View the full episode transcript.
The dense green woods of Sonoma County’s Forestville are home to a two-story music studio and residence that runs on solar energy. Known as The NEST, the mocha colored building is made completely of wood, clay and cob; and it was created for the purpose of serving Native artists.
Ras K’dee, a Pomo-African hip-hop musician who grew up in the area, is the caretaker of the space, but he didn’t build it alone. He worked with over 350 people, many of them young folks from youth groups like PODER, who took the 70-mile trip from San Francisco to this town by the Russian River, or Bidapte, “big river” in the Pomo language.
In addition to being the founder of SNAG Magazine, an Indigenous periodical that has been in print for over two decades, Ras K’dee is also a DJ and emcee in the group Audiopharmacy. This week on Rightnowish, we talk about the importance of working together to create spaces for artists to grow, and the ins and outs of land reclamation in the North Bay.
Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on NPR One, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
Episode Transcript
This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
[Music]
Pendarvis Harshaw, Host: What’s up Rightnowish listeners, it’s your host Pendarvis Harshaw. I don’t know about you but being in a forest soothes my soul. I got to feel that special bliss a few weeks back when I was in Sonoma County, specifically in the town of Forestville.
Rightnowish producer Marisol Medina-Cadena and I got to visit a place called “The Nest.” It’s a quarter acre of land nestled among lush trees, and it serves as an arts and culture hub built by and for Indigenous folks.
Over the last 6 years, it’s been the publishing home of a Native arts magazine called SNAG, which features poems, essays, photographs, and collages about Native identity and activism.
The Nest has also been a space for Indigenous folks across Northern California to convene for permaculture workshops, ceremonies and community feasts, as well as trainings on natural building.
And what came out of those training sessions is the construction of a two story art studio made from cob.
Facilitating these trainings is a DJ and musician who started SNAG magazine. His name is Ras K’dee.
Ras K’dee, Guest: I’m Pomo. My ancestry is from right here. The river that flows down that we’re on right now is Bidapte, Big River. And then Ashokawna is where our people are from. And so we’re on our traditional lands right here, this is our traditional grounds.
Pendarvis Harshaw: Ras K’dee sees The Nest as the intersection of creativity and environmental responsibility. And so he, with the help of other Indigenous folks have built this place to be completely fueled by solar panels.
We’ll hear how Indigenous creativity is taking shape at The Nest right after this.
[Music playing]
Pendarvis Harshaw: About 15 minutes away from the Russian River is The Nest, a space built by and for Native people. Ras K’dee who was born and raised in Sonoma County was able to purchase this plot of land with the inheritance he got from his grandmother selling her house.
Ras K’dee, Marisol and I stand outside and take in the beauty.
Ras K’dee: We had a land blessing from my, from my grandmother and my aunt, came and did like a land blessing, in the Pomo way, where they sing songs and offer prayers and, and, had our had our community here that were coming to help.
We got the land in 2012. But slowly, we’ve been building building it up. We actually intentionally didn’t build for, like, four years. We just kind of, like, watch the land and, during in the winter, during the spring, during the summer and just kind of in the fall, kind of see the different seasons and… Four years of that and like slowly just kind of clearing and like putting garden beds and stuff and planting trees.
Pendarvis Harshaw: This slow process of tending the land allowed Ras K’dee to be intentional about how to build out the space.
The first structure he envisioned was the art studio. It’s brown, and 2 stories tall with hexagon sides and has a roof that extends over the sides. It kinda looks like a trumpet mushroom.
He designed it by thinking about what would be conducive for creating.
Ras K’dee: I was visualizing “what do painters or artists need?” You know, taller ceilings, you know, like, open like, clay wall where they can, like, you know, put their stuff up.
Pendarvis Harshaw: And the construction of this is completely made from cob.
Ras K’dee: The building is sitting on mortared stone. And then it goes up about three feet. And then, on top of that is cob, which is the plaster of clay and straw and sand, mixed together. And it makes like a kind you know, really strong, like, kind of like concrete, almost. And so then you have, like, a foot of that and then from that going up is all pallet wall. So those are like pallets that are, that are stuffed with straw and plastered over.
Ras K’dee: Structurally it’s got wood and it’s got these big lumber, lumber pieces that are holding it up. And inside you’ll see there’s beams going across.
Marisol Medina-Cadena, Rightnowish Producer: Is it redwood beams?
Ras K’dee : Yeah Redwood. Yeah. Wanna go and check it out?
Marisol Medina-Cadena: Yeah, let’s go inside.
[sounds of footsteps]
Pendarvis Harshaw: Ras K’dee encourages us to touch the cob walls to feel all the love that was poured into making it. We do and it has a calming quality to it. He says, it’s the energy of all the people who he invited to help build it.
[Music]
Ras K’dee: We had about 350 people work on the structure, over 350 people and mostly youth. There’s a lot of young people, a lot of youth groups. We had PODER and their youth group come up. We had a bunch of families, like friends with families came up.
