A couple of weeks ago, The Egg played host to the Pete Seeger Centennial Concert, a 14-performer show that paid homage to Seeger's towering legacy as a musical pioneer and political force.
Longtime Albany resident Taina Asili played this show, eschewing her standard nine-piece band for an acoustic-and-conga-based performance. While Asili's soundscapes are rooted in Afro-Caribbean textures, not traditional folk, the two are connected by the commitment to social justice that is at the core of their respective work and lives.
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"I often play shows booked around social justice. Pete Seeger is identified musically as folk, there's a bigger concept of speaking truth to power and advocating for the environment and for social justice," Asili said. "That's definitely in line with what I do."
She's not understating that, either. Asili's personal, creative and professional lives are inseparable from her political advocacy. The Binghamton-born Asili came to the Capital Region in 2007 by way of Philadelphia as part of her work in the prisoner justice movement. In Albany, she started the Prisoner Justice Network, which is now a statewide network that partners with more than 100 organizations to, among other things, advocate for parole reform and raise awareness of racial profiling and mass incarceration.
Asili is on the board of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, which is dedicated to restoring food justice by ending racism and inequality in farming. And she's a fierce women's rights advocate, as noted by the national headlines she made with her performance at the first Women's March on Washington during President Trump's inauguration.
This weekend, Asili is performing at Black and Latino Gay Pride in Washington Park. It's an opportunity for her to represent herself and an oft-overlooked community.
Asili said this will be her third or fourth time performing at the event. "To me as a queer woman of color, it's always so important, so special to have this space to celebrate diversity in our community.
"I can tell you firsthand that this doesn't exist everywhere," she added. "So it's important to be a part of events like this."
The Pride set is a chance for Asili to play for and support the local community. Her recent album, "Resiliencia," casts a wider net, encompassing multiple genres, which suits Asili's musical upbringing.
"I was trained in opera, brought up in an Afro-Latin home and sang in a punk band for eight years," Asili noted. "My training and interests are very wide."
The title track is a perfect showcase for how Asili operates as a composer and vocalist.
"There's three distinct musical styles (on 'Resiliencia' the song): It starts Afro-Latin, then it moves to rock, then reggae," Asili explained. "For me, it's kind of a perfect example of how I like to move and flow. Being as expansive as possible is important to me. Music, like culture, is a river overflowing."
That comparison of culture to a river overflowing holds true lyrically for Asili, and it's at the core of "Resiliencia."
While doing a residency at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Asili put together a multi-media presentation and performance. For it, she "interviewed five women of color from our community." She turned their stories of survival and perseverance into short music video-based documentaries and lyrics.
The concept was expanded for the "Resiliencia" album. Asili spoke with women of different cultural backgrounds about food justice, overcoming cancer, self-love, conflict mediation and surviving sexual assault and harassment. She wove these into her own stories to present 12 tracks her Bandcamp page calls "born at the intersection of survival and reclamation of love and liberation."
Sharing her own story and telling the stories of frequently marginalized groups was something Asili took seriously. And by sharing these stories and looking back, she's hopeful she can help point to a better way forward.
"I think that it's been a real honor to get people to trust me with their stories. You're hearing people's intimate stories and finding their truth," she reflected. "It was definitely a big responsibility, knowing that I'm going to take these stories and honor and lift their truth.
"It's so important, because we're living in a time that's really dangerous. There's human rights violations, our climate is in crisis, injustice," Asili continued. "We need to remember we have a history of strength, resilience, of courage. Many of us feel a calling to offer something great to this world."
Jim Shahen Jr. is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.