go to soundclick.com/cellojoe to download my new album "let's be happy!" for free! plus there are 30 or so other songs to download. the cd is anti-copyright/pro-stewardship under the sharefare paradigm..so feel free to send me $10 for the CD on paypal to cellojoey@gmail.com if you want to support my bike tour to mexico! more info on sharefare purchase my cd "grow wild" for just $15 at efolkmusic.com
you can buy my latest CD at CDBABY! http://cdbaby.com/cd/cellojoe
wanna know a bit about the infamous, legendary and amazing cellojoe aka joey
chang, mild mannered suburbanite kid? read on..
cellojoe: a biography
There aren’t very many singing, rapping, beatboxing, cello players in the world. You could probably count them on your fingers, if you knew any of them. But there’s a particularly funny and funky curious one you should remember and he goes by the name of cellojoe.
Like most cello players, Joseph Abraham Tal Tien-Ru Chang Jr. Senior III esquire (or just Joey for short) started out as a classical cellist. A mild-mannered suburbanite kid from Los Altos, California, Joey began studying the cello at age ten. His first instrument was actually piano which he started at age nine. For the first eight years, there were weekly private lessons and many music summer camps. There were also weekly youth orchestra rehearsals. And from this fertile classical ground sprang forth a very unusual weed from a crack in the suburbial sidewalk.
Joey discovered playing on the street after eight years of classical training. First, he played his classical repertoire over and over. This practice got old pretty quick. He realized that playing on the street was a great opportunity to begin improvising. After a fair amount of purely instrumental improvisation, he thought that being able to sing and play the cello would be infinitely cool and different and would thus attract more attention and hopefully fill the case with money. Slowly and surely this talent developed. Hip hop had always been part of Joey’s listening diet and because of this habit, beatboxing naturally began to work its way into his improvisations on the street.
University Avenue in Palo Alto California is a pretty ritzy strip. It’s full of yuppie shopping zombies. There’s also a sizeable homeless population. A homeless man named Carl would listen to Joey playing often. It was he who coined the moniker “cellojoe.” Joey sang impromptu songs about the glaring disparities right before his eyes in the yuppies and the homeless. Socially conscious and politically active, Joey naturally wove concepts of social and earth justice into his lyrics.
Joey auditioned in Berklee College of Music’s World Scholarship Tour in 2000. He was awarded a scholarship and attended Berklee from 2002-2006. He has played with Rushad Eggleston, the cellist in Fiddler’s Four and Crooked Still, Edan, an internationally acclaimed MC and producer, Roxanne Young, a member of Cirque du Soleil and Barrage, Greg Liszt , Bruce Springstein’s banjo player and member of Crooked Still, as well as many other notable musicians. As cellist with the band Incus, he toured nationally and played at over forty venues and festivals all over the country. He went on tour with the El Camino Youth Symphony in Europe twice: once to Italy and Austria and once to England and Scotland. He has recorded on many artist’s CDs including Andi Star, Concept 6, Rebecca Loebe, Pablo Picker and others.
In addition to being a veritable cello monster, Joey is also very interested in organic farming and has traveled to and worked at organic farms in Canada, the west coast of the U.S. and the island of Maui in Hawaii through the organization WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms or Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms.)
He is currently working on a puppet show and a west coast U.S. tour on a bicycle with a bike trailer for the cello. If you know any great places to play, be sure to contact him! e-mail cellojoe@cellojoe.com. Additionally, he is developing percussion classes for kids, and weekend workshops on shamanic journeying, getting silly and embracing creativity.
postscript:
a lot of my lyrics are freely improvised and made up on the street. i sing about injustices i see. this world is such a beautiful place and we can make it so much more beautiful by growing our own foods, building community, and getting into simple living.
well i hope you listen to the songs and e-mail me with some comments and get some of my cd offerings. thanks so much and many blessings upon you. peace be with you. - ~!@joey@!~ "cellojoe"
here's a cool quote i like:
Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
excerpted from http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html..labelPoeticTerrorism by hakim bey.
Hey bro, my percussion teacher was the percussionist for Lila DOWNS. His name is Charlie Chavez. We are in my apprtment in San Diego thinking what a small world this is. He lived in Mexico City and was the percussionist for "Malida Vesindad", when Ms Lila DOWNS hired him and got his visa. He is now the top percussionist in San Diego, and is growing fast. Say hello to Lila from Charlie Chavez and feel free to have her contact us any time. Lots of Love, your former percussioist, LT Enoc Zamora....what a small world.
on this most important occassion... and those responsable are certain it can be corrected with our archtype... molded in the Gods image... ie; the StarLight Collective...
You see, they beleive we can stem the tide of spirit invasion, with our unique perspective and healing information...
they also beleive, it is all being channeled in order to connect us with it... the THREADZ of what is... wile projecting one idea; "LIVE AND LET LIVE WITHOUT FEAR..." in other words... "FOLLOW YOUR BLISS... TILL YOU END UP HERE..."
Please Join up on the 4th Monday of each month from 10-midnight PST. In the North Bay area, you can listen on 90.9 and 91.1 FM. You can listen anywhere in the world online at http://www. krcb. org. For those Comcast subscribers, you can listen on channel 961 all around the Bay Area.
COME OUT AND PARTY MAY 5TH SIDEWINDERS IN FISHKILL LIVE ON THE RADIO FROM 7-9 CORONA GIRLS COORS LIGHT GIRLS AND THE CAZADORES GIRLS. PARTY LIKE A MEXICAN SIDEWINDERS CINCO DE MAYO BASH KARAOKE STARTS @ 10P. M
Hey Joe its Noah out in israel wishing you a happy new year, hows it going out west? Headin out there in a couple months lets have a bike jam! Hope all is well with you and Ariel! Peace from the middle east
Rainbow Gathering Mex 2007/8 (All info From Enoc Zamora).
Rainbow Mexico 2007/8 Visitors: 580174
Invite to Intergalactic Rainbow Gathering - Mexico The sky is not the limit… Intergalactic rainbow experience 24th November 2007 - 21st February 2008 - depends on you! @ The Undeceiving, Veracruz, Mexico. We, who are brothers & sisters, families of life on earth, friends of nature, animals and of all people, calling ourselves Rainbow Family Tribe, humbly invite: All races, peoples, tribes, communes, men, women, children, individuals out of love. To join with us in gathering together for the purpose of working towards peace on earth and harmony among all creatures. Rainbow gatherings: Since rainbows started they have sprung all over the earth, bringing another vision of humanity through compassion, unity, art, freedom and love. Gatherings have been going on for 35 years, and they are to me like a temporary community living tribal anarchy. The gatherings are free non commercial events, open to all peaceful people, there are no leaders, no administration and hence it's the biggest non-organization on earth that gathers all over the planet to pray for world peace. After sometime gatherings started to have an intention so those within the family could gather and work towards a common vision. We invite those inspired by this magic to live as a merging tribe and find ways that we can actually achieve extending the spirit of the rainbow path into a way of life, so as a result of these experiences we can manifest more intentional sustainable communities and caravans, so we can have alternatives to continue to grow as a rainbow family. Why experience? The gathering is a part of the experience, as well as the community creation, and spreading through organic caravans. Why intergalactic? So there are regional, national and world gatherings, so why should we initiate an intergalactic one? We are about to reach a major planetary convergence of major cosmic cycles for 2012.
wanna know a bit about the infamous, legendary and amazing cellojoe aka joey
chang, mild mannered suburbanite kid? read on..
