TABLE OF CONTENTS
• A WELCOME FROM FIRSTWORKS
• SMALL ISLAND BIG SONG PROGRAM NOTES
• ABOUT FIRSTWORKS
• SPONSOR CREDITS
Photo courtesy of NTCH, photo by Gelée Lai
Welcome from the Executive Artistic Director of FirstWorks
The incredible depth and artistry of FirstWorks’ residency with Small Island Big Song represents our past, present and future. The origins of FirstWorks are in partnerships which have blossomed, developing trust and overcoming challenges for 20 years. Remembering our beginning in 2004 brings memories of a very different city and a very different arts landscape from which so very much has grown.
We are propelled by the vision, passion and generosity of artists – and rejoice with the Small Island Big Song project and all who have contributed to the storytelling, music and cinematic beauty that has come together over its multi-year creation period. This epic commitment to an artistic platform championing environmental awareness began with the creative spark of its two founding producers: BaoBao Chen (Taiwan) and Tim Cole (Australia), along with an ensemble of incredible artists.
Our Rhode Island residency week with Small Island Big Song was developed by the dedicated cultural workers at FirstWorks and Program Director Suzanne Kim, an inspired advocate for this project. Together, the FirstWorks team has developed workshops and performances for students across the state, conversations with our partners at Brown Arts Institute, space to highlight tremendous Indigenous voices from the Tomaquag Museum, and more. Live performance is at the heart of FirstWorks. Tonight’s performance at The Strand is surrounded by a constellation of activities and events that extend the impact of the arts far beyond the stage.
2024 and our Global Journeys theme marks our 20th year of connecting art with audiences, and much more than a number. It is a commitment to be an essential partner in our home of Providence, Rhode Island and to the artists and organizations who joined us from across the globe to further this idea. Firsts in the arts can transform a community and the lives within.
Thank you for joining us for the start of our Global Journeys in 2024. Please come celebrate FirstWorks at 20 on May 2nd at the Providence G!
Kathleen Pletcher
Executive Artistic Director and Founder
FirstWorks
More Ways to Engage
We invite you to a FirstWorks Artist Up-Close conversation during tonight’s program intermission with BaoBao Chen and Tim Cole, co-producers of Small Island Big Song.
Visit the merch table in the lobby after the show for DVDs and CD’s, tour merch, and to meet the artists of Small Island Big Song.
Check out the Tomaquag Museum Indigenous Empowerment Center‘s informational table here in the theater to learn more about this important organization.
Small Island Big Song
Small Island Big Song is a music, film and performing arts project uniting the islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean through artistic collaboration, a contemporary and relevant musical statement from a region that shares an ancient seafaring heritage and the impact of our changing sea.
Be prepared to have your view of islander music shattered, as leading artists of the blue continent, the Pacific & Indian oceans unite in a powerful & timely cultural statement, a voice for our changing seas – ‘Our Island’.
Small Island Big Song a collaboration between artists of Island nations drawing from their shared seafaring heritage to unite the Pacific & Indian Oceans. The performance ‘Our Island’ brings together some of the most prominent artists of Taiwan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, and Tahiti, who have made a choice to maintain the cultural voice of their people, to sing in the language, and to play the instruments of their land. These unique lineages mixed with their diverse contemporary styles – roots-reggae, beats, folk & spoken-word, establish a contemporary musical dialogue between cultures, drawing on their ancestral lineage to confront contemporary issues with a hope driven vision of the future. Framed with live visuals filmed across 16 island nations on a 3-year field trip by the project’s co-founders, creating “Beautiful cinematography and incredible music, one coherent, jaw-dropping piece” as described by Rob Schwartz – Billboard.
Motivated by their concerns for the ocean, a couple, Taiwanese theater producer BaoBao Chen and Australian music producer / filmmaker Tim Cole, quit their jobs after hearing the predicted effects of climate change to the oceanic nations, and spent the following eight years recording and filming with over a hundred artists on sixteen island nations, layering up songs from island to island. Outcomes include two award-winning albums, a feature film, impact program, and two world-touring productions.
Music critic Tom Orr has noted in the RootsWorld review “Small Island Big Song sound like one very big, very happy family doing what they do best while helping get the word out on a most serious issue.”
Co-Founders’ Notes
“How can we respond to the issue of our era, our planet’s future as theater and music creators?”
Culture is the framework through which we understand our relationship to our social and physical environments. It is our shared patterns of behavior, interactions, and beliefs. Fluid, ever evolving and whether we are aware of it or not, it is the core of our guiding personal narratives, our sense of self.
