OneBeat taps into world groove at Atlantic Center

As part of OneBeat, a cultural exchange program, guest artist Jamey Haddad, an American percussionist, plays with Kenyan drummer Kasiva Mutua at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach

News-Journal/JIM TILLER

By Rick de Yampert

In his native Kampong Thom, Cambodia, musician and singer Young Yorn plays traditional Khmer music on such two-stringed instruments as the tro sou and tro ou, and on such drums as the yike and the skor thon.

After traveling 9,670 miles to the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach to participate in OneBeat, a cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Young quickly discovered a new fan following an impromptu performance.

“Elena (Moon Park, one of OneBeat's directors) said she cried,” Young says during an interview at the ACA. “So I think my music very much connect to people around the world. I think the world is connected by art and music.

“Some music, like Korean song 'Gangnam Style' — I don't understand a word, you know? But people in Cambodia and many countries in the world danced and were happy with the song.

“There are politics problems in some countries, but with songs there is no border. The music — is no border.”

The founders of OneBeat are hoping to break down some of those borders that do exist between nations and cultures. According to the website 1beat.org, the program's goal is to “engender cross-cultural understanding and cooperation through the creation of original, inventive music and people-to-people diplomacy.”

The program launched a year ago by bringing several dozen musicians from around the world to the Atlantic Center, an artist residency facility nestled in coastal scrub land near Turnbull Bay. Following a two week collaborative residency at the ACA, the OneBeat musicians performed local concerts then toured up the East Coast.

This year's program has brought 25 different musicians from 16 countries to the ACA. They include rappers from Egypt and Senegal, an oud player from Nazareth, a pianist from Burma, a singer from India, a beat-boxer from Russia, several U.S. music artists and a South Korean musician who plays such native wind instruments as a piri and saenghwang, and a hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum.

Having rehearsed the past two weeks at the Atlantic Center, on instruments both modern and indigenous, the OneBeat musicians will perform a free concert Saturday at the ACA, then head out on tour to New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities.

“I think we're aware at one point that we're not going to be able to solve the crisis in Syria through playing funky beats here,” says Jeremy Thal, director and co-founder of OneBeat, and the artistic director of an organization called Found Sound Nation. “That's not the kind of diplomacy this can be realistically.”

Found Sound Nation's primary mission, to merge music-making with social engagement, led to the organization landing a two-year, $1.25 million grant from the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to create OneBeat.

“It really is building this international network of people who want to collaborate and who also want to serve their communities,” Thal says, citing first-year OneBeat fellows who went on to launch community-engaged projects in Kenya, Senegal and Chicago.

“Is that a benefit to the average American citizen? I guess that's an open question. America has a very mixed popularity rating in the world,” Thal says, choosing his words carefully.

“So, I think OneBeat is a really good thing and a really good expression of American values, the kind of American values I actually, fundamentally believe in — like jazz (laughs). I don't know how I feel about Congress, but I believe in jazz. I think most Americans can get behind that.”

Kasiva Mutua, a drummer-percussionist from Nairobi, Kenya, says she and many of her countrymen are familiar with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and other American pop stars. But the 25-year-old OneBeat musician says she was “amazingly surprised by the amount of content in this place. Everybody has this special thing in them.”

“We had these little share sessions the first three days and we were superly surprised. We were moved to tears by a lot of the performances.

“There's so much in the world, you know. I knew it in my head, but it never really occurred to me there could be so many instruments and so many sounds. Now I really have an open mind.”