Ulithian Vibes: From Micronesia to Buffalo, With Love
Reggae band from the Ulithian Atoll will team with Buffalo musicians to perform at the Borderland Festival!
The text from my friend Jennifer Brazill, President of the Borderland Festival, arrived about 18 months back.
“Are you interested in producing, mixing and mastering an album for a reggae-based band from Micronesia, through a grant from National Geographic?”
“Um… well, hell yes, I’m interested. Details???”
Thus began a journey that will culminate in a performance at the Borderland Festival on Saturday, September 13 at 1 pm, when founding members of the band Ulithian Vibes (Jerry Salap, Kiralani Soholmar and Konner Yithweyang) travel from Guam to Western New York, to be joined by a cast of Buffalo musicians (Damone Jackson, Declan Miers, Jeff Miers, Rodney Chamberlain, Michael Ruopoli, Harry Graser and Eric Crittenden) for their first international public performance.
And those details I asked Jennifer about back in 2024? Well, they form quite a backstory.
Ulithian Vibes hails from the Ulithi Atoll, an island with a large coral reef system, located in the Federated States of Micronesia, in the western Pacific Ocean. It comprises some 40 islets and has a total land area of 1.75 square miles, with a population of roughly 1000, depending on time of year - Ulithi has one of the two high schools in the outer islands, to which youth come during the school year from the neighboring islands, and the population varies as a result.
Ulithi culture and food security is entirely based upon the biodiversity supported by the coral reef. Over time, climate change and negatively impactful human activity have challenged the island’s ecosystem, and the inhabitants’ very way of life. Ulithian Vibes formed as a way to preserve the culture and traditions of the island for future generations through a marriage of music and storytelling.
Enter One People One Reef, an organization that describes itself as “a collaboration between Micronesian coastal communities & scientists who develop inclusive, adaptive, & sustainable conservation solutions to protect the health & resilience of critical coral reefs’ marine habitat & the people who rely on them for food security.”
OPOR secured a storytelling grant through the National Geographic Society to fund the creation of what would eventually be the debut album from Ulithian Vibes - an album titled, appropriately, One People One Reef.
“The Ulithi youth love music!” Says OPOR Senior Conservation Scientist Nicole Crane. “Chants, storytelling and music are traditionally the way knowledge has been passed down in these and many other outer island communities.”
That’s where I come into the picture, courtesy of Jennifer Brazill, who - through mutual friends and via her own role as a prime mover in the Green movement within the national and international music industry - heard about the Ulithian Vibes project and felt strongly that it checked the necessary boxes as a means of combining music with cultural and environmental conversation.
I didn’t realize at the time the depth of the impact Jennifer’s simple text message would have on my life, and on my own belief in music’s power to effect real and lasting change in individuals, cultures, and ultimately, the world as a whole.
It took about 6 months to complete the production, mixing and mastering of the One People One Reef album, but only about 3 minutes for me to fall deeply in love with the music this collective creates.
Through phone calls, Zoom meetings and text messages around the world and across a handful of time zones, I worked with the band’s Jerry Salap and Derwin Romlar, sending them the mixes as I completed them, discussing production details, and eventually, coming to a consensus as this music truly came to life and bloomed into an album we all felt incredibly proud of. (Side note: I’m profoundly grateful to dear friends Jenna Rutkowski at GCR Audio Recording Studios and Nelson Starr for their advice and feedback during the mastering process. XO.)
We started floating the idea of somehow bringing these musicians to the US for a performance before the album was even finished.
Jennifer being Jennifer, she immediately offered her Borderland Festival as a suitable grounds for the band’s first performance.
I immediately piped in with, “I’m happy to assemble a band of amazing Buffalo musicians and act as musical director!”
And One People One Reef set up a Go Fund Me to help cover the considerable costs associated with bringing the Ulithian Vibes musicians here to Western New York, quite literally from the other side of the world.
Somehow - perhaps through the divine grace of a universe that lately has seemed more cruel than anything else - everyone involved pitched in to make this dream a reality. This incredibly soulful blend of reggae-informed stylings - conceived in the Ulithi Atoll, produced in Buffalo - will now be presented in Buffalo, with the considerable contributions of Buffalo musicians.
This feels like something to celebrate.
One people. One reef. One love.
See you at Borderland!