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MARIANNE COMBS: It's Word of Mouth. I'm Marianne Combs.

[TIM ERIKSEN, "SOLDIER TRAVELLING FROM THE NORTH"]

(SINGING) A soldier traveling from the North and the moon shines bright and clearly. The lady knew the gentleman's heart because she loved him dearly.

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Tim Eriksen. Eriksen met Mirjana Lausevic in a graduate music class at Wesleyan University. Eriksen was a punk rocker who harbored a growing interest in American folk music. Lausevic was an ethnomusicologist focusing on the music of her native Bosnia.

The two seemed to come from different worlds, yet once they heard each other sing, they realized they had a great deal in common. Years later, the two are married and collaborating on music projects, both American and Bosnian.

Lausevic works at the University of Minnesota. Eriksen's music will be heard on the soundtrack to the film Cold Mountain due out in December. He acted as a consultant on the film, and the couple both ended up with bit parts. This week the couple came into the studio to sing and talk about their work. Here's Mirjana Lausevic singing a piece of Bosnian folk music called Lepo Pevam.

[MIRJANA LAUSEVIC, "LEPO PEVAM"]

MARIANNE COMBS: Mirjana Lausevic and Tim Eriksen say they saw certain things in each other's music that brought them together.

TIM ERIKSEN: Intensity, I think.

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: Attitude.

TIM ERIKSEN: Attitude just of-- Some of it's hard to convey without actually seeing it, but just there's a relaxed intensity in both the American stuff that I gravitate towards and in the Bosnian stuff that she does.

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: And it's also directness in expression that I recognized. And immediately after the class, we thought, well, we should sing together.

TIM ERIKSEN: Yeah, we started a band pretty much--

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: That same day.

TIM ERIKSEN: Yeah. And that's how we played together in the band for a number of years before we figured out we should get married.

MARIANNE COMBS: The two songs that you sang, there's Lepo Pevam and Soldier Traveling From the North. In looking at those two songs, where do you see a connection?

TIM ERIKSEN: It's just something that's hard to describe about attitude and intention and intensity.

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: This is something that we see a lot really across the globe, particularly with the musicians who exhibit a similar kind of directness in their performance. It really doesn't matter what kind of genre, what language, where people are from.

When you see that intensity and that directness, suddenly somehow everything else stops and the music has started. And that attitude towards singing is, I think, what is really the common denominator between the two traditions that I recognized immediately.

TIM ERIKSEN: It's far from saying that music is a universal language. It's something that, I think, we both don't believe. But it definitely is an example of being able to see and find qualities in unfamiliar places and identify them as somehow familiar and worthwhile.

MARIANNE COMBS: What can American culture learn from the folk music or folk tradition of another culture?

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: Well, I think a lot. I think that there are horizons to be expanded when you hear a different way of approaching music or a different way of using your voice or just simply a different way of interacting with each other musically.

And I know that from experience doing concerts and performing Bosnian traditional and popular music in the United States in various kinds of contexts, we've realized that, first of all, what one can gain is realized that these are actual real people with real music and real musical expressions.

TIM ERIKSEN: And real similarities and real differences too. When we first moved here, our idea of Minnesota was pretty much the standard one. And right away, Mirja, in her research, began looking into the music scene in the Twin Cities and just instantly got hooked up with the Lao community, the Oromo, the Amhara, the Somalis, the Sudanese, the Hmong, various Native American groups, unbelievable diversity and unbelievable music. And you wouldn't believe what's out there if you look.

MARIANNE COMBS: Musicians Tim Eriksen and Mirjana Mirjana. They perform tonight at the Cedar Cultural center in Minneapolis. They'll also be participating in the annual Minnesota Sacred Harp conference this weekend at Murphy's Landing in Shakopee.

[MUSIC]

MIRJANA LAUSEVIC: (SINGING)

MARIANNE COMBS: This month On Word of Mouth, we're exploring the poetry of Kate Green. Here's her last poem titled movies.

KATE GREEN: What I remember is being dropped off in the rain in front of the neon marquee of the world with $2 in my pocket and posters of Rock Hudson and Peter Pan pasted on the cement wall. Inside, I traded a ticket for a torn stub. I'd roll in my fingers as the lights went dim and the stars in the ceiling rolled their rhythm across the fake blue curve of sky.

