Hataałii and Colectivo CalleSon, live music performance
The Poetry Center presents acclaimed singer/songwriter Hataałii joining us from Window Rock, Arizona, for a rare Bay Area appearance, with San Francisco-based banda Colectivo CalleSon opening, an evening of live music performance at Medicine for Nightmares bookstore y galeria, in San Francisco's Mission district. Come on down and join us for a very special night of music and camaradería.
Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Medicine for Nightmares bookstore and gallery is located at street level on 24th near Harrison.
VIDEO for this program will be posted after editing at Poetry Center Digital Archive.
Colectivo CalleSon is a diverse unison of nature, roots, Chaos, and street vibration. Through the instrumentos and sounds of “El Sotavento” we lift up our voices through the viento, we stomp our feet for Tonantzin, and tell our stories of resilience and migration. "El muro de la frontera se rompe con la canción."
Hataałii (aka Hataałiinez Wheeler) began self-releasing his music as a teenager, beginning with 2019’s Banana Boy, the fruit of a personal challenge to write a song every day. Word-of-mouth and online interest swelled, and he followed Banana Boy with 2020’s Painting Portraits — which added shoegaze and bossa nova to his sonic arsenal — and followed that with 2021’s Hataałii, and COMPLETELY!!! personal, a lo-fi collection that serves as evidence of his restless creative streak. With his latest album Singing Into Darkness (Dangerbird Records), Hataałii’s intuition sharpens into a visceral and inquisitive, yet artfully obfuscated, sense of focus. “The demos were recorded in Window Rock in my dad’s shed behind the cornfield during Christmas break,” Hataałii said. “I was still 18 at the time. All songs from the entire album were recorded in the span of a week because it was the only time I had with a drum kit. It was freezing in that shed, so much that I could see my own breath while I was recording.”
Raised in Window Rock, AZ, the capital of Navajo Nation, 21-year-old Hataałii’s (pronounced: Hah-toth-lee) music has been praised by Michael Klausman at Aquarium Drunkard as “weirdly genreless and out-of-time, yet constantly reach[ing] for some sort of cosmic agency.” Last year SPIN magazine recognized Hataałii as 2023's breakout musician.
Related event:
Kim Shuck and Hataałiinez Wheeler, at The Poetry Center
Audio and video: