Latest news with #SkyIslands
The Star
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Filipino American composer Susie Ibarra wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Music
MANILA: Bridging ancestral tradition with environmental urgency, Filipino American composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra (pic) has recently claimed the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her visionary work, 'Sky Islands.' 'Sky Islands' is a piece that reimagines the boundaries of contemporary music while celebrating the biodiversity of the Philippines. Premiered on July 18 last year, at the Asia Society in New York, 'Sky Islands' draws from the ecosystems found in the highland rainforests of Luzon. In a recent Ojai Talk with Ara Guzelimian, Ibarra emphasised the importance of biodiversity in these rare and vital landscapes, which deeply informed her creative process. 'Sky Islands,' she shared, was born from an urgency to give voice to the ecological and cultural stories embedded in these endangered terrains. The Pulitzer jury praised the work for '[challenging] the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool,' highlighting its bold and collaborative spirit. At the heart of 'Sky Islands' is Ibarra's commitment to using sound as a medium for ecological storytelling. Drawing from native instruments like bamboo percussion, flutes and the kulintang – a traditional gong ensemble from southern Philippines – she created a layered sonic tapestry that invites reflection on both nature and heritage. The performance took place on 'Floating Gardens,' a set of sculptural gongs that served as both visual centerpiece and resonant sound chamber, elevating the immersive experience. The ensemble featured Ibarra alongside fellow percussionist Levy Lorenzo, flutist Claire Chase and the Bergamot Quartet: violinists Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violinist Amy Huimei Tan and cellist Irene Han. Speaking about the piece, Ibarra expressed her hope to bring attention to the 'rich and fragile ecosystems' that inspired her. Through 'Sky Islands,' she invites listeners into a space where ancestral memory, environmental urgency and musical experimentation converge. In 2024, Fil-Am journalist Nicole Dungca was a finalist for her work on 'Searching for Maura' with The Washington Post. - Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
The Hindu
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
It takes a village to protect the Western Ghats' Sky Islands
Heading into the hills of Kodaikanal in the middle of balmy April was already a treat. Then, to sit on the lush grounds of a boutique hotel with nearly 150 people, the cool air speckled with a light drizzle, listening to 'Music from the Mountains to the Skies', was simply magical. The unique concert held at Mountain Retreat Kodai against the starry evening sky, kicked off with the sonic stylings of the Dindigul Mavattam Kodaikanal Poombarai Gramiya Kalai Kuzhu. The band of nine musicians of the indigenous Arunthatiyar community played their traditional percussion and wind instruments, including the kombu, an S-shaped brass instrument that looks like an elephant's raised trunk. They were followed by singer Seema Ramchandani, a Kodaikanal resident and formerly of the pop band Viva, who belted out covers of Joni Mitchell to Jason Mraz. Finally, lit by spotlight and moonlight, indie artist Suman Sridhar closed off the show with her original songs that blend jazz, Indian classical music, spoken word, opera and Afro-beat. She concluded her set with her underground hit Plastic, a track that is Sridhar's commentary on the increasing plastic pollution around us. The concert marked the launch of Sky Islands, an independent digital platform that 'aims to connect communities across the Western Ghats towards engagement, action and storytelling'. Rajni George, its founding editor and publisher, thinks of the hill station in Tamil Nadu 'as a special place' having grown up here. Nearly two decades ago, the widespread protests against the Hindustan Unilever mercury contamination of the area was her first memory of local groups 'proactively coming together to stop Kodaikanal going the way of other hill stations around India'. Inspired by this formidable older generation who took on industry and the state, George started looking around for others to band together 'to preserve and protect' their piece of the earth. Speaking of their experiences George brought her experience and connections from the publishing and media field into play, and since 2021, along with editor-writer Neha Sumitran, 'ran a hyperlocal publication called The Kodai Chronicle to speak of the environmental degradation as well as the amazing things happening in this region'. After four years of running it, George wanted to bring other citizen-led conservation and care to the centrestage, and so she decided that while the Chronicle's website will remain as 'an archive for the hyperlocal stories', the new Sky Islands platform, administered by the Kodai Chronicle Trust, will mature this vision. 'Sky islands' are geographically isolated high-elevation regions that have distinct flora and fauna from its lower-elevation surroundings. Like islands, 'they're cut-off but still share so much'. For George, the poetry and potential of this name was the reason for adopting it for the platform. With it, she seeks to bring together stakeholders along the Western Ghats — from the Nilgiris and Anamalais (Eravikulam, Munnar, and Meeshapuli mountains), to Banasura Hills, Chembra Hills, the Palanis and more — to collectively share and pool ideas on conserving and celebrating the region. She intends for 'local news to be sustainably reported from the perspective of lived experiences', to bring more adivasi voices into the debates on what should be going on in the hills, and become a confluence of the larger community taking on the environmental fight, to take ownership of their island. 'Each month, we will publish an audio format and longform story from the region, which speak directly to issues and initiatives that affect the people living here. There will be an 'engage' section, which will highlight the various citizen conservation campaigns and map out the opportunities for the people of the Western Ghats to take part. Sky Islands will also run outreach programmes and workshops led by indigenous and other environmental stakeholders to help locals navigate the bureaucracy to make change happen,' she explains. Opening up the mandate to spotlight the entire region means that the platform can access a larger pool of resources, financially and people-wise. They'll be networking with independent researchers and environmentalists, private organisations and government bodies and as a node for important information. 