Ras K Dee: We had my friend Tomaggio and his family… were some of the first people here helping. They had a three year old and a one year old at the time. Inside is like a plastering and mixing area. And so you just put a tarp down and put all the ingredients in. And so the youth are just in there, just, you know jumping around, having fun. And like, we went to lunch and we were eating and, you know, just visiting and having a break and we came back and like the whole thing is like, mixed. We’re like, “oh man, you guys, you guys did the work, you know”?
But it was really cool like seeing the young people, yeah, just bringing in the clay. Like, the three year old is like giving it to the one year old or the one year old giving it to the three year old and three year old is like, bringing it in to the parents and then the parents are like, putting it on the wall. So that’s kind of like how this started in here.
Marisol Medina-Cadena: How did you even know how to do sustainable type of building?
Ras K’dee: I’m pretty self-taught. I also like went to a lot of workshops. But, really got my chops in Hoopa. At the Hoopa Rez, we built a straw bale structure. It was little bit different of, of a kind of a building. But you basically use the straw bales and you cut them and make them look kind of like Legos. So they’re like… and stack them and then you plaster that. And that that structure is still, still standing.
That really like gave me a perspective like what it takes and the amount of people and the amount of work that it takes to do this kind of building. But this is my first building that I built from scratch.
Marisol Medina-Cadena: When I was touching the wall, like you said, I noticed it was very cool. Can you talk about how the material itself is good for winter and summer?
Ras K’dee: Yeah, you know, the walls themselves absorb you know, the humidity, the moisture. And the clay walls, they’re like, really they’re known to, be a great barrier in terms of like, creating a more, just relaxed temperature inside. And what the clay does is it absorbs like the humidity and the kind of the, the heat, the moisture and kind of captures it. And when it starts to cool at night, it starts to release it inside. And so it keeps the building naturally fluctuating between just a comfortable temperature. But you’ll notice when we walk outside even, you know that it’s much cooler inside of here.
[Music]
Marisol Medina-Cadena: Yeah
Pendarvis Harshaw: Yeah
Ras K’dee: Ya know, behind building a structure like this is that it’s nontoxic. You don’t have all the waste chemicals. You don’t have all the waste number one from from the construction industry. There’s a lot of waste. Like, I don’t know if you ever been to a construction site, but you look in the dumpsters, it’s like, full of, like, perfectly good, usable materials, but it’s just stuff they cut off or stuff they’re not going to use. So it’s it’s… I pulled a lot of the lumber for this structure out of dumpsters actually, because people just throw away perfectly good two by sixes.
Pendarvis Harshaw: This room is essentially a sleeping den for Ras K’dee. A mattress takes up the full space and original art pieces from visiting artists hang on the walls.
Next Ras K’dee invites us to check the upstairs level of this structure. For the last couple of years it’s served as a creative studio for visiting artists to retreat and work on their own visual art. Most recently, they had an Anishinaabe artist from Detroit stay and create graphics and articles for SNAG magazine.
[Ras’Kdee talking]
Pendarvis Harshaw: We walk up a flight of stairs made from redwood trees.
Ras K’dee: Okay. Watch your head here this is a little low this side. Gotta duck down there.
Marisol Medina-Cadena: It’s cool up here.
Pendarvis Harshaw: It’s a fully fleshed out recording space. There’s acoustic and electric guitars hanging on the walls. a desk with 2 keyboards, sound mixers and recording microphones. The wooden roof has a skylight so the sun shines into the studio and provides beautiful natural lighting that feels conducive for getting the creative juices flowing.
[Music]
Pendarvis Harshaw: Ras K’dee has even recorded a couple albums here with his group Audiopharmacy.
Ras K Dee: The founders of the group are all kind of like rooted in hip hop and hip hop, I would say is, you know, really a music that’s founded on sampling. And so it literally sampled every genre, you know, and so that’s kind of like what we are. We’re like, we are every genre, you know. But I play keys, is my main instrument that I, that I grew up playing.
Pendarvis Harshaw: After this short tour, we sit down to talk more about the vision behind The Nest.
Pendarvis Harshaw: You live here as well? What’s your day to day life like here?
Ras K’dee: Taking care of the garden is a big part of my day. Waking up in the morning, watering the garden, doing some weeding. I like to, I like to do a little bit of work. Work in the garden in the morning, and then jumping on my other work that I do. I’m also a musician and artist, so it’s a busy time. You know, we got gigs and stuff, so there’s a lot of calls and stuff happening around negotiating and figuring out gigs. But yeah, just supporting artists, you know is kind of what I do here.
Right now, I’m working on a mural project in Windsor, we’re, we’ve got like, a 100 foot wall over there and so bringing in the artists for that.
Pendarvis Harshaw: So, juggling the arts, also juggling all that comes with managing nature. You’re in the middle of nowhere. What’s nightlife like out here?
