Taína Asili carries on the tradition of her ancestors, fusing present and past struggles into one poetic song-voice. She is a puertorriqueña poet, vocalist, visual artist, mother, teacher and activist, currently living, teaching and performing in Albany, NY. Her newest artistic work is with her live band, Taína Asili y La Banda Rebelde, soulful vocals laid over an infusion of hip hop and Afro-Caribbean sounds. Taína Asili carries a fire breathing voice of rage and resistance to venues, festivals, conferences and political events across the country. She weaves resistance, anti-colonialist struggle, love, identity, reclamation of the body, ancestral remembrance, and more into a unique vocalization style melding poetry and song.
Taína is a winner of the 2005 Transformation Award given by the Leeway Foundation each year to a select few of women artists who profoundly use their work towards social change. Taína has shared the stage with artists such as Ursula Rucker, Sonia Sanchez, Pamela Means, Dead Prez, Immortal Technique and Tyrone Hill of the Sun Ra Arkestra. She was voted Albany’s “2006 Best Poet” in the Metroland, Albany, NY’s premier alternative news weekly. She can be witnessed in Scene and Not Heard, a documentary about women and hip hop culture in Philadelphia, also featuring Bahamadia and Monie Love. As a part of the Puerto-rock band Ricanstruction you can hear her vocals blow on their album Love and Revolution. Taína is now working with La Banda Rebelde on their debut album Mama Guerrilla, to be released in 2008 on the Rebel Army Media label.
Taína’s performance history and experience is as eclectic as her artistic work. Starting as a singer classically trained by a local Peruvian Opera singer, Taína later found punk rock, and for eight years wrote and sang songs of rage and resistance with Antiproduct, touring the country several times and putting out four albums internationally. During this time, she fell in love with spoken word, and together with her brother, Victorio Reyes, created the spoken word group, Rebel Poets. Since that time she has sung soulful back-up vocals for numerous bands, eventually becoming her newest artistic project, Taina Asili y La Banda Rebelde.
In addition to performance work Taína facilitates poetry workshops. She began her artistic educational work in Philadelphia at Taller Puertorriqueño, a Puerto Rican cultural center based in North Philadelphia where she taught local Puerto Rican youth about the current struggle and resistance movement in Vieques, Puerto Rico, using poetry and drawing as their expressive voice. Taína has since taught poetry writing workshops for both children and adults, including the co-facilitation of a bimonthly poetry workshop in a women’s correctional facility. She is currently working towards her Masters Degree in Transformative Language Arts focusing in Poetry Therapy at Goddard College.
Taína is dedicated to using her art as a weapon for the mental and physical transformation and freedom of her people. Not only is her art politically conscious, but it is based in the concrete organizing she is in involved in, working in political prisoner liberation, prisoner rights, democratic education, indigenous rights, environmentalist, and holistic health movements for over 10 years. She is most currently involved with The Albany Political Prisoners Coalition, Intl. Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Albany Free School. However, Taína’s main revolutionary, activist and artistic work currently involves raising her child... her newest and best poetic inspiration.
Hey Sis, I was just thinking of you. I facilitate the Pioneer Valley Women of Color Moms Group gathering every 3rd Saturday, here in Northampton at the Forbes library we'd love to have you and your son. Also I'd like to talk to you about a Moms Night Out Coffee House featuring...."YOU!"