Our dominant global culture is failing us. Our planet’s natural ecosystem on which we depend for our very survival, is collapsing around us. The evidence is tangible, lived and indisputable. Yet we fail to respond with the resolve and urgency that nature, that our future generations demand.
Those of the ocean have maintained successful communities on fragile islands for countless generations and their cultural lineage embodies this. Small Island Big Song is an ensemble of such people, artists who against the mainstream have made a choice to sing foremost in the language and maintain the musical sensibilities of their heritage. They are the songkeepers continuing an unbroken cultural lineage back to their first ancestors to step, sleep, die and be born on their homelands. Their music embodies this knowledge, and as with music itself, it is only revealed through movement as it is shared, through your listening it lives.
Some of us will lose our island homes to rising sea levels and all of us are witnessing the death of our reefs and disappearing sea life, it’s soul destroying. Our response is to share that loss in song, supporting each other and you, the listener, but also to celebrate nature and our cultures. We do live in extraordinarily beautiful places and we want to share that, too. We have to, for our island we all share.
–Small Island Big Song co-founders – BaoBao Chen & Tim Cole
ARTIST BIOS
Songwriter & Performer | Sammy – Merina heritage, Madagascar
Sammy followed his passion for Madagascar’s musical heritage by mastering and learning how to make most of Madagascar’s instruments. His efforts came to the notice of the UK’s world music scene as his band ‘Tarika Sammy’ gained international recognition, becoming a regular on major festival stages and being acknowledged as one of the world’s “Best Ten Bands”, alongside U2, by TIME Magazine.
SIBS met Sammy at his house during their inspiring field trips to Madagascar in 2016 & 2017. He’s featured in both albums and concert tours around the world since 2018.
Songwriter & Performer | Aremiti – Tahitian heritage, Tahiti (French Polynesia)
Like the lively uplifting Tahitian rhythm he was named after, Aremiti’s music could have only come from one island, Tahiti. A natural fusion of the island’s cultural mix grounded in his Tahitian heritage, Aremistic’s songs and performances integrate traditional Polynesian instruments and rhythms with reggae, hip-hop, rock, folk and pop sensibilities, often sung in Tahitian, French & English in one song. His recent performances at Aotearoa/New Zealand’s ‘Pasifika festival’ and in Europe and the USA expanded his reputation as a voice for the Pacific Ocean.
Songwriter & Performer | Yuma Pawang – Atayal heritage, Taiwan
Yuma, a member of the Atayal tribe of Taiwan, is a multidisciplinary artist expressing her thoughts on “Atayal,” cultural preservation, transformation, essence, and social equity in film, music, painting and performance. With Taiwan’s respected Minang performance group, she was invited by Indigenous nations of Northern Europe for a cultural exchange. This experience along with studying film performance made her aware of the significance of cultural practice in the context of Atayal life, where written language was historically limited.
Songwriter & Performer | Sam Roem – Wamena heritage, West Papua & Indonesia
Sam Roem is an Australian based performing artist from West Papua. In 2006 with 40 other West Papuans he crossed over 600 miles of open seas to seek political asylum in Australia, sparking a diplomatic crisis. After graduating from Australia’s Dance Academy Sam has pursued a dynamic career in the arts drawing on his unique Papuan heritage, performing at The Sydney Opera House, Womadelaide and BluesFest Byron Bay.
Songwriter & Performer | Richard Mogu – Magi heritage, Papua New Guinea
From the south coast of Papua New Guinea, Richard has been a feature musician in PNG for many years as a musician and producer in both traditional and contemporary styles. He’s a master of traditional instruments including the Kwakumba flute, Garamut drumming, and PNG’s iconic Kundu drums.
Tim and Richard have been long-time collaborators; they met up again during SIBS’s field trip to Papua New Guinea in 2016. He’s featured in both SIBS’s albums and concert world tours.
Songwriter & Performer | Mea Joy Ingram – Motu heritage, Papua New Guinea & Australia
Mea comes from a long line of drummers and dancers. She was taught by her father, master percussionist Airileke Ingram in the tradition of Manus Garamut, Cook Island Pate, and Gabagaba Motu Mavaru. The Garamut drumming of PNG was traditionally an artform dominated by men, however Mea, having just turned 18, represents the new generation of female log drummers emerging from Oceania.
