Ali Hammad is featured by FatheR BrotheR Sun as a headliner for Oakland Drops Beats with A Thousand WordZ at Spice Monkey May 9th, 2015.

Oakland Drops Beats

On

Saturday May 9th, 2015

@

Spice Monkey

1628 Webster Street

(CLICK THIS G-MAPS LINK):

ALI HAMMAD

(Photo by Jennifer Dowdy, 2014)

Ali Hammad is a Berkeley, California native, but he spends a great deal of time in Oakland doing music. Among many of his talents, he is one of four lead singers in FRBRS aka

and will be highlighted for his writing and singing genius this Saturday May 19th, 2015. He will headline the evening portion of Oakland Drops Beats in a production of A Thousand WordZ at Spice Monkey in Downtown Oakland. He appears on stage at 9pm, and will be backed by his band FRBRS to share some of his newest songs that have not been heard live before. 

Unknown to many of his listeners and fans, he has been accepted to next falls enrollment at Boston's Berkelee College of Music for performance, so this is your chance to see what they see in him, the greatness that Oakland will miss until his return! 

Ali Hammad has a long career ahead of himself. He has leveraged his experience as first a student of Youth Radio in Downtown Oakland, and secondly an employee there to take himself further. With his initials being A.H., he's had his Ah Ha moment in music, and is writing and recording tracks with groups like the Harbingers, (along with some un-published tunes that will appear before this year is done) playing live with FatheR BrotheR Sun, while learning how to work intimately with a band of 11 players; including himself. It appears he is learning, creating, and aiming for exploring and expressing what he develops and discovers each day, month, and year. So, stay tuned, but first come out and see for yourself, after you have a listen to the tracks below.

Listen to his newest song, 'Sang'.

Listen to Red Rover (ft. Isaiah McLane). 

MORE LINKS:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alihammad510

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/alihammadart

FatheRBrotheRSun: http://FatheRBrotheRSun.com

Website coming soon!

(Aeron Miller Photography, 2014)

sOuL from the O performs in Oakland Drops Beats with A Thousand WordZ at Spice Monkey

Performing a short set for Oakland Drops Beats

on Saturday May 9th, 2015

@

Spice Monkey

1628 Webster Street

(CLICK THIS G-MAPS LINK):

'sOuL from the O'

EVENT LINK: 

 https://www.facebook.com/events/1594147624197473/

sOuL is captivating in his stage presence and performance. When he grabs the microphone, he engages the crowd like no other. His lyrical content is clear, and his message is both thought provoking and uplifting. In a day when lyricism appears filled with metaphors that glamorize violence, misogyny, and good ole' sex and drugs, sOuL beats his own drum. The craftsmanship in his lyricism is precise, witty, profound, and delivered with an ease, that it always feels like a very intelligent free-style. He uses bass lines and melodies to groove you into submission, and then fills you with stories that one, these days, can only find in books, good magazines, documentaries, or short stories. He has a welcoming command of his words and stage presence! He lives up to his name, sOuL.

sOuL's current body of work is titled, 'The Unspoken Word':

http://s-o-u-l.bandcamp.com/album/the-unspoken-word

"Nobody gave sOuL permission to make his brand of hip-hop, and he likes it this way. Sometimes eclectic, sometimes fierce, pounding on the doors of the establishment, sOuL has been on a collision course for expanding the boundaries of contemporary music for some time now." -11525.com

Links:

Web: www.11525.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/soul11525

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/soul11525/videos

Twitter: sOuL11525

Bandcamp: http://s-o-u-l.bandcamp.com/album/the-unspoken-word

Pandora: http://www.pandora.com/soul-aka-soul-from-o

Oakland Drops Beats - Penny Harncharnvej: Visual Artist

Meet, Penny Harncharnvej

She is installing and exhibiting her newest body of work themed, Beauty and Botanicals for our downstairs show. 

Artist Statement

Penny Harncharnvej's artwork has a distinctly playful character. Birds flying under water, fish swimming through stones, faces emerging from still objects to chatter with themselves... the natural order of life is left to gleeful neglect, as if life were living itself differently, so that the viewer may organize the world from scratch. The visual cues spell out strange and delightful mysteries, mystery that does not demand resolution but delights us as we mingle with it.

Cats are a frequent subject for Penny Harncharnvej. The fondness of feline paintings revolves around the prism that they offer us between our own world. The domestication of these animals have made their actions and behavior obvious to how we understand them. However, being animals, they are still in connection with the instinctive and intuitive. This has been a mixed blessing for the feline in human culture, at one time elevating them to divine creatures (as with ancient Egypt,) and at other times debasing them as familiars of witches (as with the witch hunts of England and Colonial America.

The artwork from Penny Harncharnvej brings the viewpoint closer to the cats, furthering along the continuum between these animals and humans. Moving the lens toward the animal world allows the intuitive quality of sense to be conceived in art in much more coarse, visceral fashion. Because the cat is a domesticated animal, and a friend, their actions are transparent to us. Cats are symbolic of her feelings. Cat fanciers see their pets as being intimate friends. The closeness of cats to humans makes them a bridge between that which we understand and that which we don’t understand. 

-(http://www.pennyartgallery.com/artist_statement)

For more information about Penny Harncharnvej's art work and artistic journey, please check out her website: http://www.pennyartgallery.com

EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/1526457564269046

Artist Bio: Jack Eastgate

Jack Eastgate: artist bio

(Mr. Eastgate showed his artwork at the Feb. 27th, 2010 show, and helped raise $1,800 for Haiti relief)

I didn’t start living until I moved to America. I smile every time I think back at my first years, months, and even days when my “fresh off the blane” ready to experience life attitude naively wondered the streets of Oakland. I was 18, straight from a farm in the middle of a jungle on an island surrounded by hella warm water. That was seven years ago.

Oakland…buck wild, shady, sunny, beautiful crazy all at once. America on the other hand was the one that got me. Caught up in it all, the shine began to wear and I wandered without cause, my state of mind was unsatisfied, my spirit malnourished. I felt there was something missing and it bothered me.

Questioning everything, my fascination with the world grew. As I am as insignificant as a mustard seed in the whole scheme of things, I had the nerve to ask who was I and why did I exist? That’s when my being opened up to an environment seen only when still. A place where time becomes irrelevant, and every cell in your body reverberates in synchronization to the universe, and a place where they say angels gather to listen in bliss.

Like a Taurus, I dove headfirst into the infinite world of spirituality and found my self sitting with the Sufi’s and mystics of many traditions. It was amazing. My life and art changed, unintentionally giving me a better understanding of my shortcomings, but, most of all my strength- my humanness.

During this time I came to realize that a common factor, whether intentional or not, is often concealed, misinterpreted or simply confused. Everything is One, like a circle, a drum. All the different perspectives we have, have been shaped by each individual or collective reality- their language, geography, climate and culture. It still in its essence universal, and it is still collectively interpreted human. This is what I want to reflect. This is what inspires me.

Life is art is life. Inspired by life and the beauty that comes with struggles, Jack Eastgate, a bay area transplant from the Fiji Islands, has infused the elements of his present urban society with his multicultural roots, allowing him to articulate his personal and shared experiences. Jack is currently a senior pursuing a degree in Graphic design at Cal State University East Bay. Traditionally an illustrator, Jack has incorporated several mediums into his work including acrylic, spray paints, and collage.

Linkz:
http://jackeastgatestudios.com
http://jackeastgatestudios.com/livepaint.html
http://eastrandstudios.com