Stephan Said and The Clarion
HERALDED MUSICIAN-ACTIVIST STEPHAN SAID TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM, UNSTOPPABLE, WITH WEBCAST, GLOBAL NETWORK, AND FORTHCOMING BIOPIC
1st Album In 11 Years, Unstoppable, Features Star-studded New Band “The Clarion,” Out June 18
Hosts Video Podcast With Global Network “borderless” promoting a new pop culture for change
Documentary About His Life In Works By Spirit Award-Winner Gill Holland, Directed by Matt Kohn
New York-based musician and global activist Stephan Said has developed a reputation for crafting literate, poignant music and is known for consistently using his art at the frontlines of social change. He first broke into mainstream press with a police brutality anthem that featured Patti Smith, was asked by folk legend Pete Seeger to rewrite “We Shall Overcome,” and received praise from The New York Times’ Jon Pareles who wrote, “With his reedy, nasal voice, his acoustic guitar and earnest topical songs like his ‘Ballad of Abner Louima,’ Stephan Smith recalls Bob Dylan in his early days as a Woody Guthrie acolyte.” His songs have been sung at human rights protests across the world as well as by artists from Dave Matthews to DJ Spooky, and he has performed, toured, or recorded with a artists including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Ween, Paul Simon, Ani DiFranco, Philip Glass, and others.
Stephan’s last album, 2010’s difrent, produced by the late Grammy Award winning Producer Hal Willner (Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Bono, Saturday Night Live), blended pop with rock, folk, and world music in cinematic love songs and pop anthems about global equality and peace in English, Arabic, French and Spanish. Now, after spending the past few years focusing on his docuseries and global network “borderless,” traveling to conflict zones across the world to shed light on the change makers at the front lines, Stephan, with his new band, The Clarion, is getting ready to release a new album, Unstoppable, on June 18th on sonaBLAST! Records. He says, “Since the release of difrent, I’ve been focused on how music and art can build a sustainable global movement for peace, equality, and environmental sustainability. Instead of playing clubs, arenas and festivals, I’ve been making music on the front lines of the world’s biggest crises, working with young activists and creatives in war zones, refugee camps, natural disasters, and the like. There is an new generation that wants popular culture that represents the urgent need for systemic change they perceive. And, there’s nothing more inspiring to be in the thick of it.”
Unstoppable features The Clarion, Stephan’s band of acclaimed musicians – bassist Mark Plati (David Bowie, Prince, Rachid Taha), who also mixed the album; drummer Doug Yowell (Joe Jackson, Duncan Sheik, Suzanne Vega), and keyboardist/programmer Matt Katz-Bohen (Hedwig, Blondie, Cyndi Lauper). Stephan proclaims, “Together, Mark, Doug, Matt and I found we have something really magical in the balance between us. We clicked immediately, so much so, that we decided to call ourselves a band, ‘The Clarion,’ after the victory horn”. Five of the songs were recorded live in one day at Mission Sound the week before lockdown in March 2020.
The first single from Unstoppable, “Together Across the World”, was written and recorded in the first few weeks of lockdown as “a joyous call for us to seize this moment to come together and transform our world.” As the lyrics say – “we’re invincible when we are one, across the borderlines, everything’s possible, when we’re together, we are one!” The track features Pam Fleming on trumpet and background vocals by Meah Pace (former Baltimore Ravens Cheerleading Captain, soloist with the Resistance Revival Chorus), and acclaimed cabaret singer Ali Babs.
Another track on the album, “Our Dream”, is the song from which the album gets its name. Stephan explains, “It’s written from a perspective that our victory is inevitable, and, when I say ‘our,’ I think of everyone from Amazonian tribes fighting for the rainforests to youth in Palestine and Israel fighting for peace, Friday’s For Future, Indian farmers, and BLM. It’s both a rally cry and a power anthem.”
The song and video for “I Won’t Be Silent” debuted last year to benefit Black Futures Lab which focuses on long-term movement building and impact, working with Black people to transform communities, building Black political power and changing the way that power operates—locally, statewide, and nationally. The song was written “as a personal reaffirmation that nothing will turn us around. That all of our movements are one, and we are taking a stand and will not be silenced.”
Although Stephan has previously released several critically acclaimed albums under his mother’s maiden name, “Stephan Smith”, for his own independent label Universal Hobo Records, as well as for Artemis Records, Rounder Records, and Caroline Records, Unstoppable is only his second album reclaiming his born name. The Austrian and Iraqi-American with immediate family in Baghdad and Mosul, recorded under his mother’s maiden name after executives at major labels in the U.S. insisted he “could never have a career in America with an Arabic name.”
Coinciding with the release of “Unstoppable,” Said will host a new, weekly video podcast “borderless,” produced by the global network and production company of the same name that he co-founded with his wife, Anushay. The borderless web-cast will feature voices from the frontlines who are creating a new pop culture focused on civic engagement, equality, and environmental sustainability. In the past six years since its founding, borderless has grown to operate on 5 continents, following Said as he brought his music across the world meeting changemakers in local communities – everyday heroes doing amazing this to make a better world.
Together since the release of his last album, Said and borderless have produced a music video for peace in the streets of Baghdad, Iraq as four bombs fell across the city; put on a major concert for unity in Karachi, Pakistan at the height of ISIS in which the country’s beloved Qawwal’s joining him; made a full length film on the refugee crisis including a live recording of his song “No More Lines” in refugee camps and settlements at the peak of the crisis in Greece (“it was so inspiring seeing the momentary sense of freedom that singing such an empowering song gave children and adults who had lost everything”); filmed in Houston following Hurricane Harvey in the hardest hit neighborhoods that went virtually uncovered by mainstream media; and in Charlottesville and Richmond, VA in the wake of white supremacist riots, where hundreds of youth at public high-schools and community centers co-created the music video for his song “We The People.”
Said says “‘borderless’ is the culmination of my life’s experience. Having been mentored by both Allen Ginsberg and folk/civil rights legend Pete Seeger, I knew from a young age that in order to achieve the systemic change my generation knows is imperative, we need to organize a global cultural movement in the way both Allen and Pete helped create in their lives - movements that lifted multiple voices and communities, not individuals. Movements that said “pop as we know it is over.” Having been blacklisted when The Bell “the first major song against the war in Iraq” (Neil Strauss, NY Times) became the most played song against the war in Iraq, ‘borderless’ for me is very much what building the folk revival was for Pete after he had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era. The silver lining is that being silenced, however painful and devastating, teaches one to become unsilenceable, to be unstoppable.”
In addition to the album, global network and webseries, acclaimed Spirit Award Nominee film producer Gill Holland is producing a documentary about Stephan, directed by filmmaker Matthew Kohn, which is expected to be released later this year. The film features archival and contemporary footage as well as interviews with Pete Seeger, Hal Willner, Penny Arcade, fellow musicians, and more. The documentary tells Said’s story as an artist activist who took a stand and a paid a price for it, but has come through it all to use his voice to lift others, helping pave the way for the current wave of activism.
“Seeing this new global generation taking a stand for things that I have fought and been silenced for is so inspiring”, he says. “Unstoppable is an inward reflection and rallying cry about one’s personal commitment to social change, while borderless is an outward, global celebration of this new social change activist generation. This is our moment, nothing can stop us, we can create a more equal world and stop climate change, and we can make a new kind of pop music and pop culture that takes over the airwaves for the people and the planet.”
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For additional information/materials on Stephan Said & The Clarion and the album Unstoppable, please contact Jocelynn Loebl at Howlin' Wuelf Media at Jocylibs@yahoo.com or Jocelynn@howlinwuelf.com.
