Music

Northern Arizona musician Klee Benally has a new acoustic album out called The Unsustainable Sessions. It’s a departure from the music he’s perhaps best known for, the all-sibling Navajo punk trio Blackfire. But it’s equally powerful in its messages of environmental and social justice. In the latest installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats: Stories about Food and Music on the Colorado Plateau, Benally talks about the new album and punk rock as a tool for social change. He’ll perform at an album release party Fri, Dec. 20 at the Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff as part of A Winter Solstice Indigenous Acoustic Revue. 

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is only 19, but he’s already veteran climate activist. He addressed the United Nations General Assembly at the age of 15 and is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government over inaction on climate change. Martinez is also an internationally acclaimed hip-hop artist who writes socially conscious music partially inspired by his Aztec heritage. He'll speak and perform as part of the Climate 2020: Seven Generations for Arizona summit Fri, Nov. 15 at Northern Arizona University, and is the focus of the latest installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats, Stories About Food and Music on the Colorado Plateau.

It was a marvelous night for a moon dance at the annual Spring Dance Festival in Flagstaff presented by Canyon Movement Company. This year’s theme was the Apollo missions. How do dancers translate science onto the stage? In this installment of Eats and Beats: Stories about Food and Music, we hear three choreographers explain how they used music and movement to cast a different light on the moon.

Good news for Deadheads: This weekend dozens of local and national musicians will come together in Flagstaff to pay tribute to the Grateful Dead. Over the course of two days, they’ll interpret the band’s music and recreate the Dead’s landmark 1973 performance at the Watkins Glen Summer Jam festival in New York State that also featured the Allman Brothers and the Band. In the latest installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats: Stories About Food and Music on the Colorado Plateau, we hear from musician and Grateful Festival mastermind Tony Abrams about his lifelong love of the Dead that started at his first show.

Hundreds of people die each year attempting to cross the international border through the Sonoran Desert. It is described by many as a humanitarian crisis including Robert Neustadt, an activist and a professor Northern Arizona University. He has has written and produced a play called “Border Voices” that features his students acting out harrowing stories taken from the headlines. The vignettes are based on Neustadt’s recently released album of border-related songs. In the latest installment of Eats and Beats, we catch a rehearsal with Neustadt and his cast.