Watch Episode 9: WATER
This episode is dedicated to the memory of Kenyan-American jazz vocalist Gabrielle Agachiko
FEATURED SONGWRITERS: GABRIELLE AGACHIKO: When The Water’s Gone, JAMES KAHN: NO More A’Whaling, RICK ARNOLDI: We Are The River (Sung By MaryEdna Salvi), WATERMELON SLIM: Black Water, HOSTED BY PURLY RAE GATES
ABOUT the SONGWRITERS and their SONGS
Jazz singer Gabrielle Agachiko was born in Kenya, and trained at the Julliard School of Music. Her song, When the Water is Gone, asks us not to keep our heads buried in the sand about the effects of drought on the planet. If we wait until the water is gone from rivers and lakes, it will be too late to act. We all have to do what we can – and the first step is to wake up, pay attention, and see the problem for what it is.
James Kahn’s No More a’Whalin’ is a take on a modern sea shanty about saving whales instead of harpooning them. It tells of the majesty of these beautiful deep sea creatures, a species in decline in part because some countries still kill them, and partly because their habitats are being so altered by climate change.
We Are the River, written and arranged by Rick Arnoldi, is sung by MaryEdna Salvi in this R & B take on a song Rick wrote in the late 60’s. Picked up by various groups working for social change, it became a small part of anonymous oral tradition. Inspired by an actual river (Connecticut’s Natchaug) and by the peace and justice movements of the sixties, the song embodies all the rivers that start as tiny streams, joining others on their way to the sea, unstoppable by man-made dams and levees. Floods are coming, the response of the rivers to our attempted control – and loss of control – of nature. And the power of the sea reflects the power of the people yearning to be free.
Black Water, by Watermelon Slim, is a hard rockin’ Gulf Coast electric blues about the muck that was left flooding the streets after Hurricane Katrina hit, leaving so many living in tent cities. Climate change is making hurricanes more destructive every year, and Slim asks, after all the money this country spends on war, why is there so precious little left to help the victims of these terrible storms.