This week on State of the Arts, the sounds of Neo Tango, a singer's incredible journey and ceramics inspired by the sea.

Take a journey with us around the country to explore music, movement and more in this episode of State of the Arts.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Mary Paul.

Jimena Famá is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and the founder of Electro-Dub Tango, melding together traditional sounds with electronic beats.

She's ushering in a new generation of tango.

We visit downtown Miami, Florida to catch one of her performances.

[ Music ] My name is Jimena Famá and I'm the composer of Electro-Dub Tango.

I'm a multi-instrumentalist and I'm the producer as well.

Basically the albums I do it from zero, from scratch, till they are released.

[ Music ] Most of my work I use the name Electro-Dub Tango.

The whole idea was to mix, to keep it organic and I think that's the difference, you know, of what we do and the sound that we have.

Have all the tango elements and the electronic elements but keep it organic and also I wanted to always make it accessible.

Like tango can be very complex and very kind of like intense and the dynamics are everywhere.

My plan was to make it accessible and to be able to play everywhere.

So I try to catch a little bit of, you know, the essence and sounds of the rest of the world, always with the rhythm and, you know, traditional items from my culture from Argentina.

It's about finding a right blend, you know, between acoustics and electronics and technology and something that comes from the heart.

I think it's a good balance and a way to translate a message.

[ Music ] This is Neotango.

It's very up-tempo.

It's milonga which is a style of tango.

Neotango, it's kind of a movement.

It started by combining drums which tango normally don't have drums.

Neotango came with like more like a four-four drums and start to use different sounds, more electronic sounds or maybe keyboard, like electronic keyboard.

But the concept and the root and the harmony that should be from tango, not from electronic music.

[ Music ] I started this project in 2004.

So that gave me enough time to get to know the industry.

Production is kind of like a language.

So I was basically speaking and somebody was translating that for me.

And at one point I decided, okay, I need to do this by myself.

I need to be able to translate the whole message from the beginning until the end myself.

So I can really express what I want with the music and with the instruments.

For example, in a song you put an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar and it would take the song completely different places.

So once I have a concept and I wanted to express something and share something, I make sure that, you know, all the pieces make sense until the end.

[ Music ] I try to only compose when I'm starting a project.

Otherwise I have many ideas all the time, you know, but I try to, I make it organized.

So inspiration is something that really doesn't stop, you know.

I think tango is something that comes with time, with age.

Growing up I remember my dad would put tango in the car and I was like, ah.

This happens to everybody that I talk to.

It's like, oh, that's awful.

It's so depressing.

It's like so nostalgic.

And then with time you start to appreciate the roots and appreciate the deepness.

And it's not sad.

It's dynamic and I also wanted to make it happy.

I'm releasing a new album called "Hermosa Vida," which is like, "Beautiful Life."

It's very up-tempo and very happy and my goal is to make people have a good time, you know, with me and with what I do.

[ Music ] I also play traditional tango songs that you will hear on the concert.

So I like both, you know.

It's not like, oh, no, it's the old stuff.

It's like, no, I'm one of the people that's like, okay, no.

Totally, we have to respect.

I'm very conservative in that way and many other ways, you know, to really like understand the origins of tango, you know, harmonics and everything to keep that pure.

Then you can mix it up, but also don't go super far away because this is culture, right?

We always want to keep the culture, keep it growing, you know, evolve.

[ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you, thank you, "Hermosa Vida."

It's officially out in Miami.

Now let's travel to Virginia to meet the singer, Queen Esther Marrow.

Discovered by Duke Ellington when she was just 22 years old, Marrow has had an illustrious career that has taken her across the globe.

It's my pleasure to introduce Esther Marrow.

[ Applause ] [ Music ] Well, I left here to go to New York because I was tired of my surroundings.

I was tired of the segregation, the prejudice, and it was very thick back during that time.

I mean, everywhere you turn, there was someone saying nasty things or treating you different, and I had my fill of it.

[ Music ] Here I am in the big city.

It was a different feeling.

It was a little scary, but it was exciting also at the same time when I got myself a job, and I was on my way.

[ Music ] I'm working on a job in the Garment District, and I'm singing "Happy Birthday."

One of the bosses said to me, "Hey, I got a lady I want you to meet."

You know, she's very interested.

I want you to meet.

I said, "Okay."

So I went to meet her.

Sang "How Great Thou Art."

and she looked at me very seriously, and she said, "How would you like to be in show business?"

She says, "I want you to quit your job, and I want you to come here every day like you're going to work, and I want you to build a repertoire, and we will find a pianist, and we'll get some work."

The only singing I had done was been in church.

