This video was shot on King Julia's Aunt Alison's birthday, on New Year's Eve 2009. Both the djembe and the guitar were Christmas gifts from Julia's parents, who are Fifth Nation's greatest supporters. Sabari is a song written by Baba Djan, a West African fellow from the country of Guinea. Julia has no idea what language the song was written in -- she learned that Guinea is a country of nine million people in which thirty two languages are spoken, and was unable to find which Baba Djan speaks. She hopes to one day meet someone who can translate the song for her, and hopes not to discover that all along she was singing about someone's mother falling down the stairs.

 

                                                                                                


 These next three videos were shot by Ron Goebel at Kick Butt Coffee in December '09. The event was the three year anniversary event for Spoken and Heard, a weekly open-mic poetry night in Austin. The community of people who attend and perform is incredibly diverse, and it even accommodates deaf audience members. The women you see on stage with us are ASL interpreters, who are doing their best to understand the lyrics and convey a message. Pretty funny!

FLIGHT - download - play Quicktime
This video was recorded by Jeffrey Liles at the Kessler, an old theatre in Dallas that is currently being renovated into a music venue. Through the course of its reconstruction, Jeffrey has been shooting musicians performing stripped-down and unplugged in different parts of the building. "Flight" is the title track on Fifth Nation's debut album FLIGHT which came out September 2009, 6 months after we met. It is available for sale -- mp3s and physical copies -- on this website, www.FifthNationMusic.com!

GOTTA TRY - download - play Quicktime
This raw rendition of "Gotta Try" was also shot in the Kessler, and appears as well on Fifth Nation's debut record FLIGHT.

This video was shot by Boss Man Steve of The Annex at Windham Arts Collaborative in Willimantic, CT. This was the second show of our first tour, which began on January 7th 2010. The building was full of studios, galleries, and this venue which hosts a variety of musical genres several times a week. The walls were covered in century-old dancing Indian shadow puppets, made of thin colorful leather. We were like -- damn! this art is really enthusiastic! they must dig our jams! Then we thought well we too are excited by their creative expression. Then we agreed that artists inspire art and art inspires artists so we all teamed up and entertained the four humans in the audience.