Terra Madre in Turin, Italy in October, 2008 is a driving force on the planet for small-scale food producers sharing their traditional wisdom and coming together to solve problems. The current dominant mode of food production contributes to environmental degradation and the loss of local control.
From the Terra Madre website:
By giving voice to all those who are not prepared to accept the standardizing, inhuman, totalizing model that applies the rules of industry to living matter, the event promotes ‘positive globalization’. The Terra Madre communities meet to proclaim food production’s need to maintain a harmonious relationship with the environment and assert the cultural and scientific dignity of traditional practices. When they return home to their countries of origin, they are fired by a positive feeling of being members of a ‘community of destiny’. The end-result is a new form of virtuous globalization that grows from the grassroots, from local identity.
Here's our first press release:
Checkered Past band invited to global food conference
KANSAS CITY, MO -- On October 23, 2008 in Turin, Italy, 5,000 food producers, 1,000 cooks and restaurateurs, 500 academics, 1,000 students and 5 Kansas City folk musicians will come together to discuss the challenges shared by small-scale, sustainable food producers from all seven continents -- including Antarctica. This gathering, Terra Madre, is a global forum for sharing traditional knowledge and solutions to the environmental and social damage brought about by prevailing modes of food production.
The Checkered Past band became interested in Terra Madre upon reading a press release from the Fifth International Slow Food Congress in November, 2007 which announced “the biggest folk festival ever organized with musicians from food communities” to be held at Terra Madre 2008. They contacted U.S. Terra Madre Coordinator, Jerusha Klemperer and learned there would be no folk festival after all, but she extended an invitation for the band to come to Turin to perform and participate in the gathering. Checkered Past will be the only band representing the United States. “Carlo Petrini, president of Slow Food International, always has been a lover of music," Klemperer said. "He has wanted for a long time to bring musicians to Terra Madre, to recognize the connections between music and the work producers do out in the fields. Checkered Past was appealing to us because of their strong connection to their food community.”
After performing at several farmers markets and Kansas City’s Urban Farm Tour, subscribing to Consumer Supported Agriculture, growing gardens, teaching composting and solar cooking, and contact with local food initiatives such as Kaw River Valley Food Future, Kansas City Food Circle and the Squash Blossom Food Buying Club, not to mention writing and performing songs about food and love of the land, the band is attuned to the purpose and spirit of Terra Madre. "We believe the health of the earth and its inhabitants is completely connected to the way food is produced in the future,” said band member K.C. Compton. “It is our honor to take our musical greetings from America's Heartland to this amazing gathering of individuals acting on Earth's behalf."
This is a project of CrossCurrents Culture.
Contact the band and/or the web master: info@CheckeredPastMusic.com
