22 films — 2012 to present
A mesmerizing all-night performance of Bajidoran, a genre fusing Jaipongan, Pencak Silat martial arts, and driving Sundanese gamelan. The audience members take turns orchestrating the musicians with their dancing — a communal musical exchange unlike anything else.
The members of Marginal Consort met in art school in 1970s Japan. They create elaborate instrumental systems from household items and hardware-store treasures, performing music that exists at the outer edge of what music can be.
In Long Beach, CA, a late-blooming newlywed couple work to preserve the remnants of Cambodian music and literature left in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide — a catastrophe they both escaped in the early 1980s.
The a'reng is an instrument played by the Pako people of Vietnam and Laos — one of the most perplexing on earth. We set off to find it, and end up in a mountain valley with an elderly couple who are the last keepers of the Pako musical tradition.
Onyx Ashanti is a Detroit-based Afrofuturist living in a basement with only an extension cord, using a homemade 3D printer to build wearable kinetic modular synthesizers. He travels the world having sonic conversations about evolution and technology.
Three generations of artists — one of them dead — make up Fantasies in Crystal. Erin Schneider and her Grammy-winning father perform live music to her grandfather's crystal micro-photography: stunningly surreal images, totally raw and unaltered.
We were invited to a fetish ceremony in the inner city of Accra, the capital of Ghana. What we found was animal sacrifice, ancestor communion, and some of the most hypnotically tranced-out drumming in the world.
Huun Huur Tu are the undisputed worldwide masters of khoomei, the ancient Tuvan throat-singing tradition from the steppes between Mongolia and Russia. We meet them at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, where they evoke a timeless natural world with their voices.
John Schneider won a 2015 Grammy performing music by the midcentury genius Harry Partch, an American pioneer of microtonal music. We dive deep into Partch's strange instruments and ideas, and watch John perform them on his couch and onstage.
The Space Lady, aka Susan Dietrich Schneider, built a Bay Area legend through years of street busking out of necessity. We spend a few days in LA — filming on the street, onstage, and in the mountains — to find out what brought her to live such a singular life.
First held in 1969 in Spivey's Corner, North Carolina, the annual National Hollerin' Contest is a daylong celebration of Southern American cultural heritage and the preservation of an archaic form of communication.
On any given night, you may find yourself serenaded by a living mannequin on Sunset Blvd. A Gulf War veteran, motorcycle gang member, stockbroker, and chimney sweep — we had to find out what brought Mister Moonbeam from rural Alaska to a glittering storefront window in LA's Echo Park.
Under a bridge near a train station in Jakarta, an outdoor nightclub is the last of its kind — keeping the traditional Sundanese art form of Jaipong alive. We trance out into the early morning with the musicians and the club owner keeping this tradition from disappearing.
Iasos began receiving music in his head from another dimension in 1965, calling it 'Paradise Music.' Today he's recognized as one of the fathers of new age music. We visit him in Marin County, where he takes us on a hike and debates heavy metal.
Richard Kik keeps Detroit's historic Belle Isle Aquarium running almost single-handedly, while also collecting Soviet synthesizers and performing industrial noise music. We visit him in the aquarium's eerie stone-and-glass halls for a very special performance.
In 1966, Dave Bixby burned out on LSD and went temporarily out of his mind. His encounter with a wandering spiritualist pulled him back — and the prayer group they formed grew rapidly into a Christian cult, with Dave's music as its soundtrack.
While living in a small farming village in northern Ghana, the filmmaker was invited to film a chief's funeral — a huge all-night party involving hundreds of people from across the country. Years later, a Skype interview with a Ghanaian friend begins to unravel what he witnessed.
Hailu Mergia led one of Ethiopia's biggest jazz-funk bands in the 1970s, even playing for the president. Then he arranged a U.S. tour, was met with indifference, and the band fizzled — leaving him stranded in Washington D.C., driving a cab for decades.
We travel to a mosquito-swarmed gazebo in North Jakarta to visit Keroncong Tugu, a group of Portuguese-descended Betawi folk playing traditional keroncong — resisting the pull of modern instruments and drum machines while trucks rumble on the nearby highway.
We boarded 70,000 Tons of Metal, a heavy-metal cruise ship sailing from Miami to the Turks and Caicos, and drifted into the deep black sea. Come witness the strangest luxury cruise of all time.
Frustrated by a lack of venues, a gang of Tampa experimentalists took to the streets in the early 2000s — performing under bridges, in alleyways, and construction sites. We went down to meet these mavericks and see how an outdoor, illegal noise show differs from a dark basement gig.
In Middlesboro, Kentucky, the Full Gospel Tabernacle raises and handles deadly snakes as an act of faith. We visit Pastor Jaime Coots and his congregation to hear the rockabilly, blues, and gospel that forms the soundtrack to their lives.
