Bady-Dorzhu Ondar & Shodekeh

About Bady-Dorzhu Ondar:

Bady-Dorzhu Ondar was born in 1984 in the small village of Iyme. At age four, he was discovered by Kongar-ool Ondar, who took him on as a student. A few years later, Kongar-ool brought along his young protégé when he toured the United States, where they appeared on the David Letterman and Chevy Chase Shows. Bady-Dorzhu has a B.A. in National Instruments from the Kyzyl Arts College and an M.A. in Conducting Folk Orchestras from the East Siberia State Academy of Culture and Art in Kyzyl. He has toured in Russia, Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and China. He won best soloist at the 2005 All-Russian Festival of traditional ensembles and orchestras, and best in competition at the Maxim Dakpai xöömei competition in 2006. In 2007, he was named a People's Xöömeizhi (throat singer) of the Republic of Tuva, the youngest person ever to receive this prestigious award. At the 2008 Xöömei Symposium, Bady-Dorzhu was awarded the grand prize for throat singing (video1, video2). In 2019, he was awarded the honorary title "Distinguished Artist of the Republic of Tuva." He specializes in the kargyraa style of throat singing, and is especially talented on the igil and the guitar, being a great fan of Jimi Hendrix.

(photo credit: Nicole Renee)

About Shodekeh:

With 36 years of personal, professional and community-based experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking and highly adept Beatboxer, Vocal Percussionist and Breath Artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of Hip Hop music and culture. As the first vocal percussionist to do so, he formally served as a dance technique musician and composer-in-residence for Towson University’s Department of Dance for 12 years and is the founding director of Embody, A Festival Series of the Vocal Arts, which strives for artistic and cultural convergence through a variety of vocal art traditions from a multitude of worlds such as opera and Tuvan throat singing, to the many forms of vocal percussion, which has featured such vocal luminaries as Madison McFerrin, Alash Ensemble, Dan Deacon, Raul Midon, and Joyce J. Scott.

Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion born within the world of Hip Hop, and easily exists as one the most highly advanced vocal art forms known within the diversity of the human voice. Imitating and often replacing a drum set, drum machine, or drum loop through a series of vocal effects or percussive sounds primarily produced by the larynx, nasal, oral and chest cavities, Beatboxing exemplifies the Hip Hop philosophy of creating meaningful artistic expressions with limited resources at its most extreme; it replaces the source of the timeless break beat with the human voice, becoming a ubiquitous and indigenous feature of the African American city experience and soundscape.

Shodekeh recently served as TU's very first Innovator-in-Residence from 2019 - 2022, a historic designation which was anchored by the College of Fine Arts & Communication, allowing him lecture, collaborate, experiment, compose, perform and conduct research within the departments of Music, Art + Design/Art History/Art Education, Dance, Communication Studies, Electronic Media + Film, Mass Communication, Theatre Arts, Arts Integration & Interdisciplinary Arts Infusion, as well as the Asian Arts & Culture Center of TU, the TU Community Art Center, TU Community Dance & the TU Center For The Arts MFA & Main Gallery.

In previous years Talifero served as music faculty of the American Dance Festival at Duke University and has served as the chosen musician for a variety of master class experiences led by such luminaries as Ailey II of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Ensemble, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In his close relationship with the world of dance, he has acquired a wealth of experiences of applying his vocal and rhythmic skills in the movement context of ballet, capoeira, fire movement, belly dancing and a wide range of modern dance techniques created by such legends as Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Lester Horton.

This deeply synthesized relationship with dance, which began in 2006 has also played a tremendous role in Shodekeh’s sustained & pioneering development of ‘Breath Art”, which is essentially the deep practice and extensive research of isolated creative breathing techniques and methods maintained within the musical and kinesthetic modalities of universal human vocal expression. This deep artistic and philosophical practice and ongoing research of "Breath Art" are greatly exemplified in the recent commissions of original compositional work for the Covid-19 sculptures created by Rebecca Kamen for the 2021 exhibition "Reveal" at the American University Museum in Washington DC and his cymatic / sound art composition "Vymatics" for the 2022 world premiere event of "Voyages", a brand new immersive science communication series based at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD.

Over the years, Talifero has evolved and moved through the world as a musical ambassador from Beatboxing’s Hip Hop roots to explore innovative and convergent cultural collaborations with a wide range of traditional and classical artists. He serves as the Beatboxer and vocal percussionist for the globally renown Alash Ensemble, one of the world’s leading Tuvan Throat Singing ensembles from Southern Siberia, and features as a guest artist on their Smithsonian Folkways album release “Achai”, as well as a co-curator and executive producer on the recently released album “Embodiments” with Bady Dorzhu Ondar of Alash, which is the first full album of Traditional Tuvan Throat Singing and Hip Hop fusion; has become a regular collaborator with the magnificent percussion and rhythm ensemble So Percussion based at Princeton University, with whom he composed for during Shodekeh’s historic Carnegie Hall debut in 2021.

