Taína Asili
Taína Asili carries on the tradition of her ancestors, fusing present and past struggles into one poetic voice. She is a puertorriqueña vocalist, poet, and community organizer from Philadelphia, PA and Albany, NY. Her newest artistic work is with her live band, Taína Asili y La Banda Rebelde, soulful vocals laid over a unique infusion of Afro-Caribbean, reggae, rock, and hip hop and sounds. The band’s eclectic style represents the diversity of its band members, who have origins in Puerto Rico, Sicily, Greece, Brazil and Ghana. Taína Asili carries a fire breathing voice of rage and resistance to venues, festivals, conferences and political events across the country, weaving rebellion, love, and ancestral remembrance into an unparalleled vocalization.
Taína is a winner of the 2005 Transformation Award given by the Leeway Foundation each year to a select few of women artists who profoundly use their work towards social change. Taína has shared the stage with artists such as Ursula Rucker, Sonia Sanchez, Pamela Means, Dead Prez, Immortal Technique and Tyrone Hill of The Sun Ra Arkestra. She was voted Albany’s “2006 Best Poet” in the Metroland, Albany, NY’s premier alternative news weekly. She can be witnessed in Scene and Not Heard, a documentary about women and hip hop culture in Philadelphia, also featuring Bahamadia and Monie Love. As a part of the Puerto-rock band Ricanstruction you can hear her vocals blow on their album Love and Revolution. Taína has just completed her debut album with La Banda Rebelde entitled War Cry, which was released this March 2010 on Caona Media record label.
History
Taína’s performance history and experience is as eclectic as her artistic work. Initially trained as a European classical vocalist, Taína later found punk rock, and for eight years wrote and sang songs of rage and resistance with Antiproduct, touring the country several times and putting out four albums internationally. During this time, she also fell in love with spoken word, and together with her brother, Victorio Reyes, created the spoken word group, Rebel Poets. She has sung soulful vocals and back-up vocals for numerous bands including Yolk, Ricanstruction, and Broadcast Live.
Taína’s musical style is strongly influenced by the music which surrounded her childhood. Her father was a Latin Jazz conductor, vocalist and congero, and her mother was an Afro-Caribbean dancer. These Afro-Caribbean and Latin jazz sounds have carried her to the music she currently composes with her musical group La Banda Rebelde. However, the folkloric arts of Latin American and Spain have also captured her heart in news ways. Currently, Taína Asili and guitarist Gaetano Vaccaro perform, as a duet, folkloric music from Latin America and flamenco from Spain. Together they have studied at Flamenco Latino in NYC, and Taller Flamenco and El Centro de Arte y Flamenco de Sevilla in Seville, Spain.
Taína is dedicated to using her art as a tool for social transformation. Not only is her art politically conscious, but it is based in the concrete organizing she is in involved in, working in political prisoner liberation, prisoner rights, democratic education, indigenous rights, environmentalist, and holistic health movements for over 10 years. However, Taína’s main revolutionary, activist and artistic work involves raising her child… her best poetic inspiration.
Education
In addition to performance work Taína facilitates poetry workshops. She began her artistic educational work in Philadelphia at Taller Puertorriqueño, a Puerto Rican cultural center based in North Philadelphia where she taught local Puerto Rican youth about the current struggle and resistance movement in Vieques, Puerto Rico, using poetry and drawing as their expressive voice. Taína has since taught poetry writing workshops for both children and adults, including the co-facilitation of a poetry workshop series in a women’s correctional facility in PA and refugee support center in NY. She has her MA in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College.
