We're thrilled to be part of the 2026 Wailuku Film Festival (in Maui June 17-21st)  + our film screening was just announced in an early slate of films that are going to be part of the festival. We're honored and looking forward to it, since Aaron Paulk, who's featured in the film, lives, works and surfs in Maui. Get yourself there if you can.  

And, we're stoked + grateful for this community screening in partnership with AccesSurf Hawai'i, an organization that provides life-changing accessible water programs for people with disabilities. It's an organization that Aaron is a part of, and an organization and community near and dear to our hearts. The screening coincides with the Hawai'i Adaptive Surf Championships- so there will be lots of athletes, supporters, and energy! Film screening is May 6th! CHECK IT OUT! Aaron will be there for conversation + hang + QnA after the film, so go say hello. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. 

We're thrilled that our short documentary is screening at the Bilbao Surf Film Festival in Basque Country, a small land between France and Spain. Local and international athletes,  filmmakers, and films from all over the world will be there along with photo contests, a skate championship, surfing,  live music, talks and roundtables and a solidarity action!  

I'll see you there! 

We're so honored to have our film included. Festival is March 18-22nd! Xxoo.

WATCH OUR TRAILER HERE. 

Christoph and I had a blast screening a couple films in New Bedford this weekend. It was standing room only at the cool theater at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park!

Thanks to the lovely folks at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center for hosting us + for inspiring some cool post screening conversations + QnA with the crowd. At this time, it's just so nice to gather together and hang out, and watch films in the same room-hell yes to art and creativity and community. 

Also, I loved exploring the Portuguese and Cape Verdean culture in New Bedford! 

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I wrote an article about the Association for Cultural Equity's Nathan Salsburg for GhettoBlaster Magazine: Music, Film, Culture, Film in the Summer of 2012! Back then, and still now, I think a lot, a lot,  a lot about Alan Lomax. Musicologist, writer, and producer Alan Lomax spent over six decades immersed in world’s people and folk music and oral traditions. But was the way he worked ok? What was his connection to the communities and people? How did it all work? I think about this in relation to my own work, and documentation of people and places not my own. 

Alan Lomax was a kind of pioneer in the repatriation of cultural documentation. "He deposited copies of his large collections in national archives at a time when tape and disc media made it difficult and expensive to do so, and, whenever possible, sent recordings to his colleagues and sources in the field," says the Association for Cultural Equity. 

I really admire the work of Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), for their work repatriating collections and materials to the communities and people from which they came. This runs counter to extractive reporting, documentation and recording that removes the communities from the work they create, share, and pass on. The way it works is ACE partners with libraries and cultural organizations to bring home the compelling music, photographs, film, video, interviews + research from the Alan Lomax Archive, reaching out as well to their virtual + diasporic communities.  

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​You can learn more about ACE's repatriation projects in the U.S., Spain, Italy, and the Caribbean ON THEIR WEBSITE HERE. And also read my 2012 article/interview about it all here.

GhettoBlaster Magazine: Music, Film, Culture, Film
Association for Cultural Equity's Nathan Salsburg
Summer 2012 
By Caroline Losneck

Many of the most important people in our history seem to have FBI files, and in the case of Alan Lomax, this includes folk documentarians.

Despite a 1940-1960 FBI open file on him that states “Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a very peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folk lore music, being very temperamental and ornery. ... He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner, and paying practically no attention to his personal appearance. … He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results,” Alan Lomax is perhaps the most significant figure in the arc of ethnomusicology, documentation and folk traditions in the United States and beyond. He also is the man behind extensive recordings of some of the greats and folks recognized as the backbone of American music like Jelly Roll Morton, Big Bill Broonzy, Bessie Jones, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Muddy Waters among many, many others. 

The big news is that in February of this year, the Alan Lomax Archive and the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) launched the massive ACE Online Archive, the result of over a decade of the restoration, digitization and cataloging of Alan Lomax’s life work in documentation, research, and sweeping appreciation for folk music and oral traditions. 

Continue reading this ARTICLE HERE, for free. 

Really nice to get to talk with and listen to the music of Hadith Abdulle, he sings and plays oud in traditional Somali style. His childhood near Mogadishu Somalia was filled with listening to Radio Mogadishu, and listening to his sister sing songs, and sneaking over to a neighbor's house to listen to music and sing himself. He fled during the unrest and civil war in his country, and has alway been drawn to music as a source of peace and comfort. Music has always been, and remains his refuge.
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LISTEN TO MY STORY HERE. 

Rellat onored to have produced this story, Hell Valley, Hawaii, USA alongside my colleagueHonolulu based print journalist and photographer J Matt + the entire PRX team. The whole series is excellent - and worth a listen! Recokoning with our monuments is series business, as you know. 


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Our episode looks at the people and communities behind a new monument in Hawaii, on Oahu. And some of the challenges that come with the U.S. Park Service's management of such sites, that commemorate and ackowledge horrible parts of our nation's past, like the forced incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry in WWII --- and how to prevent this in the future. 

Pearl Harbor National Monument is the most visited place in Hawaii, and it’s one of two national sites recognizing a foreign assault on U.S. soil. The monument tells the story of the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on the island of Oahu in 1941 and how the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered World War II the following day.

But the U.S. government did something else that’s not often talked about: martial law was immediately declared in Hawaii, followed by the incarceration of men, women and children of Japanese ancestry. Just over ten miles from Pearl Harbor is the Honouliuli National Historic Site. It was Hawaii's largest and longest-serving World War II confinement camp, and it’s now being developed by the National Park Service as a new memorial space that will eventually be open to the public. It’s only when we look at Pearl Harbor and Honouliuli together, and see them as inextricably part of the same story, that we can reconcile who we Americans believe ourselves to be...with who we sometimes actually are. Hope you listen! Tell me what you think. 

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Hey + happy 2024! Over the past 6 months or so, I've had the pleasure of working on a long form audio story with my pal, the exceptional photographer, reporter, big wave swimmer, cat parent, and Honolulu based human being, J Matt.

J and I are reporting and producing an Episode for the PRX MONUMENTAL series, which is supported by the MELLON FOUNDATION. Our Episode is a part of a series of stories that crack open and interrogate the state of monuments across the greater U.S. and what their future says about where we are now and where we’re going. I'm thrilled and honored to be part of this project, with so many amazing and talented audio producers, journalists, and storytellers (and editors and PRX team) --- creating all 10 episodes.

​Our Episode will drop this Jan 2024, stay tuned!