate in sound with them. It's a lot of fun. Kids are so spontaneous and they like to make sounds all the time. So I like to get back into the my. Well I'm always in sort of a childlike state I guess by making sounds all the time

but I love to speak to toddlers and to first graders and to nursery school kids and speak the language of beat box because they understand it. Well I'm sort of say that we're out of time we're going to stop. But I will mention again seven o'clock tonight at Allen Hall. You can see a performance of from Tel Aviv to Ramallah. It is free and open to the public. You should feel welcome there. The address 10 0 5 with Gregory drive in her band and our guests have been your Elaine whose voice you just heard Sharif Izzat the computer visual artist who contributes visuals to this presentation and Rachel have a walk. Who's the writer and director to all of you thanks so much for being here. Thank you. And that's it by the way is sponsored by the only program for the research in humanities. Want to get that in as well. Thanks so much.