Mildewed curtains spread apart a sea of faded red. The cracked screen blinked into color. Scratchy soundtrack revving once, then dying in a swoon through catcalls of bands of bad kids in the balcony who shredded popcorn boxes and heaved them toward the earth of the first floor.

I held in my lap my cache of Bit-O-Honey, popcorn, and junior mints, one hand in a cardboard box. I licked the salt from a paper cut. Coke bottles clink down the slant of aisle as I leaned into the ripped velvet seat against the broken armrest.

The lion tilted his head and roared or that blue queen of clouds. The Columbia Angel rose while spotlights crossed heavenward over our plain lives. Then came the dream of it, full as love had been promised.

And in the blank, dark, where all individual lives became faceless backs of heads. We disappeared into your mouths. Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Pinocchio in the reflected light of your illusion. There was nothing in our lives we could not forget.

MARIANNE COMBS: Poet Kate Green, reading her poem Movies. Green has published several books, including two volumes of poetry. She currently teaches literature and writing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARIANNE COMBS: If the music of Twin Cities based hip hop duo Los Nativos had an address, it would be at the corner of rap street and Latino music avenue. Themselves, a blend of Mexican-American and African-American backgrounds, the members of Los Nativos draw on their Indigenous and immigrant roots to create a unique brand of hip hop.

They say their blend of Spanish and English rhymes, often with political themes, is their way of telling people where they come from and where they're at. Minnesota Public Radio's Grant Williams reports.

SPEAKER: This is Los Nativos. Once again, it's my man.

GRANT WILLIAMS: Los Nativos has played for much bigger crowds than the 20 or so people at the Cedar Cultural Center tonight. However, they're performing at a rally against proposed changes in media ownership laws. It's a cause the members of Los Nativos feel strongly about.

FELIPE CUAUHTLI: I wish more people would have been there because I think this is a very, very perfect cause. But every revolution has to start somewhere, so.

GRANT WILLIAMS: Rapper Felipe Cuauhtli tells the members of the group that the increasing power of corporate owned radio stations and record labels is making it hard for groups like his to get their non-mainstream messages to the masses.

Los Nativos wear their culture and politics on their sleeves, and they don't fixate on money, women and the gangster lifestyle. You're unlikely to hear this song called All My Native Vatos on a top 40 radio station anytime soon.

[LOS NATIVOS, "ALL MY NATIVE VATOS"]

This Revolutionary warfare brother and sister. A Patriot in the Los Nativos militia resurrect and now an ancient Native tongue. When it's all said and done, I'm still standing native ones. All my native sway your ax in the air. Come on. Like you just don't care. And the tribal honey's in the house tonight. Find you. Hurry up and hold him down tight.

FELIPE CUAUHTLI: People in America really don't understand what it's like for migrant people and also living in another country, you know what I'm saying. And we have direct links to that.

GRANT WILLIAMS: Cuauhtli is part African and Mexican American, born and raised in St. Paul. His mother's side of the family migrated from Mexico to Minnesota over four generations ago. His musical partner, Xilam Balam, was born in Texas. Cuauhtli says Balam's family has been in Texas since before Texas was a state. Los Nativos started out in 1996.

Cuauhtli and Balam are not their birth names. Cuauhtli says his name means eagle in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. The name Xilam Balam, says Cuauhtli, means speaker of the Jaguar people in the Mayan language. Cuauhtli says these cultures are still alive in the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. And they say the name of their band, the natives and their adopted names, represent their beliefs.

FELIPE CUAUHTLI: You know what I'm saying, it's like when people find Islam, you know what I'm saying, and they become Muslim and they have a Muslim name, it's almost-- that's how serious it is for us. These weren't rap names that we chose, you what I'm saying, these are life changes that we made, you know what I'm saying. It's a testament of a path that we decided to take.

GRANT WILLIAMS: They're trying to walk the line between political and purely entertainment based rap. Instead, Cuauhtli says, they're trying to make their music enjoyable and thought-provoking, like some of their favorite hip hop artists like KRS-One and Public Enemy.

