Anna Baignoche is presenting at our Community Arts Dialogue November 5 9am. cacv.ca/dialogue
Anna Baignoche has been a student, performer, and an appreciator of the music of the world for as long as she can remember. Having travelled, lived, and studied in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey, she was deeply impressed by these countries’ integration of music into the culture. After completing a degree in Contemporary Voice, specializing in world music, at Vancouver Community College, Anna B. (her stage name) has performed for 13 years in the Vancouver music scene in various projects: Anna B. and the Heartbones, a western Latin jazz sextet, Catita, a bossa nova and samba duo, and Diez, a ten piece Latin jazz band. In 2009, Anna received a BC Arts Council Grant to study bossa nova in Rio de Janeiro. She has released two albums: Heartbones (Western Jazz) and A Deal With the Wind (Western Latin Jazz – Spanish and English). Anna is currently completing a Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology at UBC.
Presentation – “Local Vocals” Local Vocals is a 90-member singing and dancing group in East Vancouver that started with 10 people in Anna B.’s basement apartment in 2005. Since then, the group has moved out of Anna’s house and into a communal space where everyone feels comfortable to move and sing. As well, two programs for at-risk teens in Surrey have recruited Anna for songleading in their alternative high-school programs, and these programs have subsequently been very successful at promoting teens to stay in school. Anna also leads a Family Choir on Sunday mornings where the whole family (parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends) can come and sing and dance.
Anna will be discussing the importance of music making and singing in particular as a glue that keeps communities together, happy, and getting along. She will give a brief history and overview of global communal singing, talk about the history and philosophy of Vancouver’s song group, Local Vocals, evolutionary/biological benefits of singing, using singing to build bridges between communities. We will sing!
Karen Ravensbergen will join Anna as a community member who has experienced Anna’s work.