Special guest DJ Docta Deep takes over La Danza Poetica this month, with a mixtape exploring the DIY Hip Hop culture of India. Featuring rap crews and artists from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Assam, representing the country’s various linguistic and religious groups, Docta Deep’s Hip Hop India takes us right into the present counter-culture of the country.

Mixed in a sultry summer in Budapest, La Danza Poetica #65 is a collection of sultry new sounds from South America, the States, France, Canada. And dedicated, with love, to the bright light of Australian poet and activist, Candy Royalle, who passed last month. Pure heart and spirit, within this music is the poetry of life, the continuum of tradition, the bright promise and healing that comes through music.

Recent releases from Brome, J.Lamotta, Kuzich featuring Mei Saraswati, William Beale, Lido Pimienta, The Turbans, Besarabia, Anna Stereopoulou, Dat Garcia remixed by Space People, the Music Action Collective, DjClick, Lagartijeando remixed by Chancha Vía Circuito, and featuring Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet’s, “Landfall”, now released as an album.

A slow chorus. A slow driving mix of spoken word and hip hop and multi-voice harmony, music with many layers, complex melodies and harmonious fusions of electronica and folk origins. Musicians and poets from the United States, Spain, Colombia, Canada, and Guatemala. Big questions and big problems being addressed head-on. Stories being told from the heart, voices coming from deep in the chest. An energising way to start a new year!

Poesía y música, Española. A mix of all new music, joyful and uplifting, anchored by the voices of our “honoured ghosts”, poets of 20th Century Latin America, exploring the political and social importance of poetry, nature, and the nature of our desires.

Pieces of the Puzzle takes its title from a poem by English spoken word artist Salena Godden – the poem that closes the show. From Australia to Costa Rica, to Colombia, to Argentina, to Italy, Portugal, Germany, America, Chile, England, France, Japan, Ghana, Mozambique … all these pieces are part of our big, beautiful jigsaw puzzle of thought, emotion, word, and music. 

A special collaboration between La Danza Poética and La Rebelde Academia de la Música Latinoamericana (RAMULA)! Colombian poet Gustavo Gómez Giraldo, aka Juaco, recorded in Brussels by Joaldo Domínguez. Mixed with music from Mateo Kingman, Nicola Cruz, Sentidor, and Negro Dub.

For the Kulin Nation, Melbourne has always been an important meeting place. And it continues to be a place of connection for people from all around the world.

This month I am presenting for you an excerpt of a special mix for Chimeres Radio and Circe:the Black Cut, performed live in Athens on 4 July at Kreuzberg bar, the eve of the referendum of 5 July. 

"Words can be bullets or butterflies. The truth uplifts, while lies destroy. So, say what you mean and mean what you say."—Piri Thomas

Entering my third year at Groovalizacion - happy birthday to La Danza Poetica! The 24th edition is intercontinental, transnational - a world of poetics, mainly new releases, ranging far and wide in the spirit of the dance. 

Start 2014 with some conscious dance! Mixing passionate, compassionate dance releases from 2013 together with the hearts and voices of indigenous resistance in South America, and some truly powerful spoken word. Music and story as uniting and empowering force - the word, the silence, the global dance poetic.

Ideas arrive late in the night, explode in passionate flame, burn out fast. Passion that consumes itself, but does not destroy the structure. Like forests that need to burn to burst the tree seeds. What is left is a deeper inspiration and beautiful - perhaps a little sad, even a little dehydrated, but unquestionably beautiful, as experience, and wisdom, and soulful living is beautiful. It's in the music, too, and in the poetry, of Spain, all Latin countries. Fire is at the heart of it all.