Shara Lunon on Improvisation, Synthesis and Community | Bklyn Sounds 3/1/2024—3/5/2024
A short profile of one of Bklyn's hardest-working musickers + Shows: King Britt's Blacktronika / Nikki Giovanni + Javon Jackson / Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few / A.B.E.L.A. / Tricia Romano / more...
Apologies for the very late delivery this week folks. There are a lot of personal things going on at the moment that could not be avoided. Life, it’s bigger… Thanks for sticking around and supporting.
Even by the polymath standards of the musicians and musickers powering Bklyn’s improvised music circle circa now, Shara Lunon’s level of diverse creativity and dedication stands out. The range of projects, the limitlessness of interests, the desire to continue building, sonically and ethically. It is borderline overwhelming to observe from the sidelines. What can it possibly be like for the 34 year-old transdisciplinary artist herself, whose primary musical practice features voice and electronics, but who also builds machines, produces/curates shows, and collaborates with an absurdly broad cast, across a genre-free spectrum? How does she choose which of her ensembles or initiatives she’s working on next?
“Choose?” Lunon laughs at the question, when I posed it over coffee in Bed-Stuy, in early January. “I don't know if I'm choosing which one happens next, but when I tried to box myself into different categories, I was really unhappy, hitting walls in ways that made me feel trapped. So I think I'm just allowing them to unfold. Like, I love creating: I live, breathe, eat, sleep, dream creation. I think [all the different projects] are part of the same package.”
On the surface, that answer is consistent with responses for an over-achieving member of a generation raised on the notion of the “multi-hyphenate creative.” But in the months after meeting Shara at King Britt’s one-day Blacktronika festival at Public Records last summer, then tracking her activity, it became readily apparent that Lunon is dreaming, operating and producing on an extraordinarily high level, especially when it comes to the intersection of electronic and improvised musics.
There’s the myriad of small gigs at which she stretches her voice and pushes synthesis alongside numerous members of the Bklyn community. (In the fall, after the beginning of the genocidal campaign in Gaza, she also co-founded History Dog with drummer Lesley Mok, bassist Luke Stewart and trumpeter Chris Williams, their performances reflecting the sorrow of the moment.) There is the Heavy Florals series she is putting on at Sisters on Fulton Street — in November hosting a great ambient-techno double bill featuring Afrikan Sciences and HxH. (Heavy Florals is currently partnering with Angela Morris’ Brackish series. Next one is at Public Records in a couple of weeks.) November also saw Lunon premiere a somewhat theatrical Roulette commission called “Bitter Fruits” that featured an incredible band of Bklyn improvisers, a piece for which she specifically built a wig theremin. (I repeat: she built a wig theremin.) All the while she was gigging with her punk band, Blasé; and working on Laugh Ash, a new project by drummer Ches Smith (and another incredible ensemble), which dropped in early February to great reviews. I know I’m missing at least a couple.
Lunon was born in New Jersey but grew up in Florida, falling in love with music via her grandmother’s collection of 45s, and with singing when that grandmother took her to Lincoln Center to hear the soprano Leontyne Price perform a short recital. She spent her youth as a vocalist in performing arts programs geared towards classical music, while reveling in random sound-making. At University of Florida, wanting to “sing things that weren’t only written by white men” — or have spirituals represent the entirety of classic Black vocal music — Lunon began studying Brazilian opera, leading her to spend a year abroad in Sao Paulo, where she fell in love with Tropicalia, gave up on classical music entirely, and dove deep into the psyche-rock world. A transformation had begun. Back in Gainesville, Lunon became part of the college-town’s local fabric, joining an art collective of musicians and visual artists, embracing improvisation and hip-hop and dance and synthesizers (both playing and building them). An intertwining and evolving philosophy of Black music, technology and community became her lodestar. It still is.
“As I keep expanding my vocal vocabulary,” she says, “I keep thinking: how do I use synthesis in the voice with process — and without process? How does adding machinery enhance the improvisational noises that I make? How does that maybe hinder it? How do I make these electronic things that feel other-worldly feel like they’re of-this-world? And then, how do I incorporate my own history, my own feelings, my own culture into these very inorganic things that have already shaped my culture? Black music keeps advancing through this technology. So I'm always trying to find how the organic and inorganic meet in the middle? How do they inspire each other? How does my culture as a Black American interweave all of that?”
It took Lunon a while to find her footing after moving to Bklyn in 2014. She was dabbling in post-hip-hop sounds and songs, DJing, performing solo at now-lost galleries, and DIY spots like Trans-Pecos, Silent Barn and Palisades. But she was also making connections that stuck, with folks like the visual artist Montana Simone (ex-Bodega band), with members of the Uptown Vinyl Supreme DJ collective, and with studio engineer Jhevere Reynolds, who still mixes all of her vocal recordings. In 2019, she bit the bullet and went to the New School for her graduate music degree, where she acquired great mentors in vocalist Faye Victor and saxophonist Darius Jones, who pushed her not only towards improvisation, but how to shape it into composition.