Los Nativos refer to both English and Spanish as invader languages. Neither of the two are fluent in Spanish, but they slip easily between the two when they rap.

[LOS NATIVOS, "SONIDO INDIGENA"]

That's what my squad's amped off adrenaline. We hit it like bullets and bombs. And it's a war zone. Hit the floor, homes thrown. They hit you with axes, lances, sticks and stones.

PETER SCHOLTES: There are definitely other Native Americans and other Hispanics in local hip hop. Los Nativos are by far the most prominent group.

GRANT WILLIAMS: Peter Scholtes is a staff writer for City Pages who covers the local hip hop scene. Scholtes says there are probably few acts like Los Nativos in the entire country. He says the group's politics and support for Native culture makes them unique.

The group plays at clubs all over the Twin Cities and out of town. But Scholtes says their performance at a recent Cinco de Mayo celebration is particularly memorable.

PETER SCHOLTES: They seem in their element at Cinco de Mayo. And they're like bouncing low riders and people doing, American-Indian dances and traditional dances, and they participate in all that. And then they add the hip hop flavor.

[LOS NATIVOS, LIKE THE INDIGENOUS"] You can change the prose. It burns. It never soothes. It's the strangest bruise. Butterflies they flew through the jungle to Mexico's the clue. I'm late for an interview

GRANT WILLIAMS: For a man whose name means speaker of the Jaguar people, Balam doesn't say too much. He doesn't jump in to add to Cuauhtli's outline of the history and philosophy of the group. However, he says he's feeling a little under the weather today.

Balam is the beat master of Los Nativos. He lays down a prerecorded groove the group uses as a base for their rhymes.

XILAM BALAM: Everything that we use is a sample of something that has been played live like a live base. I'll take just a few notes or just one note and play the melody with that or the keys. All the drums are pretty much sampled sets from somewhere else.

GRANT WILLIAMS: There's a lot of hip hop music out there. It dominates playlists on commercial radio and MTV. Cuauhtli and Balam say there's very few popular rap artists worth listening to. And Balam says he tries to keep the influence of commercial hip hop in the Los Nativos sound to a minimum.

XILAM BALAM: I listen to more music, all kinds of music, man, just whatever, jazz, rock, metal, Latin music, salsa, bachata, cumbia that's what I'm into right now, man.

[LOS NATIVOS, "URTHAWUT"]

A fleet of natives holding heat on the street or in the sticks with leaves under your feet. Expect to inject with our project the edible audible salad.

MARIANNE COMBS: And that report by Minnesota Public Radio's Grant Williams. Los Nativos will be playing tonight at the Fourth Street Station in St. Paul and tomorrow at the Xcel Center during the Latino family expo.

[LOS NATIVOS, "URTHAWUT"]

Valleys and grasslands keep them back to the native woman, child and man. What the whole heart to beware. Come again. What? You're the who. You beware. Why wait. Come again. What The hobo. Beware why wait. Come again. What?

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Word of Mouth. And now it's time for--

EUAN KERR: The Word of Mouth arts roundup. I'm Euan Kerr.

MARIANNE COMBS: And I'm Marianne Combs.

KATHERINE FERRAND: I was just left on my own. I was alone, but I wasn't lonely.

MARIANNE COMBS: Park Square Theater in St. Paul presents Shirley Valentine, the story of one woman's escape from a dull marriage. Valentine travels to Greece, where she discovers she's more comfortable dining alone than the people next to her, who insist she sit with them.

KATHERINE FERRAND: I thought the waiters were going to break into applause because I'd been rescued from my loneliness by Jeanette and Dougie, Jeanette and Dougie Walsh from Manchester.

Well, no. I know the exact dimensions of her kitchen, the price of the new extension, the color of the microwave, and the contents of the Hoover. And we hadn't even started on the first course. It's a good job. It wasn't super. Would have put my head in it and drowned myself.

MARIANNE COMBS: The play stars Katherine Ferrand in a one woman show directed by her husband, Jon Cranney. Cranney says Park Square chose the play because in these economic times, it's easier to make a profit with fewer actors on stage. It's also a well known story, thanks to the film of the same name. Cranney says while Shirley Valentine is especially popular with women of a certain age, he thinks it has appeal for men too.

