Meet Namaya – The Voice of Vermont
A recognized Vermont treasure, Namaya creates work that harmoniously blends reality with imagination, providing a unique celebration of Vermont’s natural beauty.
Namaya’s Bio
T.Namaya – Is an international performance artist, jazz poet, story-teller, and humorist. He has performed around the world in theaters and clubs in Europe, Asia (Japan, Malaysia, Australia, & New Zealand), though out the USA, and in the past year Palestine and Syria. He has performed with his band “Jazz Beat Poetry Ensemble,” and as a solo artist with his show “GOD SEX POLITICS,” and “Imagine this” a show completely improvised with the audience in NYC. Described as, “The high wire performance artist of the spoken word.”
His 2011 show is based on his new CD “Vermont My Home: A celebration” is a multimedia performance based on Namaya’s stories, music, songs, and photographs. “It is a celebration of my home on Blue Heron Pond, characters like my neighbor Josiah, the wayward monk Li Pon, and this 5 season paradise we call Vermont.” It is a story about traveling around the world, but always coming home to Vermont.
He is a poet and playwright and his play “Beatnik Cafe: A Musical Revue of the Jazz Beat Generation” played to a sold out audience in NYC, and Boston. His newest play “Four Prophets,” the story of Jesus, Mohamed, Moses, and Satan in a public restroom is planned for staging in 2011. He has written three books of poetry “Eros to Godhead,” “GOD SEX POLITICS,” “Vermont My Home,” and a memoir “Journal of the Plague: Living and working with AIDS” (based on working with end-stage AIDS patients in a VA hospital in NYC.)
Namaya is a visual artist, designer, & photographer who is creating large scale installation/ performance projects “B 4 Peace” which includes “Pornography of War,” “Peace Garden Designs,” “100 Flowers of Peace” (translation of 100 Flowers poem into 100 languages), and building a 12 foot by 21 foot “Wall of Apartheid” in Boston and at the Clear Water Festival in 2011. Between now and 2015 Namaya will create a series of art and performance projects based on the theme of Peace and Social Justice
“I live for the creative process and my life is fueled by curiosity. My creativity is best expressed in my art, poetry, performance, visual arts, plays, children’s stories, singer, / song writer, and my large multimedia installation projects. I view all of life as a celebration and my work as a writer, healer, social change activist, and artist is part of this continuum. With my wife Zoe we founded a grass roots community organization www.gracecares.com that provides for small scale community development in Central America, Dominican Republic, and India. All of these performance projects, art, and social change are a witness that we can create a world with dignity and justice.”
Obligation
My paintings may never
Hang in a museum or seen
By more than friends.
Be heard or read by more
Than a few
I devote my life to – may
Not find an audience in
This life…
Obligation is to wake
Up each day and create.