JOHN MALKIN and BOOTS RILEY discuss SOUNDS OF FREEDOM April 30, 2006

A compilation of interviews with sixteen musicians speaking about social change and spiritual growth, SOUNDS OF FREEDOM includes an introduction by Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and a CS representing a diversity of styles and realms including rock, jazz, classical, hip-hop, native, experimental and folk. The musicians � including Ani DiFranco, Laurie Anderson, the Indigo Girls, Philip Glass, Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Franti, Utah Phillips, John Trudell, Tom Morello, Holly Near, Michelle Shocked, Darryl Cherney, Steve Reich and Goapele � speak about their involvement in national political movements, anti-corporate gatherings, civil rights, labor struggles, movements to ensure autonomy for indigenous people, and more. For some of them, it is the first time they discuss in detail their ideas and feelings about the relationship of social change to spirituality and how both inform their music and performing. Joining editor John Malkin, on whose �The Great Leap Forward� weekly radio program on Free Radio Santa Cruz these interviews were originally broadcast, is Boots Riley, the co-fonder of the Oakland rap/hip hop band The Coup, with Pam the Funkstress. Their new album is Pick a Bigger Weapon. Boots� father worked with the NAACP, CORE, and the Black Panthers; Boots became a social change activist at a young age as a member of the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective and Young Comrades, and channeled his social activism into music in the early 1990s. In SOUNDS OF FREEDOM, he says, �When people say that they are spiritual, I think that they mean that they are in touch with the universe. And that is what I want to be. That is why I want to be involved with things and involved with the world. By being involved in the world I am more alive.� Note time: 4:00 PM at Cody�s Stockton Street in San Francisco