“Israel starts the musical off by rapping about the herb’s use by shamans and Sufis in ancient times. He then follows cannabis across the Atlantic, brought by enslaved Africans through the Middle Passage to the plantations of Brazil. From there, Israel’s verses make their way up to Mexico, and thence into the United States, picked up by the jazz vipers, beatniks and ultimately hippies — who spread it around the world with the rest of the counterculture zeitgeist.”
— Bill Weinberg, Cannabis Now Magazine
GRACE GALU & BABA ISRAEL
Grace Galu is a vocalist, actor, guitarist and composer. She combines the sounds of her Irish and Congolese heritage and her LES upbringing in a soulful and gritty twist.. Grace was featured in Buskerball, and recorded “Firelight” with Fearless Music. Her composition, “Ordinary Sentiment” was featured in the Ed Burns film, “Purple Violets” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Grace devised The Mendelssohn Electric with Trusty Sidekick, and was cast as the lead in their production, The Gospel Electric, commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory. She is a core member of the band Soul Inscribed, and was twice selected as a cultural ambassador for the American Music Abroad program. She has been selected as a cultural ambassador for their next residency program (2022). Grace is also a recipient of the NEFA NTP grant. Soul Inscribed has recently been signed to the music label, Tokyo Dawn and just released their EP, Tune UP. Grace is an artist in residence at HERE Arts Center and the composer for Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville. Grace voiced Wisdom in Nia Witherspoon’s production, The Dark Girl Chronicles (2021 at The Shed). .
Baba Israel is an artist, producer, educator and consultant raised in New York by parents who were core members of the Living Theatre. He co-founded Playback NYC, the first playback theatre company to integrate freestyle hip hop. His debut solo show “Boom Bap Meditations” was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Hip Hop Theatre festival. He has toured across Asia, Africa, Europe, the South Pacific, North and South America as a hip hop and theatre artist and led cultural ambassador programs internationally supported by the US State Department. His work has been featured in documentaries such as Freestlye and Hip Hop for Hope, and on MTV and BET.
He was Artistic Director and CEO of Contact Theatre in Manchester, a leading venue at the intersection of youth leadership and innovative performance. He premiered his most recent multimedia performance The Spinning Wheel as a resident artist at BRIC in Brooklyn. The production was developed and toured in the UK, Holland and Norway and in America with MDC Live Arts and the University of Madison, Wisconsin. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and is the Co-Artistic Director of the Performance Project based at the University Settlement.
Soul Inscribed is a hip hop, and spoken word collective who are the core band for the production. The ensemble creates an eclectic new vision of jazz, dub, and funk. Soul Inscribed is comprised of Baba Israel (emcee/production), Grace Galu (vocalist/composer), Duv (vocalist), Sean Nowell (Sax, Flute, FX/composer), Doron Lev (Drums) and Yako 440 (instrumentation/production).