Choreographer & Performer | Mathieu Joseph – Creole heritage, Mauritius
Mathieu has been a professional dancer and choreographer since the age of 14 when he was discovered breakdancing on the suburban streets of Port Louis, Mauritius by renowned choreographer Stephen Bongarçon. Quickly embedding himself in Bongarçon’s SRDance, his dedication earned him the gold medal for dance at “Les Jeux de la Francophonie” in 2009. Leading to a succession of shows and companies, including choreographing “Di Sel”, a tribute to the salt workers of Mauritius which won the “Les Jeux de la Francophonie” in France in 2017.
CO-FOUNDER BIOS
Tim Cole – Australia
Director, Music producer, filmmaker
Cole is an Australian music producer and filmmaker who’s passionate about cross-cultural arts projects. He has produced numerous albums, films and concerts for Australian aboriginal, Torres Strait islander and Pacifica artists including Archie Roach, Telek, and Shellie Morris. He has also toured internationally with Circus Oz for 8 years as theater and sound designer with seasons on Broadway NYC & West End London. He was a senior music producer at CAAMA – Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association before beginning Small Island Big Song. Cole has received a Churchill fellowship and invitations to speak at the United Nations HQ, APAP NYC, and WOMEX.
BaoBao Chen – Taiwan
Producer, Manager
Having produced and managed Small Island Big Song’s two multimedia concert productions, two award-winning albums, documentary, as well as curating world tours across 18 countries in Europe, the USA, Asia and Oceania, BaoBao is one of Taiwan’s most prominent producers of cross-cultural arts projects and an ISPA (International Society for the Performing Arts) fellow 2023-25. A vivid storyteller and fluent in English and Mandarin, she has a social media following of 130K+, and has been invited to speak at TEDx, WOMEX, APAP NYC, Stanford Live, and numerous arts festivals.
SPECIAL GUEST BIOS
Samantha Cullen-Fry – Narragansett
Indigenous Empowerment Center Manager
Samantha Cullen-Fry is the Indigenous Empowerment Center (IEC) Program Manager at Tomaquag Museum. Samantha’s role is to help facilitate relationships, through museum partnerships, that create a catalyst for economic change within the Native Community of Rhode Island. Many of the relationships formed have been with nonprofits in the state of Rhode Island. These partnerships focus on the various areas of interest in the community, including but not limited to theater, community-led initiatives, metalworking, pottery, education, business development, entrepreneurship, fish and wildlife, and many others. Samantha comes from a strong background in sales management. The creation of IEC was a calling for her to get back into the workforce after being a stay at home mom of her two beautiful girls. Her goal is to make a meaningful difference in her community through social justice and activism lens. In her spare time, Samantha enjoys attending Providence basketball games, listening to audiobooks, podcasts. She also enjoys gardening. Samantha is currently attending College Unbound in Providence, RI, obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership and Change.
Lynsea Montanari – Narragansett
IEC Coordinator
Lynsea Montanari is the Indigenous Empowerment Coordinator for the Tomaquag Museum. Lynsea first joined the Museum as a high school intern with the then-new Indigenous Empowerment Program, where she found her passion as an activist-educator. Over a decade of working with the Museum, Lynsea has held the roles of Educator Associate, Museum Educator, and Educator Supervisor, utilizing education as a tool to create change and uplift for and with Indigenous communities. As the Indigenous Empowerment Coordinator, Lynsea will be creating programming for the local Indigenous community, and is especially excited to develop language revitalization resources. Lynsea earned her B.A. in Organizational Leadership and Change from College Unbound. Lynsea is a visual artist, writer, and musician, and uses her artwork to explore what it means to be an Indigenous woman in the 21st century. Tying her art to her activism, Lynsea uses whatever tools she can to put beauty back into the universe: she has written a poetry manuscript about healing; writes and performs her original music; and has presented her visual art across New England. If Lynsea looks familiar, you may have seen her face on the “Still Here” mural located at 32 Custom Street, Providence, RI! In this mural, Lynsea proudly represents her Narragansett community as a modern Indigenous woman.
Nkéke Waupianoohom Harris – Narragansett and Niantic
Indigenous Cultural Artist – Guest Vocalist
“Through traditional arts I tell the stories of my people, the Narragansett and Niantic, first people of Rhode Island.”
Nkéke Waupianoohom Harris resides with parents and six siblings adjacent to tribal reservation lands. A member of the Narragansett Nation, Nkéke is a traditional artist, carrying on stories and teachings as passed down for time immemorial. Nkéke practices visual and performance art, with a passion for obscure pop culture, socio-political activism, art equity, Indigenous visibility, and empowerment. Working to convey the histories of peoples while being a culture bearer, Nkéke is a champion Eastern War, Smoke, and Grass Dancer.
