Continental Divide From Crossing the BLVD


In 2002 Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan interviewed Shekaiba Wakili for inclusion in the Crossing the BLVD book, exhibition and audio CD. This piece was composed by Scott Johnson for Crossing the BLVD. Shekaiba reflects on her love for and memories of Afghanistan, her displacement and longing for home. On August 15, 2021, almost 20 years after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. the Taliban took over control of Kabul. We revisit this piece to honor the lives and pain of those fleeing the Taliban, those who fled the Russian invasion and those Afghans scattered throughout the world.

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Dayenu – Judith Sloan/Frank London-Winner Missouri Review National Audio Competition
Created for public radio broadcast and live performance. Dayenu is a poetic narrative that intimately looks at the Jewish holiday of Passover. In questioning the meaning of Dayenu, producer, writer Judith Sloan asks when we will have had enough torture, war, fear, hatred and what it means to look at the ideas of slavery in our contemporary lives, and to question the futility of ongoing war and enemy states. The music and voice interweave and echo each other. In collaborating with Frank London, we created the music to wrap around the words, trumpet highlights questions, inner thoughts, and ideas. Written, edited, produced, arranged and performed by Judith Sloan. Music by Frank London and Judith Sloan. Photo of Sloan’s Haggadah by Warren Lehrer.

Dayenu won First Place in the Missouri Review National Audio Competition, May 2009.

Incantations
Judith Sloan and Warren Lehrer traveled around the world by trekking the streets of their own backyard, the 112 square miles of the borough of Queens, New York, home to the largest mix of immigrants and refugees in the United States. Sloan gathered the sounds of people praying in different neighborhoods, in churches, mosques, synagogues, in apartments, at public gatherings and in private moments who come from Togo, China, Haiti, Nigeria, Queens, Romania, even North Carolina! One of fourteen sound stations accompanying a traveling exhibition of photographs, sounds and stories: Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America.

Incantations has aired on several radio stations most recently on WBEZ Chicago as part of their Re-Sound program produced by the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Sense of Duty show on August 5, 2011.

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Universal Phenomenon
One of nineteen cuts on the Crossing the BLVD audio CD, Universal Phenomenon was composed by Scott Johnson based on an interview with Janet Xiong for the Crossing the BLVD project.

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NAMES
One of nineteen cuts on the Crossing the BLVD audio CD, Names was produced and edited by Judith Sloan. It features the voices of seven different people talking about their names Nigeria, China, Togo, Austria, Barbados, and Democratic Republic of Congo.

From Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan’s Crossing the BLVD series mixing interviews and music featuring voices of new immigrants and refugees.

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Recorded, Edited and Produced by Judith Sloan
Mastered by Phil Klum

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What’s Your Status
A YO MISS! story. Judith Sloan lives in the most diverse county in the United States, Queens, New York, the new “Ellis Island”. Queens is home to the largest mix of refugees and immigrants, a borough where people speak over 162 different languages,. As an American-born citizen, and grandchild of immigrants who fled war to seek a better life, Judith teaches and mentors college and high school students. Among her many students are young people who are undocumented immigrants. What’s Your Status is a testimony and witnessing of how the culture of fear, shifts in immigration law, and big-bureaucracy impacts her students, fellow professors and teachers, and neighbors.

First Runner Up, Missouri Review National Audio Competition 2009.

 

Written, Edited and Produced by Judith Sloan
All Vocals Performed and Arranged by Judith Sloan
Music composed, produced, and performed by Taylor Rivelli.
Includes drum samples by Frank London.
Melody inspired by Frank London tune. Mixed by Ryan West

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Cargo Flight To Somewhere
Bovic Antosi is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo formerly Zaire where he lived for 30 years under the military dictatorship of Mobuto Sese Seko who was propped up by the United States seen as an anti-communist force in Africa. After losing his wife and daughter, and his livelihood, Bovic Antosi escapes as cargo, only to end up in a detention center adjacent to JFK airport. From Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan’s Crossing the BLVD series mixing interviews and music featuring voices of new immigrants and refugees.

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From the Crossing the BLVD CD. Audio produced and mixed by Judith Sloan with Warren Lehrer. Song by Kinglsey Ogunde from Nigeria. Engineered by Sheldon Steiger. Mastered by Phil Klum. EarSay Sounds (ASCAP). Cargo Flight to Somewhere won a Merit Award from the National Foundation of Community Broadcasters and aired on public radio stations throughout the U.S. Photograph of Bovic Antosi for the Crossing the BLVD project by Warren Lehrer.

