In Concert With Windgrease

On this episode of Another Sound from KKJZ, we step inside Georgia Anne Muldrow’s Windgrease Festival, a celebration of music, community, creativity, and the spirit of collaboration. We hear directly from Muldrow and her co-presenters, Yusef Hilmy and Harmony Holiday, about the ideas, artists, and connections shaping this unique gathering. Together, they explore what it means to create a festival rooted in freedom and fellowship. It's what happens when musicians and audiences come together in the same spirit and space. Plus, we have a bonus conversation with Kobi Waldfogel, founder of VinylCon, about the culture and community around vinyl collecting. From the exhilaration of live performances to the discovery of recorded works, this is a celebration of music as a shared experience.

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SPEAKER_02 0:10

Welcome back to another sound, our podcast from K Jazz here in Los Angeles. I'm your host, the Watchman Greg Bryant. Thank you to those of you who've been rocking with us since the beginning. We're a few episodes in now, and really enjoying doing this work of bringing this delightful music to you. If you're new, welcome. We're glad to have you here. The main thing, though, I would say is uh to subscribe. We want to get those subscriptions up. So if you haven't subscribed yet, you at your podcast provider of choice, click that button right now. I really do appreciate that. We all do here at K Jazz. And also tell somebody, spread the word. That's how we grow this audience of ours. We want more ears for this music. And we get to go in depth with this show, like uh we don't always get to do on the air. So it's a privilege to be with you always here on another sound. And also know that this is made possible by your support. If you want to become a member of the K Jazz family, give now securely online at jazzandblues.org. Again, jazzandblues.org with your gift. Thank you so much for your support. Well, we know that uh these days the word festival has certainly been in the air. So today we want to take a look back at an inaugural event that may very well help to shape the style and spirit of concert presentation here in Los Angeles and beyond. From August 7th through the 14th at 2220 Arts Archives here in LA, uh, that space became the home of the Wind Grease Festival. That's right, the Wind Grease Festival, presented by George Ann Moldrow, the great musician and producer, along with concert uh producer Yusuf Hilmy and poet dancer Harmony Holiday. Wind Grease uh has arrived at a particularly important moment, I think. And its execution was not only fortuitous, it was restorative. In the wake of a recent series of cancellations, this festival has created a space for artists and audiences to gather again, to listen again, to witness and to remember, and to just be together. It felt really good being amongst uh the festival goers uh this past week, and the festival's tagline uh really says it well. Quote, where concert is restored in its purest definition of unity as a toned prayer in response to genocide and everything else, unquote. Across eight evenings, Wingreese offered a remarkable range of music, poetry, movement, history, archives, and visual art. And among the offerings of those eight days was a very special gathering dedicated to the memory and spirit of the great drummer Billy Higgins, featuring former students and admirers like Jonathan Penson, Justin Brown, Calem Harrison, and poet and hand drummer A.K. Tony. Harmony holidays, poetics of the missing black notes, brought words and music into conversation. Saxophonist Logan Richardson's Horn Summit of Dreams with Theodris Avery, Ralph Moore, Steve Lehman, and Benny Malpin was certainly a night of community and growing. Georgia Ann Moldrow herself, man. She was involved in at least three offerings, bringing together like-minded explorers, but one of these pairings brought her together with multi-readist Angel Bat Dowd to lead Spirit and Sonic Revelations together as Bible girls. And on the festival's concluding night, Esperanza Spaulding took the stage for a capacity crowd for a mesmerizing solo performance on bass, piano, and of course she sang. And she got us singing too. Another memory, not to forget. Windgrease is something that resists classification, but its effect and the community that's creating, uh, it's gonna be felt for some time. And on this episode, we're excited to share a round table conversation with Georgia Ann Muldrow, Yusef Hilmy, and Harmony Holiday, along with a few snippets of the sounds and vibrations that define the week. So let's hear a little taste of Georgia Ann Muldrow and Angel Bat Doward together as Bible girls on the Another Sound podcast. There was no barrier. We were all in there, you know, together. And I just want to ask each one of you, um, what does access mean to you?

SPEAKER_04 5:17

I think it means speaking a language that people don't just understand but they feel inside of them. So something that they can feel alchemically or feel in their nervous system, so it's not just about something that's like high but it's low.