It never crossed my mind that I could be singing professionally.

[ Music ] Norma had a friend that knew Duke Ellington.

She said that Duke was getting ready to do a big show in San Francisco, and he was looking for a singer.

A week and a half later, we get a phone call from Duke.

He wants me to come to San Francisco because he's doing "Sacred Concert" at Grace Cathedral.

I met Duke Ellington, first of all, in Lake Tahoe, because he wanted me to meet him there.

He had a gig, and he wanted me to sing Solitude, which I knew.

And I was wondering, I'm saying to myself, "Well, why am I doing this?

I thought we were doing "'Sacred Concert'."

But he knew what he was doing.

He was preparing me for an audience for the big show, you know, because I had never sung in public like this.

And then when we get to San Francisco, I was like, "Whoa!"

This church, Grace Cathedral, that sits on top of Nob Hill is gorgeous.

And I'm singing "Come Sunday."

"Tell me it's the truth, yeah, yeah Tell me it's the truth" And the sun is beaming through these stained glass windows, and it was just so unreal.

I felt like I was in heaven.

That was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.

And then when Duke, on top of that, asked me, "How would you like to finish the Midwest tour with me?"

I was in seventh heaven.

After working with Duke, now I'm working in and around New York.

One night working at Brody's, a friend of mine came in.

So she says to me, "You know, they're looking for Auntie Em down at the Majestic Theater."

I said, "Really?"

She said, "Yeah."

I said, "Ooh, what do I do to go down there?"

She said, "Just go down there and audition."

I got the part, and it went over, and I did that for about five years, I think.

There's this guy from Germany, and he's looking for a gospel group.

People were off the chain, jumping up and just acting wild.

The European audience, they appreciate the music.

They love it.

They love you.

Looking back from 19 to where I am now, a little girl from Newport News, Virginia, singing to all these people, "It's just awesome."

I never dreamed of it.

To see your name up there on the marquee, I'm so thankful that I could be a part of show business and leave a mark.

Thank you.

Thank you.

God bless you.

Ceramic artist David Crane is inspired by the ocean and its abundance of life in his creations.

Among his work, handmade globes that remind us of how interconnected we are here on Earth.

[music] I don't get tired of coming out here.

I can be working around the house, perhaps in something I'm not enjoying doing, or I could be working out in the studio, getting a little stale, and I look outside and the wind's right, and I go, "I think I'm going to go out to the beach for an hour."

So I can walk out to the end of my dock, take my cell phone with me and a bottle of water, and be at the beach in 10 minutes, take a nice walk, do a little beach combing, a little shelling, back in the skiff and back at whatever I was doing in an hour's time.

So it's very convenient.

[music] Good shelling right here.

[music] I like to start with one nice shell and work from there.

I use one larger shell and two or three smaller shells, so I pick out the biggest one and then kind of build around that.

It's not rocket science, that's for sure.

[music] That's a nice one.

That looks pretty good.

And there's a candle.

The beginnings of a candle.

Half the people that buy the candles don't light them, ever.

I really like living next to the ocean.

I spent a lot of time on the ocean in my years as a boat captain.

When you're walking out on that beach and everything is drowned out by the sound of the waves crashing right next to you, It's good thinking time.

Then I might pick something up off the beach that has a nice shape to it that I like and I think, "Yeah, that might look good in play."

I've done that many times, so that alone is an inspiration.

I just like living in a place that's clean and quiet and this is it.

[music] Okay, another day.

Who put that there?

[laughs] The last course I took in school to graduate was a ceramics course that a friend of mine had taken and recommended.

So I took it and it was really the only course I took in my four years of school that I got a legitimate A in.

This was during the Vietnam War and a lot of professors were handing out A's in protest.

So I did learn a little bit that was working on a wheel.

All the stuff I do is hand-built.

So I don't work on a wheel that I can do.

I love it.

I enjoyed it and did get an A in it.

Still have a few of the pieces that I made in that class, but I have a little more flexibility for what I want to do.

I got started making the globes and that was my incentive for about ten years of work.

And that all had to be hand-built.

I was captaining boats at the time and I was able to get a little bit of a lift and that gave me large blocks of time in the off-season to play with clay.

So that was a boon.

I worked several months in the winter down in the Caribbean and the summer months up in the upper Chesapeake and New England, Maine.

And so I had large blocks of time to play with.

And I think that was instrumental in getting you know, figuring it out.

And it's just after about 25 years that I really feel like I'm getting close to mastering my end of it anyway.

I found some large oysters on the beach and thought they were big enough to be a little bowl of some sort for holding peanuts or whatever.

And so I took an impression of the inside of them.

And I eventually came down to this with smaller oysters that I can attach to the platter form.

And then I'll blaze it and do a blaze fire on it to about 2,200 degrees.

David is probably one of the most creative and inventive artists.

And one of the things that I really like to show you about David is that his intellectual side is as well as the artistic.

This is an amazing piece.

This globe represents the Renascent World.

If we don't take care of our world, this is what it's going to look like.

And there's one blue spot on this globe that says "hope."

This is all separate pieces put together on this globe.

Quite the process.

I make globes the way they've made globes since they started making them.

The first globes were made out of, I guess, paper.

And that they would bend over a sphere.

And they still make globes that way today.

Each of these gores has 45 degrees longitude in it, which adds up to 360.

And they're all numbered and they, of course, all fit together.

And I have them in order here so that I can work them next to each other, make sure that everything's going to fit.

Once the tiles are put, are fired, finished fired and put over top of the foam base that I make for it.

Your choices in ceramics are almost unlimited because the clay, the material you're using, is so flexible.

I start with the interior and I glaze the background.

And then I start, then I move from there to the interior of each oyster.

That's a different glaze.

And then I do the rim and a white glaze.

You never know.

That's the beauty of, that's one of the things I like about clay.

Is that, you know, you put it in here and you turn the heat on.

And sometimes I'll pull something out and it's beautiful.

Next time it'll be cracked.

What a great lesson in dealing with disappointment.

I learned that early on in clay, you know.

If you can't deal with disappointment, you don't have any business being in clay business.

Other artwork, you can paint it, you can look at it, you can maybe, you know, repaint part of it if you want to.

But this is done.

Once it's fired, it's finished.

I brought my mom and my aunts down here one year and took them out to the beach.

And my aunt from Indiana, who doesn't see many beaches, was just asking, you know, "Now B, what are we looking for out here?"

She wanted a definite, you know, answer what there was.

And my mom just looked at her and said, "June, anything of interest."

And so that's pretty much my guiding thing on the beach is anything of interest.

And there's incredible stuff out there.

Before we wrap up this week, let's take a look at our Southern Arizona Arts Calendar.

[Music] What a crowd!

[Music] On a typical year, we usually get about 300,000 people throughout the weekend.

Have some food, do some holiday shopping, visit the local businesses on 4th Avenue, and maybe even catch Santa.

[Laughter] This is my first street fair, so I'm from the East Coast, from Boston, and I'm so excited to be here.

She's my co-worker, she told me that it's not Christmas until we go, I didn't really believe her, and now I understand.

I understand.

And we're playing hooky from work, so we're here!

[Laughter] Stay hydrated!

We're with the West University Neighborhood Association.

We are the largest historic preserved zone in the state of Arizona.

Those neighborhoods that are impacted by the street fair themselves, it is our biggest fundraiser of the year.

We have the primo spot this year.

7th Street and 4th Avenue is the highest grossing beer booth location at the entire fair.

It's just going to be pandemonium.

It's going to be like a hoot-nanny of crazed javelinas.

[Whistling] This is my second time trying it, and the second time I've been having success with it.

So I come back because of the people and because of how big the show is.

Sometimes some of these are lost in the cupboards and they forget that they're there.

And so with me one day thinking what can I do with them, you know, to give them or upcycle them again, I thought of the wind chimes.

I was disabled recently within the last two years, so this gives me extra money.

I like doing what I do, and being here after two years, it makes me happy too.

I bought this iron artwork.

I just bought a house here in Tucson, so I'm staying for a while.

And I'm planning to paint my front door this turquoise color, so I thought that it would look really good on the outside of my house.

The work and the effort and the blood, sweat and tears that go into your own business, so supporting local artists, local vendors like this is really special.

Did you guys want to take a picture with Santa?

You want to stand right here and one over here?

Cheese!

What do you guys want for Christmas?

I want to have been wanting a toy drone.

A toy drone?

Oh yeah, with a camera too?

Wow.

As far as being a Santa in Tucson, it's a little bit difficult.

I had four events last year that I did in Tucson.

A year before that I had 16, this year I'm doing about 20.

So last year was a big lull in the business.

I wanted to tell you the kitty's name.

Tell me the kitty's name.

Tell me.

Pepe!

Pepe?

Oh my gosh, that's a great name.

With the pandemic happening, I've lost two family members myself, so it's been very difficult.

But the thing we need to do is just take care of each other, love each other, and always be there for each other.

Whether it be on the streets or at home or with your friends at work, look out for one another because that's all we have is each other right now.

[music] I hope you've enjoyed this week's tour of the art world on State of the Arts.

Thank you for watching.

I'm Mary Paul.

See you next time.