'With Sky Islands, we're helping locals across the Western Ghats feel ownership and engage with conservation initiatives in their regions,' she says. For instance, the day after the fundraising concert, Murgeshwari, a contributing writer and a daily wage agricultural labourer from the Paliyar adivasi community, conducted an outreach programme. 'She spoke to schoolchildren in Kodai about the importance of the forest to the indigenous way of life and taught them songs as well,' says George. Adivasi voices Over the years that Murgeshwari reported for The Kodai Chronicle and now Sky islands, she found herself being able to tell stories that are often missed by the mainstream media. Now, with a grant from Shared Ecologies, a programme by the non-profit Shyama Foundation, to continue writing from her lived experience as one of the original indigenous stakeholders, she says it 'gives me a sense of self-respect, and allows me to provide for my four-year-old son without constant worry'. 'While previously, I've focused on writing about my own community's challenges with the outside world, the expanded focus of Sky Islands allows me to swap the knowledge that the many adivasi communities hold about the forests and this land, and present it to one another and the world.' She believes that involving the adivasi stakeholders in protecting these regions is the only way forward. 'We've absorbed the knowledge about the forests. We can tell things by looking at a leaf or the sky,' she says, highlighting the importance of passing on this knowledge. 'If people know, they will care.' For her, conservation policies are well-meaning and well-intentioned, but aren't enforced at all. 'Each time I see garbage in bins shaped like the Indian Gaur, it breaks my heart. Who thought of this? Does it really translate the message,' she asks. Connecting stakeholders The common-sense learning over these several decades of conservation work has been that the fight must be tailored to the region. 'It's important to distinguish between the footprint of the capitalist-industrial complex and those of individuals,' says restorationist and rewilder Suprabha Seshan of Wayanad's Gurukula Periyar Botanical Sanctuary. She points out that blame can't be equally shared between these categories 'because the destruction of these bio-diverse regions are being done with impunity by the former hand-in-hand with the state'. She has spent a lifetime marking out this difference, but 'it hasn't caused much dent'. If people take ownership of the lands around them, however, mainstream conservation discourse will step outside of the 'individual blame game' towards encouraging cooperation and community living. 'First, we need to protect what exists before beginning to restore what has been destroyed,' says Seshan, who, for over two decades, has been working with the botanical sanctuary to fight species extinction. They run 'search-and-rescue operations' for native plants, 'bring them back and multiply them', and if the 'climate and the social climate allow, they would return these plants to the sites of origin'. Highlighting these local conservation initiatives, compounding their impact and connecting stakeholders of the Western Ghat are some of the tasks laid out by Sky Islands. 'We need to understand what it means to cooperate in the long run because the odds against resilience are so high,' Seshan points out. And these kinds of locally-birthed, participative responses might just be another arrow in the quiver of saving the hills — and a guiding light to inspire other such special geographical regions in the country. The writer and poet is based in Bengaluru.
NBC News
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Novelist Percival Everett and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins among Pulitzer winners in the arts
Percival Everett's novel 'James,' his radical reimagining of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' from the perspective of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 'Purpose,' Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' drawing-room drama about an accomplished Black family destroying itself from within, won for drama. It also earned six Tony Award nominations last week. Everett's Pulitzer confirmed the million-selling 'James' as the most celebrated and popular U.S. literary novel of 2024, and accelerated the 68-year-old author's remarkable rise after decades of being little known to the general public. Since 2021, he has won the PEN/Jean Stein Award for 'Dr. No,' was a Pulitzer finalist for 'Telephone' and on the Booker shortlist for 'The Trees.' Before Monday, 'James' had already won the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for fiction. His racial and publishing satire 'Erasure,' released in 2001, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2023 film 'American Fiction.' The Pulitzer citation called 'James' an 'accomplished reconsideration' that illustrates 'the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.' Everett said in a statement that he was 'shocked and pleased, but mostly shocked. This is a wonderful honor.' 'Purpose' was praised in its citation as 'a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.' Jacobs-Jenkins had been twice nominated for a drama Pulitzer, for 'Everybody' in 2018 and 'Gloria' in 2016. He won the Tony Award for best play revival last year for 'Appropriate,' a work centered on a family reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and grievances. He is on the host committee of this year's Met Gala. Also Monday, Pulitzer officials announced that Jason Roberts won the biography award for 'Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life' and Benjamin Nathans' 'To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement' had been cited for general nonfiction. Two books were announced as history winners, both of them, like 'James' and 'Purpose,' explorations of race in U.S. history and culture: Edda L. Fields-Black's 'Combee: Harriet Tubman, The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War' and Kathleen DuVal's 'Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.' Marie Howe's 'New and Selected Poems' won for poetry, and composer-percussionist Susie Ibarra's 'Sky Islands,' an eight-piece ensemble inspired by the rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines, was awarded the Pulitzer for music. The Pulitzer for autobiography went to Tessa Hulls' multigenerational 'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir,' her first book. The Pulitzers were announced at a time when the National Endowment for the Arts, which has provided support for thousands of writers and literary organizations, was cutting back funding and pushing staff members to leave. Howe and Everett are both past recipients of NEA creative writing fellowships.
