New Voices Sing On


by WILLIAM L. ELLIS, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Music, Saint Michael’s College, & curator of New Voices


Think music in Burlington and you might not conjure Korean drums, Karen lullabies, or the Guinean balafon. Yet those sounds and more have become as essential to the warp and weft of local musical culture as jam bands and jazz.


Welcome to New Voices, the Flynn Center’s showcase of world musical traditions nestled in and around the Queen City. The series—which debuted in the Flynn’s 2016-2017 season—exists to celebrate the diasporic music making of regional acts and communities, many with an immigrant or refugee background. Their vibrant musical expressions have taken root in our welcoming city to the extent that transplanted customs now coexist, adapt, and find new expressive meaning. Listen and you’ll hear more than compelling melodies and rhythms. You’ll hear the harmony borne of personal journeys, histories, hope, and yearning, a song of infinite variation that has led each artist to the Green Mountain State.


Costa Rican musician Maiz Vargas Sandoval, a New Voices headliner this season, understands this well and knows that when and wherever he performs, he also sows the seeds of diversity, tolerance, and acceptance. “For me, to be here, I am representing the Latino community, but I am also representing the immigrant community. [When] I have a microphone in front of me, I see it as an opportunity to spread consciousness and awareness. Music is the right language for it.”


This coming season of New Voices—all in FlynnSpace—promises an exciting and distinct array of global grooves brought to you by seven wonderful Burlington-affiliated acts with musical and cultural roots in Burma, Guinea, Senegal, Ghana, Korea, Costa Rica, Netherlands, and Somalia.


The first concert—Saturday, November 17—is a “Night of Drums.” Specifically, it juxtaposes the drumming traditions of Ghana and Korea. The former comes by way of the Five Town All-Stars, a virtuosic ensemble led by drum master Victor Koblavi Dogah, while the latter, Sori Mori is a female troupe associated with the Green Mountain Korean Cultural School of Essex, who perform in the samul nori folk style.


The second concert—From Burman to Balafon on Saturday, February 23 —showcases the universal appeal of a beautiful melody. Two young female vocalists billed as the Karen Singers of Vermont came to Vermont from Myanmar via Thailand and will open with songs old and new, including lullabies of their Karen heritage. Headlining will be Sabouyouma, an emerging afrofunk-tinged band led by Ousmane Camara, an enthralling Guinean master of the balafon (wooden xylophone).


The final New Voices concert—a “World Party” on Saturday, April 6— opens with the stand-up humor of comedian/poet/rapper Abow Ibrahim, whose family fled Somalia to the Kenyan refugee camp, Kakuma, before coming to the United States. Now, he finds humor in his life story and jokes about the odyssey. “We are all immigrants to America,” he says with a smile. Second on the bill is Es-K, a Netherlands-born, American hip-hop/downtempo producer who makes sophisticated, chill-style beats with a decided international flavor. Closing the series is the aforementioned Maiz Vargas Sandoval, whose band, Mal Maiz, is a jubilant good time united by the musical travels of their frontman, who came from a Costa Rican family of musicians and absorbed other styles and genres living abroad throughout Latin America. The result is “a big melting pot,” Sandoval says, “of all the rhythms from the Caribbean and Central America.”


Take a step back and “melting pot” best describes New Voices as well, an exciting Flynn series where the world rhythms of our new American friends and neighbors have reset the heartbeat of Burlington.


New Voices Series Partner VPR 6 | MARQUEE September, October, November


From left to right: Sori Mori, Karen singers, Ousmane Camara, Abow Ibrahim, Maiz Vargas Sandoval, Es-K.


Below Victor Koblavi Dogah.


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