SPEAKER_05 5:35

Yeah, I think the almost impossible but necessary task of being a practicing artist in whatever form, and also considering the means of production and the venue. One thing I noticed reading almost any biography from like Billy Holiday to whoever, uh great jazz musician, one thing that gets mentioned as one line is should have started our own venue. Like never should have started Mingus wanted a school. People wanted, and Billy, you know, was thinking about that, so that might be why the spirit um spoke to Georgia.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

I believe access is a point of treasury.

unknown 6:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Somebody can see themselves. You know, I think that's what makes Billy Higgins accessible because he helped people to see themselves and to like reflect each other, you know? Um, you know, like the kind of the style of playing he do is very uh gracious. It's and it's not so that he can sound the most killings, what what's gonna help the sound, the song sound amazing. And how do I make everyone sound amazing? And and maybe if there's a drum poem that keeps on going through the whole song with the kick and everything, how he likes to do it. And it's just like his and through his servicing of the song and being able to make space for each soloist that's playing, I see that as a metaphor for what access is. And it's creating a beautiful, you know, a beautiful mirror, you know, to create a mirror. People can see themselves more room so they can see that composite image and make a mirror so big, you know, that we can see ourselves together in the K Tony, Justin Brown, Jonathan Penson, Caleb Harrison, and virtually Karan Harrison at Drumline of the Leaves, an archive of sound days celebrating Billy Higgins.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely, absolutely. It's interesting, Harmony. You brought up um artists curating the performance experience. Um, I think back even historically to what happened at Newport in the early 60s when you mentioned Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy. Exactly, the counter festival. Yeah, and um they they they rose up and did it. Exactly, exactly. But I think about what you guys are doing and how fortuitous it is to be happening right now with all the cancellations, we'll just call it that for now, that that are happening. But tell me about coming together as this conglomerate and the original idea to be able to do what you're doing like at this time.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Well, you know, God is how. You know, God is how. From quiet moments, you know, that's where the drum line of the leaves come from. Quiet moments, consecration. Thinking about the music, loving the music so much that it makes you quiet. Because you wanna you wanna know what what what does the space desire? What's gonna make music health what keep music healthy? You know, when it's been under siege for quite some time now, you know, just on the onset of oligarchy, music's just been under siege. Ever since there was a peasant, there was a there was a problem with musicians. I mean, you know, that's the deal. So these are like ancient, you know, riddles. And we have to go into our most quiet spaces, and I really do believe that God sent me stuff and harmony. God sent them to me to work out these, to work out these equations together. These equations of community. These communications of, you know, what what people have distilled into one syllable is actually um an exhibition of good sense. Sensing wind, sensing thermal current, sensing uh automobiles going past, all this stuff is going into our languaging that they call so-called jazz. That they give this one syllable because because they haven't gone into a practice of good sense, right? Speaking out of ignorance, to name somebody else's stuff just one syllable. I mean to me, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

A little more from the Bible Girls at Wing Grease Festival. Here's more from Georgia Ann Muldrum.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Um, and so in loving the music that has raised me is my first language. This is my home basis music. Um in my quest for understanding the song of the creator, and understanding that life is just like one vowel of the creator. You know, there's so many more songs we have yet to hear, you know, but the collective life of all the universe is like one vowel, right? So I want to know more about it. You know? And what happens is this desire for unity. I want my whole life to be one thing. And um and I think that that clashes with a world that wants to compartmentalize and genrificate and gentrify and colonize and all these things. And like, you know, we got another thing coming if if the spirit of music itself is going to just happily go along with neo colonial agenda, like they're just gonna be walking hand in hand. I think we're in a different time right now. We're in a time of increased prayer. You know, people are really living from their heart right now, but I really do firmly believe that it's been in moments that are very quiet, that I can hear, you know, you know, musical ideas about community, the song of community.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Standing in the middle of the crowd, singing along with Esperanza Spaulding at the conclusion of the Wind Grease Festival.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

And as I'm getting notes, more notes come on the page. There's people, there's laughter, there's conversation. I see Yusuf, I see irony. I hope that answers the question. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

Thank you. Certainly, nothing in this music comes easy from being on an instrument to producing a thing as lofty as a festival. And I first met Georgia, who to me embodies an artist that is super radically independent, who has chosen at times a harder path because it rung more true to her and to her art practice and to her soul. And we met actually over the phone. And I and when we first we had a long conversation over the phone, and I remember feeling it feeling like I had met her before. And there was a there was a point where she she just kept on barring up. There were so many bars. And at one point, she said, she said a cat just came up to me, and cats can smell prayer. And there were a lot of promises I felt like that we made to each other in that phone call, and and and that first culminated, the first iteration was uh in my winter festival of last year. And Georgia uh closed it out with with Audre Monet on Double Bill at Lodge Room, and um a lot of wingries to me emerges out of conversations that I was having with Georgia about Los Angeles, about the nature of counter program, about what it means to be in concert. And so, even to what we're talking about before, a concert is the before and the after. And that's what this has been is that there's not necessarily a beginning or an end. And so those constructs can can can can dissolve and we can just be together, and that that's where the stage gets deconstructed in the like the not having to leave right away, or in the coming early just to hang. You know, and so um with Windgrease uh it was um I see it my as my role as a producer in this music to show people not that it's easy, but that it's possible through a clarity of conviction and of promise that I make to them. And so that's for the Windgrease Festival, it's a simple question. How about a windgrease festival?