One of Shodekeh’s most recent and by far bravest endeavor has been the recent establishment of his own collection and living archive with the Towson University Special Collections and University Archives in 2021, which is entitled “Ideations of Potential: Shodekeh's Innovation Lab of Embodied Scholarship & Hip Hop Imagination". This lifelong collaboration is the first Hip Hop-based archive created in the state of Maryland and the first Beatbox / Breath Art driven archive instituted in the world, with the expressed and dedicated mission of maximizing the collection as a platform for raising awareness on the epidemic of black youth suicide and ideation.

Ideations of Potential: Shodekeh's Innovation Lab of Embodied Scholarship & Hip Hop Imagination @ the Towson University Special Collections & University Archives.

https://archives.towson.edu/collections/ideations-of-potential

(photo credit: Isiah Winter)

Special Guests on Embodiments:

Joyce J. Scott

Baltimore legend and MacArthur fellow Joyce J. Scott is an historian, visual artist, educator, sculptor, weaver, printmaker, singer, performance artist, jeweler, beadworker, glassmaker, and force of nature. Her artworks have been featured around the globe and she has been a frequent collaborator with Bady and Shodekeh during Alash's visits to Baltimore. Her presence on this project is a blessing.

Joyce herself says of this collaboration: “Who would believe a 73 years old African American Baltimore Artist, who sculpts and is a blues singer would one day be embraced by the heart thumping, smooth breezing, throat alchemizing, bad ass Tuvans of Alash. Mesmerized by the invitation to blend my urban Blackness with their Siberian Soul is a revelation. Amen.”

Wendel Patrick

Wendel Patrick is a multitalented artist whose creativity knows no bounds. Equally at home performing on stage with his band, behind two turntables, beatboxing, improvising, or playing a Mozart Concerto on stage with orchestra, Wendel Patrick has toured Europe on several occasions and performed throughout the world with renowned spoken word artist and poet Ursula Rucker. Not only has Wendel been a constant fixture of Alash’s Baltimore performances, as part of the Baltimore Boom Bap society which he cofounded with Erik Spangler, he also took Siberia by storm in 2019 on his visit to Tuva with Shodekeh for Alash’s 20th anniversary. Wendel is also a Professor at the Peabody Institute of Music, where teaches Hip Hop Production and Theory, the first ever course of its kind at a major music conservatory.

Jasmine Pope

Jasmine, like many musicians, fell in love with music in the church, inspired by semi-regular visits by The Fleming Sisters. Listeners find themselves connecting her performances to those of trailblazing black female vocalists such as Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughn, Lauryn Hill, and Me’shell Ndegocello. “I think there is an internal rhythm and spirit that we all have inside, and that’s what brings us together as people.” A frequent contributor to Baltimore Boom Bap and EMBODY performances, she is most well-known as front-woman for “J Pope and the Hear Now,” a musical collective that has frequently toured the US and performed with musicians such as Esperanza Spalding, Robert Randolph, and the Wailers, with the band being called “one of Baltimore’s best kept musical secrets.”

Eze Jackson

Eze Jackson has traveled the world over, and toured the US opening for such legendary Hip-Hop idols such as Rakim, the Roots, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Beanie Sigel, KRS-One, Cormega, Jay Electronica, and Redman & Method Man, but he keeps coming home to the place he knows best, Baltimore. As a trained actor, Eze was a theater major at the Baltimore School for the Arts and has been involved as “Ezewriter” for a variety of multimedia film, TV, and stage projects. Since 2014, he has released six solo studio albums, three as the frontman of hip=hop collective Soul Cannon, and his is the founder of EPIC FAM (Every Person is Coming From A Memory). Eze is an integral figure in the Baltimore artistic community, as Baltimore Magazine put it, “It’s hard to envision the Baltimore music scene without Eze Jackson.”

Erik Spangler

A.k.a DJ Dubble8, is a composer and electronic musician. Engaged equally with ensemble improvisation, live sample-based mixing, hybrid electronica production, and notated chamber music, Spangler aims to dissolve cultural boundaries while drawing all corners of inspiration into cohesive sound images. Spangler’s compositions have been performed across the United States and internationally from Canada to China, by ensembles including the Atlantic Brass Quintet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Of the evening, Erik says, “This evening felt truly magical in the way that Bady, Shodekeh, and the rest of my friends on stage were able to create a profound musical dialogue in the live moment that transcended geography, ancient and modern influences. The music that we performed could only have happened through a deep trust, and the previous experiences that some of us had in previous years improvising with Bady and the other members of Alash Ensemble when they have come to Baltimore.”

Rafaela Dreisin

Rafaela is a graduate of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. She works in both the Baltimore Chamber Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and is the co-Director of Classical Revolution Baltimore, a chamber music series that organizes performances in non-traditional venues. Rafaela has been featured in the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, and has presented at TEDxMidAtlantic.