By her own admission, Lunon is constantly searching out new experiences and the previously unexplored. But negative experiences in new music spaces and as a vocalist in theatrical productions have also made her more clear-eyed about how the community she is a part of, and the community she aspires to, affect the work. She is not thinking about career, Lunon says, but the meaning of legacy.
“What is the work I'm leaving behind? What is the work that I want to create? Who are the people I want to work with? Does this opportunity align or reflect that? So, I constantly think about ‘community,’ and who I'm trying to keep around me.” And just like all of Lunon’s project, this aspiration is reflected broadly not narrowly. “[For me], community doesn't just mean one genre of sound. It's the people I'm building my world around, that I really enjoy playing with and enjoy learning from, because I feel like we are aligned, and we all want to build this multimodal tribe.”
This Week’s Shows:
For the last couple of years, Gottscheer Hall on Fairview Avenue, site of the “best carpeted dance floor in NYC,” has been hosting a monthly dance jam, First Friday Soul-Funk-Disco DJ Party, with low-key great local selectors. This Friday, it’s veteran digger, Dirtyfinger. (Fri 3/1, 9p @ Gottscheer Hall, Ridgewood - $TBD)
Nowadays’ recurring Foundations Night is about pairing current local artists with global folks who were influences on the culture, and this evening it’s all about dub techno. The mighty Aurora Halal, responsible for the Mutual Dreaming parties and upstate’s Sustain-Release weekender, welcomes the forever-Berlin don, Moritz Von Oswald (aka Maurizio, aka ½ of Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound) for a session on the Nowadays system. Expect the best low-end. (Fri 3/1, 10p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - FREE w/RSVP before 11 + $15 before 12/$25)
A meeting of two great Black dance-music institutions, one young, one old: Though the night is billed as Blacktronika, the party-festival-curriculum that the mighty King Britt has been spreading from his outpost at UC-San Diego, this Public Records three-room takeover features Timmy Regisford’s 33-years-strong NYC house-music party, Shelter; and it will be Regisford who’ll be in the Sound Room, while King and legendary South Londoner Charlie Dark, will be in the club’s atrium. The upstairs will be tracked by the Miami-born Cuban/Honduran vinyl selector Carozilla; the whole evening will kick-off with a live set by the excellent tabla+electronics player, Suphala. (Sat 3/2, 7p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $15-$30)
As famous contributors to jazz history go, the late pianist, composer and ‘60s Blue Note cornerstone Andrew Hill is less recognized than many of his contemporaries. But Hill’s classics — like 1963’s Black Fire, ‘64’s Point of Departure, and Change, recorded in ‘66 but not released til 2007 — smear the line between jazz’s free journeys and traditional compositions. Hence Hill’s hero status among generations of heritage-loving rebels; and the purpose behind Eternal Spirit: Vijay Iyer & Friends Celebrate the Music of Andrew Hill, in which the New York pianist leads a stellar ensemble, including drummer Nasheet Waits, trumpet player Milena Casado, saxophonist Mark Shim, bassists Devon Gates and Reggie Workman, flutist Nicole Mitchell, vibraphonist Yuhan Su. Highest Recommendation. (Sat 3/2, 7:30p @ Harlem Stage, Manhattan - $25/$40)
A few weeks ago, I went to see A.B.E.L.A. (Asociación de Bateristas Electrónicos de Latinoamerica) at Trans-Pecos based wholly on their name and an IG clip where acoustic and electronic rhythms spilled over into a psychedelic wonder. It did NOT disappoint. They still have no music up/out, but here’s their bio from the Barrio Collective site: “A.B.E.L.A. is an inclusive and transdisciplinary collective of Latinx percussionists who venture into technological exploration and their relationship with the ancestral rhythms of the American continent. ‘El Sindicato’ (the union), as it is also known, has more than 10 rotating members from the depths of the Latin gozadera: Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Puerto Rico are some of its spiritual headquarters. A.B.E.L.A. has two fundamental objectives: to pursue equal rights for all percussionists in the world and to make the public dance until capitalism is destroyed.” Now that’s what I call a manifesto! (Sat 3/2, 9p @ Hart Bar, Bushwick - $10)
A massive double-bill bringing together one of the world’s most beloved party DJs (the irrepressible DJ Harvey), and one of the city’s dons (Eli Escobar). Knockdown Center on a Saturday night might be a bit of shit-show, but it’s big enough that you can find your people. And the music will definitely be great. Also: Hot Honey Sundays’ Anna Collecta. (Sat 3/2, 10p @ Knockdown Center, Queens - $25)
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