Image: Embody, Erica Hansen, 2012. Description: X-Ray photo of Shodekeh’s lungs taken at Harbor Hospital.
Listen Now: Shodekeh Talifero Gives a Master Class on Breath Art
For the last few years, I’ve been exploring the possibility of something much deeper taking place at the core of my practice as a Beatboxer and Vocal Percussionist and found that breath is at the very center and foundation of what I do. This has inspired me to go deeper into how breath has been and can be used creatively beyond the functional necessity of it all, in music, dance, art, speech, meditation, and so on. So when Covid-19 emerged, and the centuries-long narrative of people of African descent living in an institutional & ideological chokehold around the world re-emerged, my practice and research of “Breath Art“ has become a much larger focus of how I see everything around me.
Breathing is universal, but not only that, we live in a “Breath Culture” all over the planet, with each other, our environments, everywhere, and our current way of thinking, appreciating and understanding our relationship with the air that we breathe will probably never be the same. So if breath can be thought of as an artistic medium all unto itself, which is what I maintain “Breath Art“ to be, can it also be weaponized in a way to fight back against these systems of crisis and oppression?
Before the world caught on fire, I was already experiencing a deep, personal crisis of my own, which became amplified by everything going on around the globe, but I’ve also never been more inspired and activated by the very air I breathe and the way I use it as a musical creation of expression and intention. Clearly the air that surrounds me every single day is a constant reminder and reflection that there is something much bigger than myself that I need to focus my energy on.
I don’t have a single moment or experience of air to waste. I have to strike with everything that I have inside of me, right now…
–Shodekeh, Innovator-in-Residence
About
With 34 years of personal, professional and community-based experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking and highly adept Beatboxer, Vocal Percussionist and Breath artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of Hip Hop music and culture.
Shodekeh currently serves as TU’s very first Innovator-in-Residence anchored by the College of Fine Arts & Communication, allowing him lecture, collaborate, experiment & perform within the departments of Music, Art + Design, Art History, Art Education, Dance, Communication Studies, Electronic Media + Film, Mass Communication, Theatre Arts, Arts Integration & Interdisciplinary Arts Infusion, as well as the Asian Arts & Culture Center, the Community Art Center & the Center For the Arts Galleries.
