World Music Festival highlights art, music

ON A RECENT hot July afternoon, artist Joseph Tiberino sat with friends at a table in the courtyard adjoining the several homes that make up the West Philly museum named for his late wife, Ellen Powell Tiberino.

The old friends drank Argentinian cabernet out of water glasses, chatted about everything from recent art acquisitions to the first rock 'n' roll record, and casually planned a film shoot for later that evening.

That blend of communal spirit and artistic endeavor is endemic to the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum, a complex of five houses and nine yards filled with paintings, sculptures and murals.

"When I first started going with my wife, she didn't want to get married because she didn't see how she could be an artist and a mother too," Tiberino said. "Eventually she changed her mind on that, so we got married and bought the first house on Spring Garden Street. Four or five years later we bought the next house and then the next house, so it's just been a gradual growth."

That organic quality comes through in the way that objects of daily life overlap with the priceless works on display. The boundary between life and art is utterly invisible to anyone wandering through those gates, where family photographs hang next to pieces in a variety of media by Ellen, Joseph and their four children, all artists.

"It has a real magical air about it," said Gerald Carter, a longtime friend, who runs the Sleeping Giant Art Gallery from his home a few blocks away. "You walk off a street in West Philadelphia and into a different world, like Alice through the looking glass."

Carter saw that environment as a perfect space for fostering dialogue and cultural communion. So when Joseph Tiberino came looking for programming for the summer season, he devised the first annual World Music Festival, a 10-week series of performances by Philadelphia-based artists representing a diverse array of cultural backgrounds: Brazil (Siora); India (Shafaatullah Khan); the Middle East (Stephen Wise-Katriel); and the Balkans (West Philadelphia Orchestra).

"The idea is to bring different types of people and different cultures together," Carter said. "This atmosphere fosters a freedom of communication. You don't feel at all resistant to having a conversation with anybody."

It's a template that Carter set years ago at his gallery. When he opened it 12 years ago, he held regular parties in his back yard to open new shows. By the gallery's fifth anniversary, the parties had grown to eclipse the art.

"It wasn't wine and cheese," Carter recalled. "We had food. And a lot of people never went upstairs and saw the show. They left saying, 'Thanks for the great party!' I wanted to say, 'I wasn't having a party - this is an art show!' So I backed off from that."

Jazz singer Barbara Walker performed at many of those openings/parties and has remained friends with Carter. She was planning to contact him for a collaboration when her phone rang with the opportunity to help produce and emcee the World Music Festival.

Walker jumped at the chance and will host the series and present two jazz-oriented evenings: This week's Diva Jazz Concert, featuring singers Miss Justine, Denise King, Nina Bundy and Rhetta Morgan; and an All-Star Jazz Concert on Aug. 28 featuring drummer Mickey Roker, pianist Sid Simmons and trumpeter John Swana.

Most people think of "world music" as encompassing sounds from other parts of the world, but Walker pointed out: "This is American music. It's going to represent our culture in the festival."

Carter was emphatic about the festival focusing on world music rather than just jazz, however, and Walker readily agreed.

"I like the idea of making a pot of stew and mixing it all up," she said. "The idea of so many musicians and cultures of music coming together lets it sizzle and boil and simmer. Here we have something right in our back yard in West Philly where people can come and taste some of that gumbo."

While based in Philly, Sharon Katz first began blending cultures in her native South Africa during the apartheid government. She formed the first incarnation of her band Peace Train - the current version of which will perform on Sept. 4 - in late 1992.

"There was a huge need in South Africa at that time to bring some unity," she explained. "Getting people to work together across cultures was not an easy task, because the apartheid regime . . . had divided people so much. I started a 500-voice choir in an effort to bring together all different cultures in a multicultural choir reflecting the demographics of the country. We represented the Rainbow Nation that Nelson Mandela was talking about."

The ensemble traveled the country by train along with Lady-smith Black Mambazo throughout December 1992.

"We became a moving billboard for two or three weeks," Katz said, "speaking for the hearts and minds of the people on the ground, saying, 'We can do this.' And we've been doing it ever since."

Though the apartheid regime fell not long thereafter, and Katz now splits her time between South Africa and the U.S., she said Peace Train's concept is still relevant.

"The message is universal. Right here in Philadelphia, there's a great need for different communities to work together. We bring these experiences together musically with a message of learning how to listen to each other and work together, with the example of people like Nelson Mandela and Dr. King, who were committed to nonviolence."

That message is amplified, she said, in a space like the Tiberino Museum. "Performing in socially relevant spaces and art museums is wonderful because we know that we're on the same path. People experience the artwork and its message, which is then reinforced through the music. It can really be life-changing for people." *

Send e-mail to bradys@phillynews.com.

Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum, 3819 Hamilton St., 6 p.m. Thursdays through Sept. 11, $10, 215-386-3784, tiberinomuseum.com.