The 2007 Village Building Convergence (VBC7) Evening Events will take place at Disjecta located at 230 E. Burnside, Portland, OR. Evening events will begin at 7pm after a mostly local, organic, vegetarian community dinner from 5pm-7pm. For a full list of evening events, please visit http://vbc.cityrepair.org/ and click on the link to 2007 Evening Events. Advanced evening event tickets are now on sale! Please visit http://vbc.cityrepair.org/tickets to purchase your tickets today!

Extra Action Marching Band shuffle, loiter, charge, and crawl around embracing the environment and quite frequently those close by. Extra Action uses the history of marching bands combined with acoustically loud volumes and musical languages of the world to get people to recognize their own powers through interaction and involvement. Using this historic platform in conjunction with the musical traditions of New Orleans street bands combined with the horn-in-your-ear nature of Serbia/Roma gypsy trumpet bands over the complexities of the African/Latin beats together a very powerful (other) worldly sound and a captivating performance that is unique and unforgettable.

Marching Fourth Marching Band has evolved into a high-energy, eclectic and mobile unit of good times, taking a Fellini-esque mix of Mardi Gras mayhem, afro beat, Mexican hustle, sultry samba, big band, and gypsy folk to the streets and parks, and the club festival scene—anywhere people seek liberation through booty-shaking beats, driving bass, and high-flying horn arrangements. Accomplished by their surrealist troupe of silt-dancers, fire-spinners and costumed beauties, they are a new love-party paradigm. March Fourth has performed with Fleetwood Mac, No Doubt, Kiss, and String Cheese Incident and has performed at MusicfestNW, The Oregon Country Fair, and Alberta Street Fair and Art Hop just to name a few.

The Everyone Orchestra will bring their infectiously entertaining brand of improvisational jams to the VBC7. The show will feature group founder and conductor Matt Butler, as well as String Cheese Incident’s Michael Kang, longtime Leftover Salmon bassist and EO regular Tye North, string wizard Darol Anger, keyboardist Asher Fulero, and more. EO shows consistently focus on musical juxtaposition and the expansion of experiential boundaries, but as many can attest, the most intriguing aspect of EO performances is their elimination of the “fourth wall,” encouraging and demanding a melding of audience members and performances in a way that few have previously experienced. Every Orchestra alumni include members of The Grateful Dead, Phish, moe., Derek Trucks Band, Railroad Earth among others.

3 Leg Torso formed in 1996 as violin, cello and accordion trio with the mission of creating original modern chamber music for their unique instrumentation. Over the following years the band has expanded both its musical mission and its size to become a quintet that now performs its eclectic synthesis of chamber music, tango, klezmer, latin and world music. As principal composer, founding members Bela Balough and Courtney Von Brehle provide the core of 3 leg Torso’s sound. They are joined by veteran percussionist/mallet player Gary Irvine, the fastidious mallets/percussion of Kyle MacLowry and the fiery upright bass player Michael Papillo.

JuJuba delivers funky, danceable style of Nigerian Afrobeat and Juju music. The strength of the eleven-piece revolves around its energetic cohesion between percussion, rhythm and horn sections. Renowned for their ability to engage a wide variety of audiences, the band has no problem drawing a dance floor full of smiling faces at any event. Jujuba features Nojeem Lasisi from Igo Ora, Oyo State, in Nigeria. He ranks among the world’s elite talking drum players. Nojeem was given his first drum at age four by his father, also a master drummer, who handed down the Nojeem its powerful language. As a member of Nigerian superstar King Sunny Ade’s group, the African Beats, Nojeem toured the world and appears on numerous recordings with King Sunny, including “Seven Degrees North” and “Odu”.

Vagabond Opera, based in the Pacific Northwest, yet encompassing the world, delivers passionate offerings of Bohemian vaudevillian. Gut bucket swing, Arabic belly dance, Tangos, Ukrainian folk-punk ballads, Klezmer and vigorous originals mingle with Absudist, Bohemian, Neo-Classical and European Cabaret style, all played with skill, exuberance and a gritty vagabond edge. “A surefire spectacle.” [The Oregonian] Vagabond Opera is an operatic European circus cabaret with high-flying displays of musical pyrotechnics matched by witty and incendiary theatrical derring-do. This is the new wave of opera-lusty (trained) voices singing the Balkan and Arabic tongues Opera liberated and reinvented for the rest of us. Vagabond Opera has shared stages with Al Franken, Brave Combo, the Oregon Symphony, 3 Leg Torso and has appeared at the Oregon Country Fair, the Willamette Valley Folk Festival and headlined on Oregon Public radio’s LIVE WIRE.

Each year, the VBC is held to promote human-scale community action. Over 30 private sites, institutions, schools, and neighborhoods will create community-based projects for community improvement, which will be implemented during the Village Building Convergence. This year’s Village Building Convergence will include feature projects ranging from building ecoroofs to garden construction in locations in all quadrants of the city. In addition to the site projects, the VBC includes workshops, speakers, live music, and entertainment. A full effort will be made to recycle all materials, promote bicycle riding to sites, and create a zero waste zone at the evening event site.

The City Repair Project is an organized group action that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live. The City Repair Project facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through projects that honor the interconnection of human communities and the natural world. The Village Building Convergence is primarily planned, designed, organized, built and run by volunteers, and on a minimal budget. We are honored to share this framework for running a large, non-corporate, ecologically-sustainable community event with other organizations in Portland and beyond.

Please help us keep this event fabulously community-supported by volunteering or donating. For additional information on evening events, please contact Elliot Rasenick; elliot@cityrepair.org or 503-475-9062. For general inquiries, please contact Meghan Crane 301-580-3554 or vbcpublicity@cityrepair.org.