The Damani Rhodes Experience with special guests Tongo Eisen-Martin and VADIA

Damani Rhodes is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and entrepreneur whose music and production style is influenced by jazz, gospel, hip hop, funk, and soul. His debut project R.E.A.C.H was recorded in February of 2020 at The Kennedy Center. The project received praise from Bandcamp editorial, SF Chronicle and other publications and features Grammy Award Winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold and vocalist Vadia. 

Damani was a recipient of 2019 YBCA 100 Award and he was the composer of a Northern California Emmy Award Winning Film Project “Dear Beloved”.  

In 2017,  Damani founded a drum education tech company (Mobile App) DrumTrax that helps drummers improve their skills in order to find their own voice and explore their creativity.  With over 50,000 downlaods, the app is continuing to contribute to the drum community worldwide.

Tongo Eisen-Martin, originally from San Francisco, is a poet, movement worker and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, received the California Book Award for Poetry, an American Book Award and a PEN Oakland Book Award. He is also the author of Someone’s Dead Already (Bootstrap Press, 2015). Blood on the Fog (City Lights Books, 2021), his newest collection of poems, is volume 62 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. He is the San Francisco’s current Poet Laureate.

Earlier this year, Eisen-Martin released his debut album, I Go To The Railroad Track And Follow Them To The Station Of My Enemies. The spoken word album was released under Rocks In Your Head Records.

Vadia is a native of Oakland California who teaches perseverance through art. None of her skills go to waste. She is a singer/songwriter and a celebrity makeup artist has shared many stages, or worked behind the scenes with, local and international artists. Her vocal ability allows her to easily adapt to practically every style of music, be it jazz, show tunes, r&b or pop music– but with an unbridled spiritual power in the delivery of every song that she sings. In her writing, Vadia is very sensitive to the message she believes she was entrusted to spread about believing in your own ability to make an enormous impact on the entire world through various arts. She wrote a song entitled “No Graves” that has inspired a growing movement, that can be followed under the hashtag #NOGRAVES . Listen closely to her lyrics, and you will discover that she not only wants to share the beauty of her mind with others, but she invites you to experience the joy and pleasure she feels as she vocally creates an environment of openness, personal reflection, love, and empowerment of artists every where. Each time you listen to Vadia you are invited on a journey that can awaken the dormant parts of the artist inside of us all.