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Sweeping Statements
written and performed by Judith Sloan for Yo Miss!

Being a teenager can be really hard. Especially if you’ve flunked out of school. Or your dad has disappeared. Or you’re incarcerated at a juvenile detention center and don’t see much hope for the future. And teaching those teenagers can be pretty hard too, as Judith Sloan can attest. She works with at-risk youth, teaching theater, writing, and juggling in alternative schools and jails. Most of her students are angry and at first reluctant to express themselves. But often, with some coaxing, they eventually do. And then Judith finds ways to shape their words and expressions into stories that are part-drama, part-documentary, and part-music. One story in particular, Sweeping Statements, explores this process and the complicated lives of Judith’s students.

Written, produced, edited and performed by Judith Sloan. Music composed and performed by Taylor Rivelli. Trumpets Dave Guy. Music sequencing by Tomek Gross and Judith Sloan. Mixed by Ryan West. Winner Missouri Review, National Audio Competition.

Sweeping Statements is part of Judith Sloan’s Yo Miss! play.

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Globalization: Preventing the Sameness of the World.
Audio produced by Judith Sloan as part of the Crossing the BLVD series by Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan features the words of Eugene Hütz–leader of the gypsy-punk-cabaret band Gogol Bordello—sharing his views on ‘globalization’ and putting forward an alternative vision of what he calls “multi-kontra culture.” Warren and Judith were hanging out on a rooftop one hot summer evening in the Lower East Side of New York, drinking vodka with members of Gogol Bordello, when Eugene came out with his critique of globalization and multi-culturalism, and offered up a kind of extemporaneous manifesto of multi-kontra culture. They liked his vision so much, they ended their 400 page, 4-color book with it (W.W. Norton). Judith mixed it with some street noise and the accordion of Yuri Lemeshev, also from Gogol Bordello, and made it the last cut on the Crossing the BLVD CD.

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Labib’s Café: Sharing the Bad Times
Produced, edited and narrated by Judith Sloan. Assisted by Warren Lehrer. For the  Crossing the BLVDseries. In an Egyptian cafe on Steinway Street in Astoria, hate is spilled and calmly mopped up four nights after the Sept. 11th attack on the World Trade Towers. Judith Sloan talks with owner Labib Salama and his customer Nasser Elgabry about the return of the four boys who ransacked his coffee shop.

Aired Sept. 30, 2001, Jan. 5 2002, and March 9, 2002 / WNYC New York Public Radio, on WNYC/PRI’s The Next Big Thing. Photo of Labib Salama and broken mirrors by Warren Lehrer, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America.

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Link to CITY LORE City of Memory Site to listen and view images

Tongues Twisting 
Clapping games and tongue twisters in multiple languages turn into rich stories when Judith Sloan records young immigrants in a theatre workshop. Memories of life “back home”, broken families, and thoughts about dual realities are woven together with rhythm games and performances as the kids reveal the game of adapting to life in America.

Tonuges Twisting was commissioned for the 2005 ShortDocs: Stories About Games. First aired at Third Coast International Audio Festival, Chicago 2005. Aired NPR’s All Things Considered, December 2005.

Finalist in Missouri Review National Audio Competition 2011.

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With Us or Against Us
from the Crossing the BLVD CD.

Ramon Mappala is one of ten thousand X-D’s who were detained after the dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines. Adis Nuhanović is from Bosnia and came to the United States when he was 13 with his Serbian mother and Muslim father after escaping the war in Bosnia. After the attacks on the World Trade Towers in 2001, Ramon and Adis talk about their experiences and feelings post-9/11 as two people who had lived through martial law and war. Photograph of Ramon and Adis by Warren Lehrer for the Crossing the BLVD project.

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Audio produced and mixed by Judith Sloan with Warren Lehrer. Music by Scott Johnson. Engineered by Sheldon Steiger. Mastered by Phil Klum. EarSay Sounds (ASCAP). With Us or Against Us is one of fourteen sound stations in the Crossing the BLVD traveling museum exhibition which has been touring throughout the United States since 2004. Next stop: SUNY Oswego, upstate New York.

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