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 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, Dead Prez, Immortal Technique and Tyrone Hill of the Sun Ra Arkestra. She has also collaborated with various artists such as world renowned musician Stephen Wise, and artistic groups including the Nzinga Arts Collective, a Philadelphia based women's dance collective, with whom she performs "choreo-poems", infusing poetry with afro-modern dance. She has also worked with prominent puppeteer, Morgan Fitzpatrick, in the poetry-puppetry combo Medusa’s Shadow, featuring at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Taína is a part of the Ricanstruction Network, and you can hear her vocals blow on their album Love and Revolution. Taína is now working with La Banda Rebelde on their feature album Mama Guerrilla, to be released in 2008 on Rebel Army Media.
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 also sang soulful back-up vocals for numerous bands.
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. Taínahas since taught poetry writing workshops for both children and adults, including the co-facilitation of a 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... best poetic inspiration.
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