The Plant Medicine Podcast (MAPS)
Shannon Carlin
Shannon Carlin is the associate director of training and supervision at the MAPS Public Benefit Corp. In this role, she oversees the development and implementation of the programs that prepare mental health and medical professionals to deliver MDMA assisted psychotherapy in approved clinical settings. Today Shannon is sharing what the clinical and legal landscape currently is for MDMA trials. The discussions with the FDA are currently evolving, but Shannon is very optimistic about the direction things are going in. She also talks about the current model of trials that they are conducting and how this promises to yield innovative and tangible results.
Daweena
Abu Obaida Hassan
The tambour of Abu Obiada was famous throughout Sudan and beyond before the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir drove the musical superstar underground and into obscurity. “In his 70s heyday, Abu Obaida travelled from Merowe, the home of the Shaigiya people and a centre of Nubian culture, to Khartoum, finding fame as a renegade player of a local stringed instrument known as the tambour.” The music of the Shaigiya people uses call and response to let the audience participate in grand tales of the vicissitudes of love. As his unique style became known around the world, Obaida became an ambassador both for his music and for his people, Read the fascinating article about a man rumored to be dead before a younger generation came to his rescue here.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/18/how-sudans-star-of-the-tambour-defied-death-and-dictatorship
Ostinato Records, March, 2019
Giacomo Puccini: Madama Butterfly, Un bel di vedremo
Ermonela Jaho
Is she the best soprano the world has seen since Maria Callas (without the drama)? The exceptional Albanian singer lives her roles fervently and with much nuance, lending her characters a new dimension. Now resident in New York, Ermonela Jaho was born in Albania and first began to take singing lessons when she was just six. At fourteen, she was taken to the Tirana Opera House for the first time where she heard La traviata and decided to become an opera singer. In demand across the world, Ermonela Jaho is particularly recognised for her portrayals of Violetta (La traviata), Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica (Il trittico). Puccini drew on Japanese folk melodies for the score, one of his most evocative and atmospheric.
The Royal Opera House, London 2019
Eden
Anna Calvi, featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg
Anna Calvi has announced a newly released version of her Mercury Prized third album from 2018, Hunted, featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Julia Holter, Courtney Barnett and Joe Talbot (of Idles). Of the rack with Charlotte Gainsbourg, the English singer-songwriter says: “Charlotte Gainsbourg has taught me so much as a singer, in how the most quiet of utterances can be the most dramatic and powerful of all. When I was writing ‘Eden’ I had Charlottes’s voice in my head – there’s a secrecy and quiet power to this song that has always made me think of her. It’s a dream come true to have collaborated with her.” Anna herself was famously hailed as “the best thing since Patty Smith” by Brian Eno.
Domino, March 2020
We Are Sent Here by History: Go My Heart, Go to Heaven
Shabaka and the Ancestors
Shabaka Hutchings was born in London but moved to Birmingham at the age of two. From the age of six he was raised in his parents’ native Barbados. There as a nine-year-old he picked up the clarinet and practised along to the hip-hop verses of Nas, Notorious Big and Tupac as well as the rhythms of Crop Over. He returned to England to receive a classical-music degree on the instrument. In London he joined the Tomorrow Warriors programme, a blues workshop led by expat New Orleans trumpeter Abram Wilson, where Hutchings met many of his future collaborators in the burgeoning South East London jazz scene, where he has established himself as a central figure over the last five years. (Wikipedia)
Verve, March 2020