SPEAKER_02 15:19

And that's why I'm gonna go a little volunteer blue as you dig from saxophonist Logan Richardson's Horn Summit of Dreams with Theodris Avery, Ralph Moore, Steve Lehman, and Benny Maupin.

SPEAKER_04 15:55

Because of the clarity of conviction that no matter what the obstacles are financially, logistically, um, that we can we can surpass it with with teamwork and with the strength of the community members that hold us up and the ancestors that hold us up. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 16:13

We also began speaking on the phone. Um and then speaking a lot about liveness. I had an exhibition over at Redcat that was centered around deconstructing the idea of what an exhibition is and giving it a space where there was a living dance class with an instructor. And Georgia was one of the only people from my homies who came to the class and happened to have taken a class with Eartha Kitt and the instructor Bernard Brown when they were kids growing up in LA. It shows like LA has this eerie way, especially for the people who have grown up here and come through a lot of the strange, unspoken rituals that happen to you if you grow up here, of like bringing people back into conference and into concert in ways that can only be, you know, it's like a strange serendipity about like the other side of Hollywood is like the kids who decided to like not follow that path, but we're also not taken away from the arts and like where we fit into the culture here, but we do fit in. But so one of the things that I care a lot about is spaces like the one we're in and holding archives. So half the exhibition was just about archiving the lives of um the musicians who have passed away through industry, basically, through too young or you know, indescribably um Whitney Michael, like the casualties of fame and how to not become them, but also how to look at that language and how to look at someone like Catherine Dunham, this beautiful dancer who codified the language of the body, and create an archive of things that people try to forget. And so this space was to do that with poetry, and then this having access to this space because we care about archiving allows us to have a festival where we can also sit in a room with a bunch of books that don't exist anywhere else and have the festival be devoted to an archive for Billy Higgins and to finding his poetry book that there's three copies of that Youssef found on you know, like a collection of um fidelities, I guess, to like thinking about things that no one in in this town specifically enjoys thinking about because they're on the margins of like what would threaten the existence of a Hollywood or a you know the oligarchs of the music industry.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Um yeah. So I think I think the the word archive and the nature of it can be intimidating. It can feel like, well, how could I possibly do an archive? I could never get every photograph of such and such or every collect every book. But archives are just about entry points and about like catching on to narratives that attract you and and and kind of displaying them out for people to find their own um personality within them or for their own meaning within them. And that that's what I felt has been happening here when we when when Georgia uh when we were first talking about the Wing Grease Festival, I remember I came over to her house for the first time and I brought a scroll. I for whatever reason I have to bring a scroll to her house, and we laid out this giant scroll, and what I'm realizing now is that that scroll was for the next 50 wing greases. Yeah, it wasn't for this first wing grease because you can't, and that's how it's the same thing as for our archive or festival. You can't necessarily cram everything into one, even though you want to. The instinct is there.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Because you want to be almost maximalist sometimes, but but but um here we're just we're just kind of it's just a beginning, and so I think there's that humility there to know that there's just like so much that we want to do, and time in its own way, sometimes uh directs you.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Well, as the sounds of the inaugural Windrease Festival are well into the ether, I'm still reveling in the spirit and excitement that I experienced. It was not to be missed. Mm-mm. And if you're just now finding out about it, put a note on your calendar for next year to be in the Los Angeles area. This inaugural event has made several new and endearing memories. Let's move to another conversation about community in concert. This time centered around collecting records, that's right. If you're a veteran vinyl collector or a newbie, you'll want to check out vinylcon. It happens August 22nd and 23rd here in Los Angeles. For a list of dates in other cities and for more details on the upcoming Los Angeles show, visit vinylcon.com. Here's a brief chat with Kobe Waldvogel, founder of VinylCon. I asked Kobe, why are people returning to vinyl?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Great question. Um, I think it's I personally think it's really just a kind of natural reaction to just everything getting digital and going away from it in the first place. People kind of realize, like, wait a minute, we kinda missed something. And I think especially next generation's getting like they're they're more interested in that physical connection. Um especially as they like discover artists. It's like real important to have that physical connection with their favorite artists, contemporary artists, and I think that just leads into more people collecting and more people wanting physical media and then you know the the ownership piece I think is huge too. Just like people have been around long enough to see the streaming services, bring stuff in, get rid of stuff, disappear. So they're like, well, maybe I should just own this.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

