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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 2013)
Street roots June 7, 2013 P H O T O B Y SUE Z A L O K A R Portland musician Chaz Mortimer blends the worlds o f tradition and technology BY SUE ZALOKAR Mortimer says. “We are always encouraged to draw on the strengths of our personal he popular adage says it takes a village ancestors and at the same time wash away the to raise a child. Local percussionist, weaknesses that we may have inherited or may educator and producer Chaz Mortimer be at risk of passing on. Over the years I have will tell you it also takes a village to raise a found the same spiritual support and healing musician. power from those who practice traditional Mortimer has roots that tap deep into the spirituality on the continent of Africa, too.” music community around the world and here in One of his first lesson with his godfather was Portland. He mentors youth throughout the playing bata drums. “If you really want to learn city and will be making a trip to Nigeria this bata traditionally,” Mortimer’s godfather told summer to co-produce a documentary film him, “part of your apprenticeship is to go out about the Afro-Cuban tradition of bata and make yourself a set to learn on.” drumming. Mortimer has become a part of the very Mortimer has taken traditions that are village that raised him. steeped in the ways of ancestral Africa and Since his arrival in Portland in 2007, he has combined them with 21st century technology dedicated much of his time to the community’s in his music, mentorship and film projects. youths, producing and teaching hip hop, audio He grew up in Boulder, Colo., and started engineering, production, songwriting and playing jazz drum set when he was 8 years old. developing a beat-building curriculum. He progressed to congas and Afro-Cuban “Working with youth has been a big calling percussion, and in high school he took his first for me,” Mortimer said. “When I work with job working in a drum shop. He has studied kids, I let them lead the way. My strength is with diverse talents, including Portland-based bringing out their strengths.” trumpeter Farnell Newton, Oberlin College’s His most recent work with youth is a team collaboration with J. Ross Parrelli and Kevin Dance Diaspora leader Adanika and Miami- “Yamio” Winkle titled “Beats, Lyrics, Leaders.” based master bata drum maker Ezequiel It is a series of interactive workshops, Torres. “When I was a kid, music was a way to break residencies, and projects developed to build character and leadership skills through the art down barriers and deal with reality,” Mortimer said. Boulder is not a very diverse place, he of music. The workshops used an iPad to said, but it was there that his foundation of create, which Mortimer says is a good tool for passion and respect for other cultures began. people who don’t have access to instruments. “When I was growing up, kids around me “I had been skeptical about the iPad when were often very involved in their family’s we wrote it into the curriculum, but when I saw religious practice, but I didn’t have that it in the hands of these kids, it just blew my structure around me. I began practicing mind.” meditation as a teenager, and spent a lot of One of Mortimer’s former students, Laray time in nature, and always felt that music had Thomas, was homeless, living in a shelter this deep way of opening up the spiritual world. downtown and making it to class at Helensview So, after spending more time around spiritual High School intermittently. In 2008, Thomas drummers from the Caribbean and the African ankle was shattered in a gang shooting that left continent I began to understand how deeply I him unable to bear weight for seven months. “I took a music development class at my felt the connection.” At Oberlin College, he was invited to play high school,” said Thomas. “We had a studio percussion for Dance Diaspora, an Afro Cuban and Chaz would teach me how to make beats. He helped me with memorizing lyrics and dance troupe. The group traveled to Cuba were basically just motivated me to be my best.” Mortimer played and studied. By the end of his time in the program, “I went through a crisis in my 20s when I Thomas was working eight hours a day in the was at college and my grandmother had passed studio. He would show up before school to away,” said Mortimer. “I took time off from work on his projects. school and in some ways my life just fell apart. “Working with Chaz was a real blessing,” That is when I went back and reconnected with Thomas said. “Before I met him I was so my godfather, Baba Adetobi Ajibilu.” wrapped up in the gang life I didn’t remember The medicine and healing practices of the who I was. I believe he saw something in me. I Afro-Cuban Lukumi traditions became a natural see now what Chaz saw in me then.” source of therapy, Mortimer says. Thomas is still involved in music today and “In Cuba, it is not ‘weird’ for a white person works under the name, Laray “Ray Ray” to find sanctuary in African traditions,” S T A F F W R IT E R T Thomas. On May 23, Ibori Records -M ortimer’s label he created in 2011 - released, “Iyaranla (Oro Cantado)”, by Seattle-based Omo Alagba. The album features a sequence of songs that that are sung in ceremonies of the Lukumi tradition from the Europa people in Nigeria. “There isn’t really a recording that has that sequence of songs, but they are sung in every community,” said Mortimer. “We wanted to create a CD that people could study, so that when people come together, they could participate (in a w hile person to fin d the ceremony).” sanctwary In H rlc a a In tandem with traditions« We are always the recording of the album with Omo encourage«! Io draw ©a the Alagba, Mortimer strengths of our personal began a film project ancestors and at the same with two local time wash away the filmmakers: Sidony O’Neal and Alex weaknesses that we may Riedlinger. have inherited or may be at Riedlinger owns the ris k ©I passing ©n/? E’Njoni Cafe, a Portland restaurant inspired by the Mediterranean and North African cuisine. The trio set out to document the making of the Omo Alagba album and established the film production company, Ibeji Pictures. Kola Bimbula, a visiting law professor at Seattle University, is also a high priest of the tradition of bata drumming. His family has been organizing the International Congress of Orisa Tradition and Culture festival since 1991. Bimbula heard about the Omo Algaba recording project and invited the group to perform at the historic 10th International Congress this summer in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The group, which includes all of the members of Omo Algaba, the film crew, Portland poet Rashida Shani Young Miya’asu and Mortimer’s godfather, Baba Adetobi Ajibilu, will travel to Nigeria and continue their documentation that traces the story of the bata drum of Nigeria. “With all of the projects I’ve taken on this last year, there have been challenges and learning experiences every step of the way,” said Mortimer. “This trip to Nigeria is a moment of fruition. It represents rising above the odds to be a part of something that is bigger than the individual - an experience that will have a ripple effect in all of our communities.”
