Chris Westhoff, Jay Swifa, and Tronee Threat popped into the WYSO studios to chat with Middday Music host Evan Miller about their international hip-hop project No Visas.
"It's a collaboration that's also developed into a community organization that does various kinds of humanitarianism, housing, and educational outreach. But at the core it's System Ali, an Israeli-Palestinian hip hop collective." said Westhoff.
Originally the show was slated to happen at The Levitt Pavilion but the artist's visas were never approved, thus the show's title. However this didn't stop the communities from finding new pathways for this project.
"Along the way, Angie Hsu found another collaborator in the village, Kevin Leidy, who has been a great resource and support to this project." said Westhoff. "Kevin happens to be the chair of the Dayton Sister City Committee. One of the sister cities of Dayton is Holon, Israel, just a burb just outside of Tel Aviv, where some of the System Ali artists hail from. So there was like this really cool connection there."
This hybrid show is much like a presentation. Local artists in collaboration with System Ali will perform and discuss their combined efforts. Westhoff says he intends to keep this show as intimate as possible.
"We're going to learn a lot about System Ali and their community organization Beit System Ali. There's some new video work that's been presented about it and then we're going to open it up for a talk back and Q&A. We're gonna be able to bring System Ali artists into the room via Zoom as well. So it's going to be an interesting mix of things. We're presenting it in the small room at the Foundry, the experimental theater. We really wanted to keep the sense of intimacy that you can get there."
NO VISAS בלי רשות بدون جواز is on November 22 starting at 7PM in Antioch's Foundry Theater. Get tickets on Antioch's website.
