Groundbreaking musicians Audry Funk, Bartika Eam Rai, and Felukah sit down with renowned journalist Jessica Lipksy to discuss using their native and adopted languages to shape their unique styles, and how their artistry speaks to issues important to them.

The discussion will be followed by short performances from each artist demonstrating their special techniques.

Jessica Lipsky is an award-winning journalist and managing editor at the Recording Academy. When she’s not collecting records to DJ, she writes about them for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, the Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Wax Poetics and elsewhere. Her book, It Ain’t Retro, a biography of Daptone Records and the revival soul scene, was largely researched and written at New York’s library systems.

Known as Audry Funk, Audry Bustos Díaz is a singer – songwriter, MC, and activist born in Puebla, Mexico who is considered as one of the most important exponents of Hip-Hop in Spanish. Residing in the Bronx, New York, she has an international presence in the independent music industry for twenty years. During this time, her powerful message has reached different high-profile venues, while also giving talks about philosophy, feminism and migration at forums around the world.

Bartika Eam Rai is a New York based singer-songwriter, celebrated for her poetry-like lyrics, haunting vocal and authenticity. Rai was born and raised in Kathmandu, but it was only after moving to the US that she decided to experiment her prose as music, in an attempt to express the displacement that consumed her, intensified by the tangible realization of leaving home. She recognizes her medium being intertwined with her longing for home and perennial identity crisis of existing as a Nepali in a non-Nepali world, which is why all her recorded music is intentionally created in Nepali, her mother-tongue. Her albums have received rave reviews and she has been the recipient of Nepal’s national music awards. Bartika is currently working on her first book, tiny excerpts of which, was written inside the New York Public Library!

Felukah is an Egyptian rapper, singer, poet and activist. Seamlessly blending her Arabic culture into Western sounds, Felukah is dubbed the ‘Arabfuturist songstress,’ or the artist paving the way for a ‘new wave of Arab women.’ Felukah’s music and revolutionary character has garnered the attention of thousands in the Middle East as well as the Western world, landing her opportunities with the FIFA World Cup, Harvard University, the Brooklyn Museum, Boiler Room TV, and more. Felukah’s new collaboration with Ash, “On My Mind” showcases her versatility as a pop artist, rapping and singing over a dance beat and staying true to her conscious lyrics about empowerment, life and romance.