I've seen you quoted uh as saying, you know, vinyl collecting can be uh a rather solitary exercise. How did you land on creating vinylcon and what were your goals for making this not just your average record fair?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah, so I've been doing record fairs. Uh the first one was 2021 in uh Colorado. Uh that one's called Rocky Mountain Record Show, still still going here in Denver. Um I don't know, I just kind of felt like the record show concept wasn't seeing necessarily the same audience as like I'd go to the record store downtown on the weekend and see like younger kids and like you know people that I didn't see when I went to these the record fair. So it's kind of work back from like how do we get kind of like everyone to come to a record fair, not just like the more diehard collectors that you know like were in the know about them. So, you know, I think it kind of just worked backwards from there, modernize marketing, you know, a little bit more of like a make it a uh can't miss event is kind of the idea behind it.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

And what goes into your curation of um DJs who spin during the event? That's an added component that um a lot of record fairs, you know, don't always have.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

So we actually, you know, the vinyl DJ component of the show was from the very first one very important part. Um since we launched in Philadelphia, we've been working with uh internationally known DJ Scheme Richards, who's our guy who kind of handles the curation of the DJs, so making sure we're getting uh people with really deep selections that are also kind of attached to the collecting community when we can, and just we've been really blessed to have incredible uh DJs at the last shows, especially in LA.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

For sure. And how many cities are you in now nationwide? We've done six cities. Is there any feedback that you give to the vendors there, or in general, I guess do you see pricing becoming more affordable going forward, or is it just kind of any man's game at this point?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

I mean, that's a that's a million-dollar question. Uh you know, our shows feature such a wide variety of vendors that it's tough to just like paint it all with one brush. Like, we got a hundred different vendors. Some of them are like collectors that are maybe a little bit more attached to their records that are just like, you know, coming out, they're sell a few things. But then we have our pros that, you know, are buying big collections and then coming to the show to, you know, they're coming to sell. So, you know, those guys will have better prices on records, they're more way more likely to be able to do like a package deal, you know, if you buy a handful of things, get a better price. Um, but I think by and large at our shows you'll find better prices than you find online for most of our members. I think that's kind of the benchmark. It's like, can we price this stuff better than online and then also have rare stuff that's even not available online? Plus, I think like sometimes it's tough online just because it's so vast that like when you actually see the thing in front of you, you're like, okay, yeah, that's that's the one. Plus, there's also just the the discovery and the knowledge sharing at the show that you know our vendors are all experts in their own way. Some even have you know specific genres or niches that they're super, super knowledgeable about. So you might walk in looking for one thing, but you meet someone, they tell you about something else sounds like something you're into, and you walk away with something you never even heard of. So I think that's that's something that might not happen as much online that happens, you know, multiple times a day at the show. I I think, you know, even just to go back to your other question about pricing and you know bringing in the affordability of records, I think is gonna be real important. You know, it seems like I mean, I'll be, I don't buy a ton of brand new records, Greg. I'll be honest. I'm you know looking at a lot more of the used and vintage stuff myself, but you know, it seems like it's kind of hit a point where people are kind of pushing back a little bit. And, you know, from what I know of pressing plants in that industry, like, whereas what was it, four years ago, people were like, oh my god, there's no capacity, like year-long waits. I think that that's kind of subsided a little and we're getting a little bit closer to the demand meeting uh the supply for new vinyl. So that's good, and maybe that'll bring bring the prices down a little bit. But I mean, I'm hoping that you know, all these younger folks that are getting into new records that they continue to buy new records, but also make sure they make that transition into the vintage side of things, and you know, I think that that that part of collecting's never-ending and super fun.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

For sure, for sure. So let's take, for instance, there's a first-time goer to vinyl con. Um, when you first hit that room, it can be overwhelming. You feel joy, but it's like, oh my god, there's so much of it. How would you recommend they navigate the maze, if you will?

SPEAKER_01 28:23

I've been asked this before. Um so two things. Uh, we do put out a vendor guide before the show. So, you know, check our website, check our Instagram, and you can find like a list of all the vendors with a little description of what they are selling. So, you know, if you are maybe interested in a certain niche or like genre that's like your main main thing, maybe take a quick look beforehand so you can maybe plan. Oh, I'm gonna hit this vendor first because they match my needs. But if you're more you know of an omnivore, just kind of like into whatever, I would say you could go um just pick a pick a bin that looks interesting and put your head down and dive in. I mean, it's it's overwhelming when you look up too much at like how big the room is. So I think that that um just pick a bin and start digging and see where you end up.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Again, this is another sound, your podcast from K Jazz. Thanks to Minaret Records, Myths Science, and Georgia Ann Muldrow, thanks also to Leah Consialdi at Champaign House Media, our theme song and interstitial music is made by No Stress. I'm the Watchman Greg Bryant, producer of Another Sound and host of Another Sound. Thank you for being you, and we'll see you again real soon.