Supersonic x Swamp present… The Art of Collaboration
In Conversation: Moor Mother & Valentina Magaletti
Friday 11 December 2020, 19:30 GMT
Live stream via YouTube
FREE (donations welcomed*)
*Whilst these conversations are free to watch, we ask if you’re in a position to, you please contribute what you can afford. Your donations will help to secure the future work of Supersonic, enabling us to support the artists we host and our freelance team. You can donate by buying our merch or making a donation.
[Moor Mother live at Supersonic 2018 – image by Joe Singh]
Supersonic was founded and is led by womxn, one of our key aims is to be an inspiring space where womxn, trans and non binary artists who are creating extraordinary new music are celebrated and recognised.
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So we’ve teamed up with Swamp Booking, one of Europe’s leading independent agencies, to launch a series of talks that amplify the voices and experiences of womxn, trans and non-binary artists who are creating new music. Together, we’ll be exploring how to create a better working environment and a more cohesive scene, sharing wider perspectives first-hand whilst also focusing on more specific topics such as identity, collaboration, and the use of the body in live performances.
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Despite some positive trends, gender disparity is still a major concern across the wider music industry. For example, PRS for Music’s membership remains heavily skewed towards men, with only 18.4% of members identifying as female. In 2019, the top 10 female songwriters/composers in the UK generated 67% less revenue via PRS for Music compared to their top 10 male counterparts. This revealed that women, even at the top of their field, receive less opportunities than men for their music to be heard and performed.
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With this in mind, together with Swamp, we present our second talk of the series on Friday 11 December where we open the stage to multi-disciplinary artist Moor Mother and percussion powerhouse Valentina Magaletti. This conversation entitled The Art of Collaboration will be hosted by journalist, Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley.
Collaboration is an essential part of music creation – whether with a sound engineer, producer, creative director or other musicians – working with others is inevitable in this field. However, there is undoubtedly a certain “art” to collaborating. It’s an often sensitive process that requires both compromise and confidence to navigate, where the destination is all the more rewarding and you don’t arrive alone.
During this talk we’ll hear about the ever expansive practices of these two artists, and how collaboration plays an important role in their musical output. Let’s get you acquainted with them both…
Moor Mother is the viscerally charged output of Philadelphia based interdisciplinary artist, Camae Ayewa. A musician, poet, visual artist, workshop facilitator, and activist, Camae is no stranger to collaboration. She currently performs in a number of collaborative groups: Irreversible Entanglements, Moor Jewelry, 700bliss, ZONAL and is one half of the collective Black Quantum Futurism along with Rasheedah Phillips. Her music, harsh and strange, projects both the cathartic anger of punk and the expansive improvisatory spirit of Sun Ra. Using a variety of machines, field recordings, and analog noisemakers, she constructs fractured, cacophonous waves for her words of punishing pertinence to ride.
Valentina Magaletti is a drummer, percussionist and composer whose goal is to strategically enrich a folkloristic and eclectic palette through endless listening and experimentation with new materials and sounds. She has performed and co-written with many artists including Nicolas Jaar, Lafawndah, Jandek, Helm, Raime, Malcom Catto, Charles Hayward, Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome), Tightpaul Sandra (Coil, Spiritualized, Julian Cope), Thurston Moore, Bat for Lashes, Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), and many more. In her current project, Vanishing Twin (Fire Records) she has a more conventional jazz approach that finds its escape in the drone/field recordings of the percussive approach in her other main experimental/avant-garde duo Tomaga. Valentina was born in Bari, Italy, and is based in London.
