CalArts Podcasts

Chad Hamill/ čnaq'ymi (Music BFA 93; MFA 97 ) is the Executive Director for Indigenous Arts and Expression and Senior Advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs at CalArts. During the 2021-22 academic year, Chad was named the inaugural CalArts Presidential IDEA Fellow. Chad led the effort to establish a partnership between CalArts and the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA). He has also developed and taught the first Indigenous Studies and Native arts course in CalArts history, as well as organized numerous cultural events across the CalArts community.

Chad previously served as chair of the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies and Vice President of Native American Initiatives at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff. While at NAU, where he began teaching in 2007, Chad led innovative and impactful initiatives focused on a variety of areas, including tribal leadership, K-12 engagement with Native-serving schools, global Indigenous partnerships, wifi infrastructure on Native lands, and environmental sustainability in Indian Country.

Chad received his BFA in World Music Performance and his MFA in North Indian Classical Music from CalArts and went on to earn his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Colorado.

A descendant of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, Chad is the co-founder of the Spokane Language House, a nonprofit tribal organization focused on language revitalization.

Chad’s research and publications focus on music and sovereignty, music and spirituality, Indigenous ecological knowledge, performative scholarship, and the Indigenization / decolonization of academic structures.

His book, Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau (OSU Press), explores song as a vehicle for spiritual power among tribes of the interior Northwest. Chad continues to write, record, and perform musical works centered on Spokane ways of knowing and being in the world.

Learn more

• To learn more about Chad Hamill’s music and scholarship, and to listen to his music and watch him perform, visit motherearthsongs.com.
• Learn more about qey’s (Dream) Scholarship for Indigenous Artists, established by Chad, which provides full tuition support for students at CalArts.
• Learn more about Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) at CalArts.
• Learn more about CalArts’ Land Acknowledgment.

Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and performed by Socks Whitmore (Music BFA 20). Learn more about their work at sockswhitmore.com.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.

Launched in 1978, The World Music Festival has its roots in CalArts’ World Music program in the Herb Alpert School of Music. As we prepare for the The 2024 World Music Festival in April, we are joined by the co-directors of the World Music Program specialization, Yeko Ladzekpo-Cole and Andrew Grueschow, who talk about the history of the World Music Festival, how it has evolved, and what we can expect for 2024.

• Watch to learn more about the 2024 World Music Festival, April 26 - 28.

The intro music used in this episode is titled “Bamaya”
The outro music used in this episode is titled "Jera”
These live performances were recorded in Accra, Ghana. Produced by retired CalArts faculty, Kobla Ladzekpo, under his record label Zadonu Records (copyright 2001) Co-produced by Andrew Grueschow.

"Bamaya" is danced by men dressed as women. This tradition began as a way to please the gods so they would bring rain.

"Jera" is music that is sometimes performed at large funerals. The dance that accompanies it is not very common.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.

24700 presents Radical Practice a special podcast series: a podcast about finding growth and agency in design practice. In each episode, current CalArts Graphic Design students interview program alumnae to discuss how they have defined success for themselves and how their education might have played a role.

For more information: https://radicalpractice.calarts.edu/

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.

We talk with Casey Baden and Minga Opazo, co-founders of Textile Resource LA and current residents at the CalArts REEF Residency.

You can learn more about Casey Baden at caseybaden.com

You can learn more about Minga Opazo at mingaopazo.com

For more information about Baden and Opazo’s Textile Resource LA project, visit textileresourcela.com

For more information about Baden’s Full Service project, visit fullservicearts.com

Watch Baden and Opazo’s Craft Contemporary conversation here.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.

The REEF Residency is a collaboration between the School of Critical Studies, School of Film/Video, and School of Art. Learn more about the REEF Residency.

In this episode, we speak with 2022 REEF Residents, Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata. Their exhibition, Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics, opened at The REEF Los Angeles, June 24–July 24, 2022. Tense Renderings interrogates the motivations, conditions, and limitations of maps and mapmaking. The range of works include axonometric projection drawing; feminist, communally-woven textile; speculative sea and space colonization; and interventions into legal language delineating exclusion and belonging.

Tense Renderings features 14 artists across time zones and disciplines: Jumanah Abbas, C. Bain, Amy Chiao, Natan Diacon-Furtado, Jen D’Mello, Alexsa Durrans, Christine Imperial, sj kim-ryu, Wesley Larios, Julia Saenz Lorduy, Sonya Merutka, Amanda Teixeira, Sarah Sophia Yanni, and Bz Zhang.

View Tense Rendering s

Press:
24700: New Exhibition Interrogates Mapmaking in Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics

Simone Zapata is a poet and educator from San José, CA. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Quarterless Review, Tiny Spoon, Reed Magazine, and The Vassar Review. She serves as Managing Editor for The Beat Within, and as a poetry editor for MAYDAY. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts.

Fía Benitez is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Incorporating research from public archives, works in Root Rot index the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow, with recent solo and group exhibitions at The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include re:connections, water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.
Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and pe

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.