The Hindu
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Novelist Percival Everett and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins among winners in the arts
Percival Everett's novel James, his radical reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' drawing-room drama about an accomplished Black family destroying itself from within, won for drama. It also earned six Tony Award nominations last week. Everett's Pulitzer confirmed the million-selling James as the most celebrated and popular U.S. literary novel of 2024, and accelerated the 68-year-old author's remarkable rise after decades of being little known to the general public. Since 2021, he has won the PEN/Jean Stein Award for Dr. No, was a Pulitzer finalist for Telephone and on the Booker shortlist for The Trees. Before Monday, James had already won the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for fiction. His racial and publishing satire Erasure, released in 2001, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2023 film American Fiction. The Pulitzer citation called James an 'accomplished reconsideration' that illustrates 'the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.' Everett said in a statement that he was 'shocked and pleased, but mostly shocked. This is a wonderful honor.' Purpose was praised in its citation as 'a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.' Jacobs-Jenkins had been twice nominated for a drama Pulitzer, for Everybody in 2018 and Gloria in 2016. He won the Tony Award for best play revival last year for Appropriate, a work centred on a family reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and grievances. He is on the host committee of this year's Met Gala. Also Monday, Pulitzer officials announced that Jason Roberts won the biography award for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life and Benjamin Nathans' To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement had been cited for general nonfiction. Two books were announced as history winners, both of them, like James and Purpose, explorations of race in U.S. history and culture: Edda L. Fields-Black's Combee: Harriet Tubman, The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War and Kathleen DuVal's Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Marie Howe's New and Selected Poems won for poetry, and composer-percussionist Susie Ibarra's Sky Islands, an eight-piece ensemble inspired by the rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines, was awarded the Pulitzer for music. The Pulitzer for autobiography went to Tessa Hulls' multigenerational Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, her first book. The Pulitzers were announced at a time when the National Endowment for the Arts, which has provided support for thousands of writers and literary organisations, was cutting back funding and pushing staff members to leave. Howe and Everett are both past recipients of NEA creative writing fellowships.
Euronews
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Percival Everett, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Susie Ibarra among Pulitzer winners in the arts
ADVERTISEMENT The Pulitzer Prizes, which honour excellence in journalism, literary achievements and musical composition, have named this year's winners. Percival Everett's novel "James,' the American author's radical reimagining of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' from the perspective of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Everett's Pulitzer has accelerated the 68-year-old author's remarkable rise after decades of being little known to the general public. Since 2021, he has won the PEN/Jean Stein Award for 'Dr. No,' was a Pulitzer finalist for 'Telephone' and on the Booker shortlist for 'The Trees.' Before Monday, 'James' had already won the National Book Award , the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for fiction. His racial and publishing satire 'Erasure,' released in 2001, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2023 film American Fiction . The Pulitzer citation called 'James' an 'accomplished reconsideration' that illustrates 'the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.' Everett said in a statement that he was 'shocked and pleased, but mostly shocked. This is a wonderful honour.' Scroll down for the full list of this year's winners. Percival Everett at the 75th National Book Awards ceremony - 2024 AP Photo 'Purpose,' playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' drawing-room drama about an accomplished Black family destroying itself from within, won for drama. 'Purpose' was praised in its citation as 'a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.' Jacobs-Jenkins had been twice nominated for a drama Pulitzer, for 'Everybody' in 2018 and 'Gloria' in 2016. He won the Tony Award for best play revival last year for 'Appropriate,' a work centered on a family reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and grievances. Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins at the Time100 Gala 2025 AP Photo Pulitzer officials also announced that Jason Roberts won the biography award for 'Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life' and Benjamin Nathans' "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" had been cited for general nonfiction. Two books were announced as history winners, both of them, like 'James' and 'Purpose,' explorations of race in US history and culture: Edda L. Fields-Black's 'Combee: Harriet Tubman, The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War' and Kathleen DuVal's "Native Nations: A Millennium in North America." Marie Howe's 'New and Selected Poems' won for poetry, and composer Susie Ibarra's 'Sky Islands', an eight-piece ensemble inspired by the rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines, was awarded the Pulitzer for music. ADVERTISEMENT Elsewhere, the New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and the New Yorker three for journalism in 2024 that touched on topics like the fentanyl crisis, the US military and last summer's assassination attempt on President Donald Trump . The Pulitzers' prestigious public service medal went to ProPublica for the second year in a row. Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz were honored for reporting on pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgent care in US states with strict abortion laws. The Washington Post won for 'urgent and illuminating' breaking news coverage of the Trump assassination attempt. The Pulitzers honored Ann Telnaes, who quit the Post in January after the news outlet refused to run her editorial cartoon lampooning tech chiefs — including Post owner Jeff Bezos — cozying up to Trump. The Pulitzers praised her 'fearlessness.' The Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer for its reporting on Elon Musk , 'including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin,' the Pulitzer board said. ADVERTISEMENT Here is the full list of this year's Pultizer Prize winners: Journalism Public Service ProPublica, for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz "About pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague 'life of the mother' exceptions in states with strict abortion laws." ADVERTISEMENT Breaking News Reporting Staff of The Washington Post "For urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed story-telling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics." Investigative Reporting ADVERTISEMENT Staff of Reuters "For a boldly reported exposé of lax regulation in the U.S. and abroad that makes fentanyl, one of the world's deadliest drugs, inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States." Explanatory Reporting Azam Ahmed, Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer, and Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times ADVERTISEMENT "For an authoritative examination of how the United States sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan, primarily by supporting murderous militia that drove civilians to the Taliban." Local Reporting Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times "For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore's fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms." ADVERTISEMENT National Reporting Staff of The Wall Street Journal "For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin." International Reporting ADVERTISEMENT Declan Walsh and the Staff of The New York Times "For their revelatory investigation of the conflict in Sudan, including reporting on foreign influence and the lucrative gold trade fueling it, and chilling forensic accounts of the Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine." Feature Writing Mark Warren, contributor, Esquire ADVERTISEMENT "For a sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site." Commentary Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker "For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel." ADVERTISEMENT Criticism Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab "For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive." Editorial Writing ADVERTISEMENT Raj Mankad, Sharon Steinmann, Lisa Falkenberg and Leah Binkovitz of the Houston Chronicle "For a powerful series on dangerous train crossings that kept a rigorous focus on the people and communities at risk as the newspaper demanded urgent action." Illustrated Reporting and Commentary Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post ADVERTISEMENT "For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years." Breaking News Photography Doug Mills of The New York Times "For a sequence of photos of the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including one image that captures a bullet whizzing through the air as he speaks." ADVERTISEMENT Feature Photography Moises Saman, contributor, The New Yorker "For his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad's torture chambers, forcing viewers to confront the raw horrors faced by prisoners and contemplate the scars on society." Audio Reporting ADVERTISEMENT Staff of The New Yorker "For their 'In the Dark' podcast, a combination of compelling storytelling and relentless reporting in the face of obstacles from the U.S. military, a four-year investigation into one of the most high-profile crimes of the Iraq War–the murder of 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha." Literature and Music Fiction James, by Percival Everett ADVERTISEMENT "An accomplished reconsideration of 'Huckleberry Finn' that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom." Drama Purpose, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins "A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage." ADVERTISEMENT History Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War, by Edda L. Fields-Black "A richly-textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day, weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom." Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal ADVERTISEMENT "A panoramic portrait of Native American nations and communities over a thousand years, a vivid and accessible account of their endurance, ingenuity and achievement in the face of conflict and dispossession." Biography Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, by Jason Roberts "A beautifully written double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon, 18th century contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature's secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world." ADVERTISEMENT Memoir or Autobiography Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls "An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories." Poetry ADVERTISEMENT New and Selected Poems, by Marie Howe "A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness." General Nonfiction To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, by Benjamin Nathans ADVERTISEMENT "A prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights." Music Sky Islands, by Susie Ibarra "Premiered on July 18, 2024 at the Asia Society, New York, N.Y., a work about ecosystems and biodiversity, that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool." ADVERTISEMENT Special Award and Citation Chuck Stone "A special citation is awarded to the late Chuck Stone for his groundbreaking work as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement, his pioneering role as the first Black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News–later syndicated to nearly 100 publications–and for co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists 50 years ago."
