The Third Coast Festival has come and gone. What an amazing community we indie producers have managed to create! Two and a half days of hugs, grins, coffee, wine, and dancing. Oh, and networking, workshopping, CD-swapping, and technical talk. (There was a touch of the Titanic about it, with news of failing banks and free-falling financial markets burbling quietly in the background.)
On Saturday afternoon the fabulous Kitchen Sisters (a.k.a. Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) presented their “favorite things” to an exhausted and admiring crowd; somehow they coaxed all 400 of us to stand up and join in rousing renditions of Sixteen Tons and A Little Help from My Friends. That night Homelands’ pal Chris Brookes was named this year’s “Audio Luminary” (that’s the festival’s lifetime achievement award) — if you’ve never heard his work PLEASE check him out. A good place to start is an award-winning piece he did as part of our Worlds of Difference series called A Map of the Sea.
Sandy, Cecilia, and I snuck away from time to time to talk about our next project. We’d like to do a multimedia series on hunger. As with WORKING, we’ll want to focus on individual human beings. It’s a timely topic, sad to say: the number of hungry people around the world is now more than 900 million, and rising. With the economic mess, water shortages, food and fuel price volatility, rising populations, and climate change, things are unlikely to improve in the near term. If you have thoughts about the topic, or if you have ideas on who might support the project, please let us know!
Jon
P.S. Next up on WORKING is Kelly McEvers’ profile of a pirate who robs ships in Indonesia’s Strait of Malacca. If you want a reminder, go to our website and sign up for our mailing list.