Internationally acclaimed Alaskan singer/songwriter Libby Roderick will give a concert benefiting the Hurricane Katrina relief fund at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 16, 2005 at Cyrano’s (413 D Street). “Folk Songs and Social Change: The Transformational Power of Singing” is an historical, musical journey through U.S. social change movements through the lens of song. A donation of $10 is suggested.
Folk songs and participatory singing have played central roles in social change movements throughout U.S. history, from anti-slavery efforts to ending child labor to achieving civil rights and more. Please join award-winning singer/songwriter Libby Roderick for a presentation (including singing!) that explores the uses of music in inspiring, uniting, organizing and sustaining our forebears as they struggled for peace and justice for all.
Libby’s recent CNN special segment (see story below) will be shown during the evening. Call 274-2599 for information. Libby’s website is www.libbyroderick.com.
LIBBY RODERICK on CNN
Award-winning Alaskan singer/songwriter Libby Roderick and her internationally beloved song “How Could Anyone” were featured on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” a global news show, Thursday, August 19, at 7 pm EST. The segment was subsequently picked up and run by several other CNN national shows and regional affiliates. For instructions on viewing the segment online, see below. The video clip will also be shown at a benefit musical lecture given by Libby on “Folk Songs and Social Change: The Transformational Power of Singing” at Cyrano’s Theater on September 16. See attached flier for details.
A folk classic, "How Could Anyone" has traveled around the globe as a healing anthem; the segment included footage of people all around the country and the world singing the song, including AIDS orphans in Zambia, disabled children and youth in Oregon, women and girls redefining beauty in Maine, cancer survivors in South Carolina, an organization working to prevent sexual assault in Dillingham, Alaska, and children at a Quaker school in Brooklyn, New York. It also featured clips from one of Libby’s concerts in Maine and interviews with her in Anchorage, Alaska. “How Could Anyone” has been recorded by many artists and reprinted in many books, including Hometown by Pulitzer-prize winner Tracy Kidder, and it was sung by thousands at the U.N. Conference in Beijing in 1995.
Libby is an internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter, poet, activist, teacher and lifelong Alaskan. The surprising power and depth of her music and the humor and spontaneity of her performances have attracted large and enthusiastic audiences across the continent and fans all over the world. In March 2004, her musical reach expanded beyond the planet earth, when NASA played her song “Dig Down Deep” on Mars. The song was broadcast by NASA engineers to encourage the robot “Spirit” to dig a trench on the red planet in the hopes of uncovering ancient geological information and signs of water.
Her five recordings have been enormously successful worldwide. The premiere national U.S. folk magazine, Dirty Linen, calls Libby "one of the most compassionate and caring songwriters recording today," and the Worcester Massachussetts Telegraph said Libby "may be the folk music find of the decade!" Australia's Rhythms music magazine calls Libby "a singer-songwriter of compassion and insight" and Ladyslipper Distribution describes her as "original, introspective, poetic, articulate, politically conscious and spiritually inspired."
Libby is well-known as an exhilarating and witty artist who offers a remarkable blend of passionate music, wry humor and incisive commentary on social and personal issues. She is one of 225 world citizens (including the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Ursula LeGuin) whose writing was included in a book called Prayers for a Thousand Years: Inspiration from Leaders and Visionaries Around the World. In 1998, Libby was a finalist for the national Green Dove Award which honors people whose work links creativity, psychology and ecology, and the Alaska Woman of Achievement Award for contributions to her home state; that year, she sang also sang the opening invocation for Coretta Scott King in Washington D.C.
Libby is a board member of Musicians United to Sustain the Earth, which produces recordings to raise money for wilderness preservation in the U.S., and she conducts workshops on a range of topics for universities and organizations nationwide and serves as a life and vocal coach for a number of individuals.
Libby was born and raised in Anchorage, where she still lives part of the time. She graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale University in American Studies, and has worked as a TV and print news reporter, radio consultant, nuclear weapons educator and writer on Alaska Native issues.
INSTRUCTIONS for VIEWING THE VIDEO CLIP “FROM ALASKA TO THE WORLD”
To view the segment, please visit www.cnn.com/video/SHOWBIZ, find the WATCH FREE VIDEOS window, and click on the Browse/Search link. This should take you to a list of video clips. Click on the “2” link which will take you to the second page on the list. Click on “From Alaska to the World”. This should allow you to view the videoclip (click on the “play” button, the arrow pointing to the right, to start the video). You will first have to suffer through at least one or two ads, and then be able to view the 5 minute clip.
