Press Room

By Don Wilcock

Two days before he plays Carnegie Hall and a week after doing several
dates with renowned banjo player Bela Fleck’s Africa Project, African
artist Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba will play Troy’s
Sanctuary for Independent Media next Wednesday, March 24.

Bassekou plays an ngoni, a small stringed instrument that is an
ancestor of the banjo. The ngoni was the instrument of choice for the
griots (teachers) of Malli since ancient times and was threatened with
extinction until Bassekou stood up, put a strap on it and began
playing it with the same abandon as an American rocker.

His innovative updating of this instrument can be heard on his Speak
Fula CD just released by SubPop, the label that introduced Nirvana,
Soundgarden and Mudhoney to the world.

Bassekou is a world music darling who has jammed with Bono from U2,
Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal. This unusual date at the intimate
Sanctuary in Troy is part of a 47-date North American tour running
through April.

By Phil Drew

Affixed to the exterior of a building on State Street in downtown 
Troy, within sight of the YWCA building on First Street, is a simple 
bronze plaque paying tribute to an event in local history that, this 
being Black History Month, deserves to be better recognized.

A big dose of exposure comes this week with a pair of public events 
marking publication of a new book, and the opening of an exhibition of 
paintings, chronicling the rescue 150 years ago of Charles Nalle by a 
riotous mob preventing the forcible return of a fugitive slave on the 
eve of the Civil War.

"There is a lot of history under our feet here in Troy," says Scott 
Christianson, historian, author and Sand Lake resident. "This is a 
part of history in Troy and Watervliet that really bears notice. . It 
was an act of civil disobedience to stand up and act in violation of 
the law, although I do believe in this instance it was the law that 
was illegal."

By Don Wilcock

Joe Abbey is a white, self-proclaimed agnostic who also happens to be the lead guitarist in an otherwise all African American regional gospel group, The Heavenly Echoes.

Far from being the infidel in a field of holy men, Abbey fits right in with his band of proselytizers who struggle like all of us to keep their act together in a world gone mad. Joe also is a middle-aged RPI graduate who loves the Rolling Stones and fronts a blues band called JV and The Cutters.

It is Joe’s blues band that will share the stage with Thomasina Winslow and Mother Judge on Friday as part of Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Live From Lock One concert series.

By Elizabeth Floyd Mair

In the feature film "My Suicide: A Self-Inflicted Comedy," a teenage boy announces in media class that he plans to kill himself on camera as his final project. Some classmates cheer him on and encourage him to end it all, while others try to talk him out of it, and still others seek him out as a kindred spirit. His parents send him to one counselor after another, but most of the advice he receives from adults feels like cliched catchphrases and has little impact.  Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, the film finds its comedy -- dark comedy, to be sure -- in the story of the boy's inner journey as he grapples with the kinds of existential questions teenagers deal with as part of growing up.

Director David Lee Miller said recently by phone from his studio in California that the film isn't really about suicide. "Hitchcock always talked about the McGuffin. It's not necessarily the subject of the picture; it's what the picture revolves around. I do not consider our movie to be a suicide movie. Our film's a narrative story about the teen condition."

By Bob Goepfert

The Sanctuary for Independent Media has a curious name that makes the organization sound a bit spiritual and at the same time a bit rebellious.

That is appropriate as the not-for-profit is located in an old church at 3361 Sixth Ave. in Troy.

Too, the films, performances in the field of music and dance, poetry readings and exhibits of visual artists presented at the Sanctuary are usually outside the mainstream and tend to have political points of view.

The Sanctuary defines itself as "a telecommunication production facility dedicated to community media arts." To support this aspect of its mission, they offers facilities and classes that help people understand the techniques of cutting edge media technology.

By Tom Keyser

Robert Hillary King spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement at the notorious Angola state prison in Louisiana. As a member of the Black Panther Party, he and two party members became nationally known as the Angola 3 — political prisoners who spent decades in solitary confinement for, they contend, organizing prisoners to improve conditions.

King, 66, will speak Friday at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy in support of his book, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King" (PM Press, 224 pages, $24.95).

After becoming a Black Panther in prison and organizing inmates, according to the book's dust jacket, "prison authorities beat him, starved him and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a 6-by-9-foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free."

By Danielle Furfaro

The three Iraqi teenage girls show up at the library wearing red and black. The red, they explain, symbolizes the blood of dead Iraqis. The black represents the tears and sadness of their country.

Shahad Jassim, 18, Wead Jassim, 16, and Tethkar Ahmad, 15, are refugees.

They fled their war-torn country with their families within the past two years. They fled the scourge of dead bodies in the streets and bombed-out buildings. They fled what they felt would be their own certain deaths.

Now living in Albany, they aim to use art to educate the world about atrocities happening in Iraq and to express their hopes for peace. When they speak about their homeland, they can't help but cry. Their art gives them a voice, and it seems to help. At least a little.

‘Upstate Girl’ finds voice in photography

By Bob Goepfert The Record

Brenda Ann Kenneally has an addictive personality. That addiction has produced "Upstate Girls: What Became of the Collar City," which opens Saturday at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 Sixth Ave. in Lansingburgh. It is a photographic study of six young women living in North Troy. The images are stark, real and disturbing as they chronicle the lives of the powerless and disenfranchised. Though fraught with social, political and economic implications, the images are visually hypnotizing as they capture the lives of innocence lost.

Kenneally refers to herself as New York Times Magazine’s "photographer of choice when it comes to capturing images of kids living in poverty." Her first assignment for the magazine was in 2003 when she was asked to supply pictures for a series written by her friend Adrian Nicole Leblanc titled "Random Family." It was a work about neglected, unsupervised kids living on the streets of New York City. Her work was so successful, in 2006, the Times sent her to New Orleans to portray the plight of displaced children trying to survive after Katrina. An entire issue of the New York Times Magazine was devoted to that work.

Exhibit looks at women in poverty
By Sara Foss

TROY — A young woman named Dana Aftab wanders through a cramped hallway, gazing at blank white walls that will soon be covered with pictures. Dozens of photographs lie on the floor.

“Brenda, how can I help you?” Aftab asks.

Without hesitation, Brenda Ann Kenneally replies, “Hang up your photos.”

“Is there any specific order you want?” Aftab asks.

“However you want,” Kenneally tells her. “It’s your life.”

Aftab takes a plastic sleeve filled with photographs and begins tacking them to the wall. An Albany native who now lives in Brooklyn, Kenneally has spent the past five years photographing Aftab, her sisters and mother and other women who live in Troy. She has taken hundreds of pictures of birthday parties and births and homecomings from prison.

“Upstate Girls,” an exhibit featuring many of these photographs, will open Saturday in the Troy-based Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Underground Gallery; an opening reception will be held at 6 p.m. on Feb. 21.

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