Artists 2016: e.poesie

El Congo Allen

El Congo Allen (c) Ramiro de Santiago Marquez

Daniel Allen Oberto (born in Holguin, Cuba, in 1979) alias El Congo Allen started playing the trumpet when he was nine. His style combines classical jazz, the art of improvisation and experiments with Afro-Cuban and electronic sounds. He studied at the Holguin conservatory and in Havana and has shared the stage with such artists as Lauryn Hill, UB40, Sargento Garcia, Max Herre, Jean Paul, Marilyn Manson and Eric Clapton. As a member of various bands he has played at festivals throughout Europe such as Rock am Ring in Germany, Sunsplash, Jazz à Juan in France and the Sudoeste Festival in Portugal with such acts as Patrice, Shashamani, Kabu Kabu and Aloe Blacc. His collaboration with the Jimi Tenor Band began in 2006. They have toured throughout Europe, and in 2008 released the album 4th Dimension, which was followed in 2009 by Inspiration Information 4 with Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen. In 2010 El Congo Allen recorded the album 1884 in Berlin. Since 2011 he and Regis Molina have been the duo Machete Horns.

Ryo Fujimoto

Ryo Fujimoto

Ryo Fujimoto (born in Kobe, Japan, in 1987) is a beatboxer and electronic musician also known as ‘Humanelectro’. His performances merge genres such as beatbox and vocal percussion. Synthesizers meet loops with hardware controllers like the Akai APC40 or Leap Motion, based on body movements. Fujimoto, the swirling dervish ‘Humanelectro’ lived and worked in Berlin from 2011 to 2015, before embarking on  his Ryo Fujimoto Asia Tour and Ryo Fujimoto World Tour of thirty cities in six countries.

Julián Herbert

Julián Herbert (born in Acapulco in 1971) is a poet and prose writer and is the composer and singer with the rock band Madrastras. He lives in Saltillo, Mexico, and his preferred place to write is in the desert. In his readings, Herbert works with videos, sounds and installations, transporting the poetry into the visual, taking language and imagery far beyond known limits. Julián Herbert is one of the youngest members of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and collaborates with the El Taller de la Caballeriza artists group.

Publications:
Jesus liebt dich nicht/Cristonoteama. Verlagshaus Johannes CS Frank, now Verlagshaus Berlin 2014
Bisel. Impronta Casa Editora 2014
Cocaína. Almuzara 2006
Kubla Khan. Era 2005
Unmundoinfiel. Joaquín Mortiz 2004
Autorretrato a los 27. Eloísa Cartonera 2003
La resistencia. Filo de caballos 2003

Awards:
Premio de Novela Elena Poniatowska 2012
Premio Jaén de Novela Inédita 2011
Premio Nacional de Cuento Juan José Arreola 2006
Premio Nacional de Literatura Gilberto Owen 2003

Jessie Kleemann

Jessie Kleemann (born in Upernavik, Greenland in 1959) is a poet, dancer and video and performance artist who lives and works in Copenhagen. Her poems were first published in the collection Taallat in 1997, and bring motifs from Eskimo traditions into the globalised present. Mystical nature imagery collides with real social problems, sea-mothers with Brigitte Bardot, dog sledges with 4x4 cars. Thus Kleemann’s poetry, written in Greenlandic and Danish brings the Eskimos’ world of imagery up to date for the 21st Century. She seeks inheritance and identity in the broken linguistic material of the post-modern and creates texts in which the beautiful and the ugly do not rule each other out.
After training as a lithographer, Jessie Kleemann studied at the Tuukkaq Theatre in Fjaltring, Jutland in 1978-1979, and from 1984 to 1991 she was the director of the School of Art in Nuuk. She established a poetry festival in Greenland, has written film scripts and has had her own TV show. She has developed a ‘body art’ based on traditional masks and rituals for her provocative performances, using her own body as a living canvas. From the poems Kleemann has read for lyrikline.org, the artist Swoon (Marc Neys) has created a video-poem journey taking viewers into the northern reaches of Greenland.

Publications (selection):
Poem for video.Performance/Video 2001-2003
Taallat. Digte. Poems. Fisker & Shou 1997
Spirit Hosts Join the Elements. Performance/Video 1991-1993
Kinaasunga (Who this who am I).Performance/Video 1988-1989

Kelvin Sholar

Kelvin Sholar (c) David Beecroft

Kelvin Sholar (Born in Detroit in 1973) is a pianist, composer and bandleader known for crossing musical boundaries. He combines jazz with classical and soul with electronic. In 2009, Artforum International placed him in the Top Ten music acts in the world. Sholar has appeared at international festivals and won a Grammy. He has played with Stevie Wonder and had has taken the stage with the New York City Ballet and Carl Craig’s Innerzone Orchestra. Spike Lee has documented a few of the stages of his life in a film. Sholar has taught at various schools and universities including the Cité de la Musique (Marseille), the Kyo Rei Hall (Tokyo) and Columbia University (New York). He currently lives and works in Berlin.

Discography:
Jaimeo Brown: Transcendence. Motéma Music 2013
Unity6: ROT.Jazz Werkstatt 145, 2013
Kelvin Sholar: New Detroit. Kasmavtsu Music 2013
LCD Soundsystem: Someone Great. Sound of Silver 2007

Awards (selection):
Best of Music (#8 of 10)/Artforum International 2009
IAJE Outstanding Service to Jazz Education 2005
Winner of Michigan Bach Festival Competition 1990

Jimi Tenor

Jimi Tenor (c) Kuusijarvi

´Jimi Tenor (born in Lahti, Finland in 1965) is a singer-songwriter, composer and electronic musician. His mix of jazz, dance, Afro Beat, Techno and Soul makes him one of the most unique artists in the scene. His song Take Me Baby, now a classic in the Techno scene, stormed the charts in 1994. Tenor’s early work is more electronic; since 1997 he has been more heavily involved with jazz.
After recording a few albums with the Industrial band Jimi Tenor and his Shamans, he left Finland to live in Berlin and New York City. Since 1994 Tenor has been running the Sähkö-Sublabel Puu label which is devoted to the genres House, Easy Listening and Jazz. In 2009 he collaborated with Tony Allen on the album Inspiration Information 4. Today he is also a photographer and short film producer and designs clothes and musical instruments.

Discography:
Cola & Jimmu: Enigmatic. Herakles Records 2013
Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu: Mystery Of Aether. Kindred Spirits 2012
Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu: 4th Dimension. Puu 2009
Jimi Tenor/Tony Allen: Inspiration Information 4. Strut 2009
Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu: Joystone. Ubiquity Records 2007
Jimi Tenor:Utopian Dream. Puu 2001
Jimi Tenor: Out Of Nowhere. Warp Records 2000
Jimi Tenor: Sähkömies. Puu 1994
Jimi Tenor: Europa. Puu 1994
Jimi Tenor and his Shamans: Total Capacity of 216.5 Litres. Euros Records 1988