The OneBeat Podcast

In this seventh episode of Season 2, Kyla-Rose speaks with artist Anna RG, about her navigation of chronic illness, since contracting COVID in the early days of the pandemic. With a practice previously grounded in Appalachian folk music, she is a fiddler, banjo player, filmmaker, archivist, visual artist and researcher -- a storyteller in many forms. This conversation centers around Anna’s new world and practice, in sickness; and the two discuss the impacts of illness on her ideas of the possibilities of music, engagement with disability justice, and imagining ways that sick and disabled musicians could be better supported, connected, and uplifted.

Intergalactic kwaai-diva Umlilo takes listeners on a deep dive through OneBeat’s vast musical vault.

In this fifth episode of Season 2 we return to a conversation about the ongoing war in Ukraine, this time with accomplished Russian composer Marina Sobyanina. For more than a decade she has lived in Bern, Switzerland. Her work contains and fuses a wide range of genres including contemporary classical music, experimental jazz, and sound design. Marina has long been a vocal opponent of Putin, and her opposition to his regime only increased when Russia invaded Ukraine last February. In this interview she talks about what it means to be a Russian artist who opposes Putin and the current war in Ukraine.

In the final part of a OneBeat diptych series episode, Kenyan ambient artist KMRU joins Nyokabi Kariũki in a conversation about the importance of archiving sound, and what the repatriation of sonic archives can do for the past, present, and possible futures of people from the African continent.

In this episode, guest produced by Nyokabi Kariũki, Kenyan musicians and music-lovers share how they are using sound and music to recount stories of the country’s past, present, and to foretell its future.

In the second of a series of interviews focusing on music and musicians in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, talented bass player and OneBeat 2014 alumnus Roman Garkavenko discussed his coming of age as a superfan of Queen, and the limitations of music in the context of unimaginable violence.

Ukrainian singer-songwriter and organizer Margaryta “Margot” Kulichova candidly questions the relevance of music-making in this time, and explains what keeps her fight for peace going.

OneBeat 2015 alumnus Bajram “Kafu” Kinolli discusses his upbringing as a religious Sufi Muslim in a small city in Kosovo during periods of unrest and war in the 80s and 90s; where violence has affected the lives of the people of the Balkans, and discusses how music — which has been intertwined with both violence, survival, peacemaking, and even humor — can play a role in healing and uniting people in a still-fractured region.

In this - the 7th and penultimate episode of Season 1, we connect with an alumnus of our very first OneBeat Program, Moscow-based Anton Maskeliade, who is a pioneer in many ways: as an experimental electronic artist, and as the founder of a music school that guides people -- with any level of musical training -- through the process of composing and producing their own original music.

Episode 6 of the OneBeat Podcast features an insightful and moving conversation with artist, activist and Afrofuturist Pierce Freelon, who lives and works in Durham, NC. Pierce talks about the power and burden of speaking truth to power, about visioning futures, and about honoring ancestry and family.