Coming in September

 First Friday Berea 
is excited to announce a unique collaboration with... 

Narissa Bond, singer-songwriter-guitarist 

Many of Narissa Bond's original songs are story songs about the history of her family. One of these songs is about my great-great grandfather who was born a slave and was emancipated at age three. At 17 he went to Berea College paying his tuition with a cow given to him by her great, great, great grandmother. The song is called "The Road to Berea".  
Narissa has won numerous songwriting awards including first place in the Oak Valley Bluegrass Music Festival Songwriting Contest for her song “Celia,” a true story about a young slave girl. Some the issues she has volunteered her time and music to are Virginian's Against Domestic Violence, Marriage Equality in regard to the LGBT community, Fair Housing for Hampton Roads, VA and HIV/Aids prevention and awareness.

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Pati Kele presents 
Kuvebo! West African Drum and Dance Party

Lousiville-based drum ensemble, Pati Kele presents Kuvebo! West African Drum and Dance Party, featuring dancer Hamidou Koivogui. 
Pati Kele Drum Ensemble performs traditional musics of West Africa--especially Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo. They often perform with West African mask, stilt, and acrobatic dancers.  Instrumentation for Pati Kele includes: djembe and dunun drums, gyil xylophones, flutes, shakers, bells, krin slit-drums, and also sing songs in traditional West African languages.

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Land, Water, Food, Story 
presented by Clear Creek Collective

Elements of song, story, spoken word and ceremony will be offered from a longer piece originally devised and presented in the woods of Clear Creek in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  Dozens of artists, musicians & community members in and around the Clear Creek community collaborated to devise a performance that explores our stories and changing connection to land, water and food in Kentucky.  The full performance was presented earlier this summer as a midsummer’s evening of Land, Water, Food, Story on the Clear Creek Festival Grounds in July.  Food accompanying each scene of the performance was sourced from local farmers and foragers and food producers including Lazy Eight Stock Farm, Salamander Springs, Forest Retreats and Clementines Bakery. From the performance flyer…"Land, Water, Food, Story is a performative walk in the woods and masquerade by musicians, dancers, and theatre makers ... where you will enjoy the bounty of our local harvest in a farm-fresh feast ... where you will experience a visceral awakening and celebration of the land, water, food and story of this place ... where we will together have an opportunity to call forth new ways of being in harmony with nature and with one another ... a calling forth of the love & the change necessary within ourselves, our communities and our world ... join us!”

Featured artists will include Mitch Barrett, Carrie Brunk, Bob Martin, Kayla Preston, Robert Rorrer, Mirra Shapiro, and Melody Youngblood as well as Clear Creek fairy-worker-in-residence Nicole Garneau and maybe some special guests from New Orleans for a little taste of bayou-lachian goodness.

The Clear Creek Festival will occur Sept. 4-6, 2015. Tickets and other information is available at www.clearcreekfest.org.
The Clear Creek Festival grounds are an off-the-grid outdoor venue with a natural amphitheater tucked in the wooded foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in northeastern Rockcastle County, about 15 miles from the Berea I-75 exits.  The site’s minimal infrastructure is powered by the sun through a 30-kilowatt solar electric system and fed by two mountain water springs that flow into Clear Creek.  

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First Friday Berea in collaboration with Clear Creek Festival is presented with financial support from:

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