CREDITS
CREATIVE & PRODUCTION TEAM
Co-founder, Producer, Manager, Cinematography, Stage Manager｜ BaoBao Chen
Co-founder, Artistic Director, Visual Design, Cinematography, FOH Sound Engineer, VJ｜ Tim Cole
Songwriters｜Sammy, Mea Joy Ingram, Yuma Pawang, Aremiti, Mathieu Joseph, Sam Roem, Richard Mogu, Tim Cole
Stage Sound Engineer ｜ Kui Taruzaljum
Tour manager｜Nini Liu
PERFORMERS
Vocals, Ravanne, Calabash, Marravan, Triangle, Dance｜ Mathieu Joseph
Vocals, Kabosy, Jejy, Valiha, Sodina, Garamut, shakers, Dance｜ Sammy
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps, Warup, Conch, Bass, Kwakunba｜Richard Mogu
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps, Warup, Dance｜Sam Roem
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps, Warup, Ukulele｜Mea Joy Ingram
Vocals, Jawharp, Flute｜Yuma Pawang
Vocals, Ukulele, To’ere, Ihara, Vivo (nose flute), Pahu｜Aremiti
Guest Vocals | Nkéke Waupianoohom Harris
Feature Film
“The most important music documentary you will see this year.” beat magazine Australia
Filmed over three years on 16 Island nations across the Pacific & Indian Oceans, this grassroots musical follows the ocean highways uniting ancient musical lineages. From Madagascar to Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Taiwan to Zenadth Kes/The Torres Strait. A heartfelt plea for environmental awareness and cultural preservation from those on the frontline of the climate crisis.
Album
First Album “Small Island Big Song”
Released independently in 2018, physical CDs and DVD will be available on tour.
Winner – 2019 Songlines Music Award UK – Best Asia/Pacific album
Winner – 2019 The Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Awards) – Album of the Year
Nominated – 2019 Independent Music Awards US – Best Concept Album & Best Music Website
★★★★★ “Simply brilliant!” Seth Jordan – Songlines Magazine
★★★★★ Bruce Elder – Sydney Morning Herald
“One of our favorites, not an usual thing” Lauren Laverne’s Album of the week on BBC Radio 6
“A playful and potent soundtrack. Utterly wonderful!” Stuart Derdeyn – Vancouver Sun
“One coherent jaw dropping piece” Rob Schwartz – Billboard
“…sound like one very big, very happy family doing what they do best while helping get the word out on a most serious issue.” – Tom Orr – RootsWorld
Second Album “Our Island”
Out Jan’28, 2022. Physical CDs will be available on tour.
Listwar Zanset https://youtu.be/CiSNaxMS1PE
Ta’u Tama https://youtu.be/IWg1ryOK2eg
Pinagsanga https://youtu.be/1GAvAFC3NpE
Website
Official website https://www.smallislandbigsong.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/smallislandbigsong
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/smallislandbigsong
IG https://www.instagram.com/small_island_big_song/
Contact
Manager, Producer & Co-founder – BaoBao Chen
baobao@smallislandbigsong.com
Artistic Director, Production & Co-founder – Tim Cole
tim@smallislandbigsong.com
Director of Educational Outreach – Andrew Ressiger
areissiger@gmail.com
Agent – Jeff Laramie of SRO Artists
jlaramie@sroartists.com
ABOUT FIRSTWORKS
FirstWorks is a non-profit based in Providence, Rhode Island whose purpose is to build the cultural, educational and economic vitality of its community by engaging diverse audiences with world-class performing arts and education programs. Now celebrating its 20th year, FirstWorks festivals, performances and programs have attracted more than 750,000 participants since its founding in 2004. During its 2022-23 season, FirstWorks produced over 40 arts education events reaching over 2,400 Rhode Island youth. Virtual Learning online platforms furthered FirstWorks educational reach and have so far engaged over 100,000 views from students, educators, and families. FirstWorks is the founding partner of PVDFest and has collaborated with the City of Providence to curate and produce the City’s free, signature arts celebration since 2015. Embracing collaboration, FirstWorks has fostered over 90 community partnerships across business, social service, government, arts and education sectors. Visit firstworks.org to learn more.
FOR FIRSTWORKS STAFF LIST AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS – CLICK HERE
FUNDING CREDITS
This residency is made possible with support from our EarthWorks sponsors
THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR FIRSTWORKS SEASON SPONSORS – VIEW ALL BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK