|
||
|
|
|
|
Press Releases | |
March 19, 1999
"Badlands": How Can Native American and White Cultures Meet in Harmony?PBS to Film Mixed Media Effort by Author Melinda C. Porter, Musician Hubert Francis
Contact:
Jane Finalborgo
Joe Dionisio
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081Southampton, NY -- Author Melinda Camber Porter of Sag Harbor and Canadian musician Hubert Francis will give a mixed media presentation titled "Badlands: A Work in Progress," on Friday, April 2 from 4-6 p.m. at Southampton College of Long Island University.
Using words and music, the pair will express how Native American and white cultures can meet in harmony, and the spiritual journey they are taking to understand each other's worlds. The event is free and open to the public.
The presentation will take place in Chancellors Hall, and will be filmed by the Public Broadcasting System for an upcoming program about the Porter/Francis collaboration.
Porter, whose novel about South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, Badlands, received stellar reviews from The New York Times, and Francis, a singer/songwriter who leads the Eagle Feather rock band, are working on an album and a film that tell the Badlands story.
Porter and Francis met in 1997 at Lincoln Center, where the latter was performing. He was stunned by her novel Badlands and felt it had the power to act as a healing work for Native Americans. He was inspired to write a song with her called "Badlands," which is on his new JUNO Award-nominated album Message From a Drum.
Porter is a novelist, painter, poet, journalist, playwright and Oxford graduate who began her writing career with The Times of London. An acclaimed documentary on her writing and painting, The Art of Love, airs regularly on PBS. Her recent paintings are the subject of an upcoming television documentary on the Bravo network.
The Aboriginal music group Eagle Feather, formed in 1990, hails from the Big Cove First Nation of Mi'kmaks (also known as Eastern Canada's People of the Dawn). The group's mixture of Mi'kamak chants and contemporary rock sounds results in a unique, mystical combination of South and North American Native Contemporary Aboriginal music. Eagle Feather has entertained audiences in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
Francis, the guitar-playing leader of Eagle Feather, writes songs about life, love, tragedy and triumph in a Native World. Message From a Drum is the group's third album.
For information call Bob Pattison in the Southampton College Humanities Division (516-287-8420), Eagle Feather Band (506-523-4116) or Badlands Productions (212-580-2272).
###