Nuai Tribe

Aaron M.D. and Moses SOWETO-TSALI first met under the auspices of downtown Los Angeles in the year 2000 and shortly thereafter founded the Nuai (New Eye) Tribe. It was in that same year that the name Nuai came to Moses in a dream as he slept in the crack infested slums of Washington, DC.

Born in 1984 and raised between the riots of South Central and missions and murals of East Los Angeles, Aaron has been writing songs since before he can remember. By the time Aaron found and organized Moses, helping to bring him up to speed on the politic of LA, the two realized the revolutionary potential of their meeting as an opportunity to unify not just the Pacific and Atlantic American coasts in rebellion against their dispossession, but also most immediately, their clashing peoples in the City of Angels. Indeed, there in Los Angeles it pained them to see black and brown at war over those institutionalized conflicts of the prison-industrial complex that had spilled out onto the streets in blood froth for decades. This is the backdrop upon which Aaron began spewing his jazzy hot instrumentals, planting seeds everywhere he went in attempts to teach others to unleash their inner song, as he had himself been taught by the legendary Misol Tribe.

A lifelong poet and traveler himself, Moses pushed out of his mother's womb in 1985 and into the eyes of Washington, DC. In commemoration, a live broadcast from the historic WOL-AM proclaimed that a "slayer of dragons" had been born to the District of Columbia. During his most formative years, DC was murder capital-- home to homicide, the war on drugs, the White House, and AIDS. In fear for her firstborn (symbolically enough, scripturally Moses and Aaron are brothers), Moses' mother found no other option but to set him in a basket bound westward for the shores of Southern California. Indeed, to this day, he bounces back and forth so much between East and West, being here nor there, that he hardly feels comfort in the same pair of shoes for too long. . .

It wasn't long before Nuai went global, as Aaron MD found himself on a peace mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2003), just months before Moses was sent off as a student delegate into the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico (2004), where he was fed and sheltered by the Zapatistas in rebel territory. Thus, Moses' own beats came to fruition.

Both Aaron and Moses are the children of immigrant fathers from Mexico and Jamaica, respectively. Largely inspired by the conquest of the Americas, the duo has found their niche amongst an international network of warriors who have dedicated their lives to the upliftment of ghetto youths. Refusing to stagnate in a hateful, reactive state, Nuai remains proactive in honoring their ancestral ties, paying eternal homage to the native legacy of the Americas, all the while remaining ever clever and meticulous in accentuating the historical interconnectedness of all people.

* LA * DC * SAN JOSE * BOSTON * ALBUQUERQUE *