'Movement' Podcast Announces Season 2 for 2024

Today the multi-platform initiative Movement has announced a second season of its flagship podcast for 2024, hosted by vocalist-songwriter Meklit Hadero.

Movement’s podcast, live shows and radio broadcasts uplift the voices, stories and songs of immigrant musicians, claiming public space for these artists to sing and speak their stories with complexity and nuance. The Movement team has also announced significant investment in the show via partnership with the Mellon foundation.

“We are thrilled to support Movement as a manifestation of Meklit Hadero’s vision for a more authentic representation of contemporary diasporic artists” said Emil Kang, program director for Arts and Culture at the Mellon Foundation. “ Movement demonstrates the value of immigrant, migrant, and refugee voices in the pursuit of a more just and pluralistic society.” 

Meklit adds, “Migration is unfolding further and faster than ever before. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, but I’m a musician, so I ask myself - can I wrap my ears around it? What do global movements of people sound like? The Mellon Foundation has given us significant support that enables us to expand this work, and take it even deeper. Next season features a slate of mini series including on climate migrations, and race and migration, all while focusing on incredible genre-bending artists who are true sonic innovators.”

This month, Movement will bring its live show to The Nimoy theater at UCLA on October 28th, featuring Mexican-American songwriter and performance artist San Cha, Palestinian-American oud virtuoso Clarissa Bitar and Cambodian vocalist and Songwriter Chhom Nimol (of Dengue Fever). On February 15th the show will be hosted at Montgomery College in Washington DC.

Movement host Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-American vocalist, songwriter, composer and former refugee, known for her electric stage presence, innovative sound and vibrant cultural activism. Meklit is joined on stage and in Movement’s audio stories by a wide range of guest artists whose identities are grounded in an experience of migration.

For Meklit, Movement stems from her own youth as a refugee, and her hunger for new narratives of migration driven by the folks most impacted by it. It is an opportunity to honor the vastness of immigrant experiences, including themes of joy, curiosity, ancestral wisdom and epiphany, even while making space for the very real presence of trauma, difficulty and pain. 

Movement debuted in 2020 as a nationally syndicated broadcast on PRX’s The World, and we are now a regular feature on The World, airing to 2.5 million listeners monthly. Each episode features a conversation with a different musician who shares their own personal migration story, as well as selections of original music from the artist.

Season 1 of the podcast debuted in April 2023, and features globally beloved artists including Oddisee (Sudan/US), Xenia Rubinos (Cuba-Puerto Rico), Sasami (Korea/US), Gino Yevjevich (Bosnia/US), Felukah (Egypt/US), Larry Bellorin (Venezuela/US), FREEK (Somalia/UAE) and many more. 

“Across all of our platforms, our goal is to craft and uplift new narratives of migration shaped by the folks who have experienced it. Unlike mainstream coverage of this issue, our narratives are never defined by trauma alone. Instead, we celebrate their creative power, myriad contributions and incredible music,” writes Hadero.

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