BONFIRES
for Peace, the Traveling Bonfires' movable feast of family fun and
community connectedness through music, arts and dancing, is back at
Pritchard Park this summer. Now on its 12th year, the free
to the public “outdoor party,” happens on July 13, Sunday—with a
Goa trance music dance event billed “Downtown Get Down,” music
provided by Touch Samadhi DJs Kri, Sensoma, Goadream, and Sean O'Daniels.
Pritchard
Park is located right in the heart of downtown Asheville. The
Traveling Bonfires, which was born in the Philippines during the
politically-turbulent mid80s, kicked off its annual “barrio-level”
convergence in the spring of 2002 with all-day, multi-band concert
events that lasted to early fall—and carried on since then.
The
Traveling Bonfires produced an unprecedented 16 weekend park events
in 2004, involving hundreds of local and North/South Carolina
performers and visiting acts from as far as Tokyo, Manila, Houston
TX, Boston, San Francisco, New Jersey, and New York City. The
organization has also produced similar outdoor and indoor concerts in
New York City, Baltimore, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Frisco, and
Manila and Baguio City in the Philippines, “instigating arts and
music events and bringing people together in celebration of peace and
multicultural connectedness.”
Touch
Samadhi is a community of “trance Goa” DJ's that takes its
spiritual root in Goa, a small state in India. Mythology says Goa is
associated with “spiritually cleansing touch,” a peacefulness or
consciousness that Traveling Bonfires believes fit well with its
vision-mission of global peace and community harmony through
diversity. Touch Samadhi is a perennial highlight in Bonfires for
Peace since 2004.
“We
see the need to effect a vibe of peace and joy in Asheville and allow
that sublime wavelength to travel elsewhere,” says TBonfires
founding executive director Pasckie Pascua. “We don't have to
launch speeches or recite our holiness, we just play music and enjoin
the community to come out, dance and be together. That is a simple
thing, isn't it—but it's powerful.”
“Bonfires
for Peace” events enjoy the support of local Asheville
businesses, organizations, and individuals. “This is the true
meaning of community connectedness,” offers associate producer
Marta Osborne. “Local business help us fund permits and peripheral expenses in turn we sell them friendly ad space in our paper, The Indie. Restaurants also feed our performers who
share music and art for free...”
The
organization's partner project, Loved by the Buffalo Publications,
publishes The Indie, a small newsprint tabloid that is mainly
distributed in downtown Asheville and soon, in Athens in Georgia as
its sister city. Both the Traveling Bonfires and The Indie's projects
have benefitted non-profit organizations that work with at-risk
youths, families of the disappeared, orphans, and disaster victims,
especially typhoon victims in the Philippines.
For
more info, http://ashevilletravelingbonfires.blogspot.com/ / www.touchsamadhi.com or call Marta Osborne at 828 280 2309. For Loved by the Buffalo/The
Indie, call Chris
Wagoner at 706 207 7746, email lovedbythebuffalo.chris@gmail.com
or
email pasckie@yahoo.com
