Musicians and poets from across the United States, Canada and Latin America will hold court from Oct. 28 through 31 at the Tune In Festival presented by the Center for the Art of Performance, also known as CAP UCLA. As most everything in the time COVID, the festival will be prerecorded live in Los Angeles and elsewhere. However, the mission of this fest is in its name — to Tune In — to bring artists together in solidarity to pay respect to the traditions of music and poetry as a source of resilience, protest and inspiration.
The festival kicks off Oct. 28 with a tribute to the late folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger by Kronos Quartet, joined by Los Angeles choral ensemble Tonality, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Jolie Holland, folk singer Lee Knight and Ethio-American singer-songwriter Meklit.
Also, on the lineup will be LA-based blues, folk, punk, singer-songwriter Sunny War.
Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director of CAP listened to her music and knew about her advocacy around hunger justice and her own story.
War first made her name on the Venice Beach boardwalk around the early 2000s. But before that she described her childhood as a nomadic existence, moving from Nashville, Tenn., to Colorado, to Michigan, then to Los Angeles as a teenager. She was homeless for a time during her Venice days where she busked on the streets for almost a decade. Her style of playing, called crab claw picking, using just her thumb and forefinger, is a banjo technique — an instrument War is fascinated with. Indeed, War’s musical tastes replicate the range of her travels. Influenced by the blues and bluegrass music early in life, War, later at 13 years old, started a punk band — playing acoustic guitars because the band couldn’t afford electric ones. She doesn’t shy from singing about her difficult times or conversely, about love, like on her song, If It Wasn’t Broken.
Edmunds had invited War to play at Tune In, but at the time we spoke War said she wasn’t certain how she was called to participate in the festival. She recalled a connection to a teacher and the Get Lit poetry group.
Back in 2017, War performed in a birthday tribute to Seeger at the New Ash Grove along with Get Lit. That same teacher helped organize the New Ash Grove and was involved in the Seeger tribute. Many of those same musicians and poets will be performing at Tune In. The original Ash Grove — dubbed the West Coast University of folk music — was known for its folk and roots sounds. Founder Ed Pearl, [brother of blues guitarist Bernie Pearl] featured socially committed jazz and rock artists and provided a venue in LA for diverse performers like Ravi Shankar, Mongo Santamaría, Miriam Makeba. Pearl also encouraged a mix of music with poetry. Tune In carries on the tradition featuring the Get Lit performers where students, in call and response style, learn classic poetry and pen their own spoken word response pieces to perform.
Fast forward to 2020 and festivals in the time of coronavirus, War spoke to frustrations that many people feel when dealing with life’s responsibilities during this pandemic.
“I know I probably have [Tune In] in my email,” War said. “I threw away my hand-held calendar that I would write everything in. In the first month of COVID everything was cancelled and I just erratically threw it away. I shouldn’t have done that because now I still have to write everything down. I know I’ve agreed to a lot of livestream things coming up.
“It’s weird because it’s like, ‘Oh, I have to remember on Tuesday to set up my laptop and sit in front of it…’ It’s confusing. Even if you don’t remember until 10 minutes before, that’s still enough time.”
On performing virtually, War stated simply, “It’s weird.”
“It’s just me sitting alone in my room,” she said. “You think, ‘Should I talk to the camera?’ I guess you’re trying to make it like a live set, but you’re just alone. I’ve done at least 10 of them. It’s just awkward and a lot of people don’t want to meet up to collaborate. They may be my age but they may live with an older family member [who is] not comfortable with them socializing with people.”
Still, War is excited about Tune In. She will perform a solo set and may do one with Particle Kid — an experimental future-folk project from musician and visual artist Micah Nelson, the youngest son of country music icon Willie Nelson. War, in 2018, released Particle War, a split LP with Nelson and recently appeared in a video of Radio Flyer on his album Window Rock.
For War, honesty prevails in her own music and her inspirations.
“Right now I like Nina Simone a lot,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m inspired by her, musically. I love her music but it’s more about people who I think are honest. I’m getting more into liking stuff because [the artist] expresses themselves with what they’re feeling at the moment. It’s easy to be negatively influenced by people with art. You can become a performative performer, you know. You always gotta listen to people who stayed honest the whole time.”
War is now enjoying 60s and 70s roots and folk music saying, she usually wouldn’t be listening to that but with the way things are now, she mostly wants to hear that.
“I’m liking Rodriguez [of Sugar Man fame], he seems legit, which I don’t really hear in everything and Joan Armatrading,” she said. “Even Joni Mitchell, she reminds me of [someone] you would meet at a park in California somewhere, just somebody you sit on the grass and smoke weed with. Maybe she sells sage or something.”
War has had an album in the works that she wants to call Simple Syrup. But when shows got cancelled from COVID she described it as something weird to do. Now, she said, “Who cares? It doesn’t matter.” She recently wrote two songs for recording and she may even have a friend play a theremin solo on the album
“It’s electric and it sounds spooky, like a ghost,” War said, noting Fishbone has one of the instruments in their repertoire.
“I might as well put it out,” War said. “If there’s no shows for two years, it wouldn’t make sense. I’m not going to want to play it at that point. Tune In will be a good festival, a virtual festival — everything is going to be virtual now,” War imagined, as she talked on her cell phone, sitting in the park near her home.
“They took all the basketball hoops off of the basketball court so nobody gets encouraged to play ball or do any contact sports,” she said. “It’s weird because you would always see someone at this park playing basketball or playing soccer, or jogging. There’s some people here but it just sucks because my whole life is about being outdoors. We’re still allowed to be but it’s just sad.”
Sunny War performs in Tune In’s Sing Out program at 5:20 p.m. Oct. 31.
Tune In
Time: 7 p.m. Oct. 28 to 9:30 p.m. Oct. 31
Cost: Free with RSVP through CAP UCLA
Details: www.cap.ucla.edu, www.sunnywar.com