The Slow Drop, a new work of sound art by the artist duo Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere in collaboration with musicians living in New Orleans Musicians’ Village, will debut on Saturday, October 8, from 3 to 5 p.m. The work will feature a spatial music performance that builds upon the talents of resident musicians and can be experienced via six access points along Bartholomew Street and N. Prieur Street. The program includes a participatory ancestral tribute to Musicians’ Village founding resident Council Chief Joseph Jenkins. The tribute will be in the Black Indian tradition of New Orleans and will feature Big Chiefs Kevin Goodman and Kevin Turner.
Walking through the Musicians’ Village, a post-Hurricane Katrina affordable housing initiative and artist community, the public will participate in an immersive auditory experience—a neighborhood score—where music, voices, and sounds accumulate and travel across the neighborhood. Elements of the event will form the basis for a multi-channel video installation to open at the New Orleans Jazz Museum on December 2 as part of the annual Sound Collage Festival and Improvisations fundraiser.
Collaborating musicians include Danny Abel (guitar), Sam Albright (upright bass), Denise Bonis (violin), Tom Chute (percussions), Sula Janet Evans (vocals), Helen Gillet (cello), Edward Lee Jr. (sousaphone), Thomas McDonald (bass guitar), Margie Perez (vocals), Troy Sawyer (trumpet), Gabriel Velasco (production coordination), and Chip Wilson (guitar).
Participants in the ancestral tribute to Council Chief Joe Jenkins include Big Chiefs and artists Kevin Turner and Kevin Goodman, with Princess Ariya (vocals), Little Warrior Deliam (vocals), Warrior Marley (vocals), Ambassador Queen Jamilah Yejide Peters-Muhammad (shekere), Baba Luther Gray (djembe), and Aaron “Ace” Washington (bass drum).
The Slow Drop is curated by Anna Mecugni. The ancestral tribute to Council Chief Joe Jenkins is co-curated by Maroon Queen Reesie (Cherice Harrison-Nelson) along with Goodman and Turner.
The event is free and open to the public.
For more information, visit theslowdrop.org.
Project partners include the New Orleans Jazz Museum, New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, Katapult Events, WWOZ, Prospect New Orleans, and the University of New Orleans School of the Arts.
Tthe Musicians’ Village stretches over three blocks with a series of more than 70 colorful shotgun houses. Acclaimed recording artists from New Orleans spearheaded this housing development to bring musicians back to the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They partnered with the non-profit organization New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity (NOAHH), an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, whose mission is to bring together people to build—and rebuild—homes and communities. Since its establishment in 1983, NOAHH has built over 600 affordable homes in New Orleans using a sustainable model of zero-interest loans and sweat equity in place of traditional down payments. As hurricane-damaged areas have historically paved the way to gentrification, NOAHH has helped contrast this trend.
