Featuring Talib Kweli, Omar Souleyman, Mykki Blanco, BEARCAT, Pie Face Girls, MIT Open Doc Lab, NEW INC, Found Sound Nation, and Goldsmiths
The independent, annual, four-day festival will take place in
Durham, North Carolina from May 18-21, 2017.
This year marks its 11th iteration honoring the spirit of inventor Bob Moog.
Protest comes in many forms, and no single genre can contain the musicians participating in Thursday’s program. Talib Kweli is a renowned recording artist, entrepreneur, and social activist who uses hip hop to educate, inspire and agitate. He is well known for his work combating racial stereotypes, the prison-industrial complex, and police brutality. Syrian artist-activist Omar Souleyman represents culturally diverse musical traditions that include Kurdish, Ashuris, Arabic, Turkish and Iraqi communities. Fearless noise rap poet and performance artist Mykki Blanco was raised in Raleigh, N.C., but has traveled the globe from art-world stomping grounds in New York to his current home in Los Angeles, spitting subversive rhymes on race and LGBT issues. British DJ/Producer BEARCAT makes politically-charged bass-heavy mixes and represents Discwoman, an esteemed collective showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent in electronic music. Raleigh-based band Pie Face Girls uses defiant punk music to promote a DIY ethos and attack issues like North Carolina’s HB2. Music is one of the oldest forms of protest, but each of these artists makes their causes urgent anew with the music and community they build.
Found Sound Nation and Moogfest co-present Democracy's Exquisite Corpse: a sonic collage of reflections on democracy and resistance created in real-time across the festival weekend and in collaboration with Moogfest artists, activists, innovators, festival attendees and the public--a 21st century take on the Surrealist parlor game.
These presentations and workshops are rooted in the principle that technology can foster innovative perspectives on protest and creativity as a whole. Moogfest attendees are invited to collaborate with these technologists in launching their projects at the festival.