JON CRANNEY: I think it's a thing for guys to see about what our relationships are like and how we need to understand how our spouses and our friends and our loved ones feel.

MARIANNE COMBS: Cranney says Shirley Valentine is a story about learning to get more out of life rather than falling into a boring routine. Shirley Valentine runs through October 12th.

EUAN KERR: In today's world of the internet, television, cable movies and DVDS, the average person spends several hours a day looking at a screen and absorbing information. Choreographer Paula Mann says she believes people have become increasingly disconnected from their bodies as a result.

PAULA MANN: Look at the computer. Look at what we do all day. We sit in front of images. We sit in front of the television. We go to movies. We're always visually stimulated and perhaps not kinetically stimulated.

EUAN KERR: In Mann's latest project, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, she teams up with lighting designer and editor Steve Paul. They've created a story about the history of modern media and their effect on culture. They follow the inventor of the moving picture on a journey through time as he witnesses the long-term impact of his invention.

Paul says the invention of photography changed how people saw things. Then film changed the way people perceived things. He says images are no longer artifacts of reality but became reality in the mind of the viewer.

STEVE PAUL: And it is that power of film to really alter our perceptions of time, our perceptions of the sense that we know a place, even though we've never been there. We've only seen it on television or in the movies.

EUAN KERR: Paul combines images from movies, cable, and other media outlets to create an increasingly frenetic collage of visual stimulation. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is at the O'Shaughnessy auditorium in St. Paul this weekend.

[LATIN MUSIC]

MARIANNE COMBS: Sound Unseen, the film festival dedicated to movies about independent music returns for its fourth year at various movie houses in Minneapolis. Over the course of 10 days, the festival will present 35 films that feature everything from rock and roll and punk to blues and jazz to hip hop and new wave.

Festival director Gretchen Williams says the festival continues to grow, and this year's lineup is more diverse than ever.

GRETCHEN WILLIAMS: These are films you're never going to see again probably. They're not going to get picked up by HBO. They're not going to be out in the theaters, your Maple Grove multiplex ever.

And I'm pretty sure that most of the movies that I've seen in the last three months at major theaters don't even come close the emotional, the intellectual, the musical scope, what these films have. And it would be a shame to miss them because you're too busy watching your favorite television show on the couch.

MARIANNE COMBS: The festival, which runs through October 5th, includes a screening of Spectrum, Minnesota Soundtracks. It's a collection of music videos from 28 local bands, including Har Mar Superstar, Atmosphere, Low, Mason Jennings, Lateduster, Mark Mallman, and Heiruspecs.

PABLO NERUDA: Here on this island, the sea, so much sea, it rises again and again.

EUAN KERR: Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and activist, wrote during an era of political strife in his Homeland. But he wrote in a style that was not high minded or overly intellectual. It was the language of the people.

PABLO NERUDA: The wind is a horse. Hear how he runs through the sea, through the sky. He wants to take me. Listen how he roves the world to take me far away. Hide me in your arms just for this night.

EUAN KERR: Theater Latte Da presents the play Burning Patience, a tribute to Neruda's life's work as seen through the eyes of a young postman. The story inspired the movie Il Postino. Director Peter Rothstein says Neruda is an example of the critical role the artist plays in times of political oppression.

PETER ROTHSTEIN: This play so beautifully parallels the artists with the working man. So art is not about the elite. It is not about-- it is not an exclusive activity. Neruda found the poetry in his people.

EUAN KERR: Burning Patience runs through October 19 at the Loring Playhouse in Minneapolis.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARIANNE COMBS: And that's Word of Mouth. If you'd like to know more about any of the stories you heard tonight, check out the Word of Mouth website at minnesotapublicradio.org We're listed under programs.

Our website is managed by Sarah Lehrer. We had production assistance from Kathy Cristobal. And special thanks to Tom Mudge, Craig Thorsen, and Steve Griffith for their technical support.

Euan Kerr edits the show and the senior director for arts, and culture at Minnesota Public Radio is Don Lee. Host and father of two Chris Roberts will be back next week. I'm Marianne Combs. Have a great weekend.

[MUSIC PLAYING]