Ras K’dee: Quiet. it’s quiet. Like all those scary movies start creeping in, you know, you’re like, man, it’s dark out here. Like, what’s out here, like, you know, mountain lions, bears, you know, like you start thinking about things. And so it took me a while to like to like, unlearn that programing, you know, like to like, get out of that like, cycle, like fear and just be like, oh, it’s just nature.
Being out here alone and just kind of like in the elements, I started to really enjoy it and really enjoy that that peace,connecting to to that darkness in a different way. But, there’s constantly people coming through, especially during this, this time of year. We do like a men’s healing circle.
Pendarvis Harshaw: As a kid, were you the builder type?
Ras K’dee: I grew up in Sonoma County. I grew up, not too far from. And in northern Santa Rosa. Where we grew up, it was like the end of town, like our street was like the last street in town, basically. And like, as soon as you leave there, it’s just like hills,and so like, we would be off in the hills, you know, with our B-B guns, our slingshots. And it was like, you know, we go out all our homies, like 4 or 5 of us, you know, me and my brother, my older brother. And we would, we would just be out all day long.
We’d have different forts built. It was always kind of like in my, back of my head is like, got to get to the forest, got to get back to the forest and build that tree fort. As an adult, you know, this is kind of like a representation of that I think.
Pendarvis Harshaw: In this part of the region in Sonoma County, there’s a couple of other organizations that are doing similar work, like EARTHseed, like Heron Shadow. Are you in communication with these organizations? And is there like a movement occurring?
Ras K’dee: There’s definitely a movement. Yeah. It’s pretty special, actually, to be be a part of it. I am in community with a lot of a lot of the organizations you mentioned. I was just deejaying, actually, at EARTHseed’s “Black to Land” event last week. They open up their, their space to, you know, to, to the Black community. We we all collaborate. We all connect. And Heron Shadow has a farm, so they have more food and, they do like, Indigenous food and Indigenous seeds. They bring back seeds. And so it’s perfect because, you know, like we go over there like, do an exchange or do a collaboration and they gift us this with seeds and gift us with plants to bring back here to plant. So it’s kind of like this, you know, this sharing of resources.
Marisol Medina-Cadena: Being in your space and you talking about all the community groups that come here, it makes me think about how other land back efforts we’re seeing in NorCal are very different, in that it’s like a city, you know, giving a plot of land to a formal nonprofit to steward and tend. But this is like your private space built from your like, family equity. And talk to us about that decision to open up your personal space so that it is a collective thing.
Ras K’dee: This building couldn’t have been made without, you know, people coming. I think it was more of a prayer, you know, like I want to I want to put the prayer here, for this space to be a community space and for it to be, a resource for the community,
And so we put the prayer in and like, you know, kind of like not knowing, you know, if the community was going to show up, just like, oh, let’s start doing this, this crazy project and see, see who shows up kind of thing and the community, community showed up.
[Music]
Marisol Medina-Cadena: I’m wondering when you’re either in the garden or just sitting here with your dog Panda taking in the breeze, the sounds, how do you feel? Or what are you thinking about what this land means for you?
Ras K’dee: What I’ve gained is, I guess, a sense of peace. And coming into this land with also like a lot of work to do to like prepare it, it felt like overwhelming, you know, and it felt like, you know, like impossible at first because it was an empty lot and it was just overgrown. And, you know, trees had fallen and it hadn’t been taken care for many years. And yeah, just doing the work to, like, slowly heal the land and steward it in a good way, you know, has really just helped me to like, to heal myself,
As Indigenous people, you know, we see it as like as, like a generational commitment to the land. You know, like, we’re going to be here for generations. We’re not just here for build our house right now and then sell it and then, you know, move somewhere else, you know, or to Mexico or whatever, you know. What do they call them? Digital nomads. You know, like we’re not thinking in terms of that. We’re thinking in terms of generations.
So what are we building here right now that that we can leave generationally for, for our for our youth in the future, right. I don’t have youth of my own right now, but I have young people that I that I work with. This is a lifelong project. It’s not a temporary thing.
We were creating this space as kind of a showcase place where people can come and see, you know, a building that’s that’s cob. And they could touch the wall and feel and see what it looks like and what the different building techniques are and learn about the different building techniques and then be like, oh, I want to, I want to build an adobe, you know, adobe dome.
But really, really just incubate, incubate art that changes the world, you know, that’s that’s that’s why the space is here. So those are, those are the things that we want to do here and invite the artists that can bring about that change that we need in this world.
[Music]
Pendarvis Harshaw: Ras K’dee, we can’t thank you enough. Much appreciation to you for welcoming us to your corner of Sonoma County to see and experience The Nest.
The Nest is still evolving and Ras K’dee has plans to build a yurt and a dance studio to be able to host more classes and workshops. To stay updated on The Nest follow along on Instagram @SNAG.magazine.
And to keep up Ras K’dee’s art and music projects, you can check out his IG @raskdee that’s spelled R-A-S-K-D-E-E.
This episode was hosted by me, Pendarvis Harshaw. Marisol Medina-Cadena produced this episode. Chris Hambrick held it down for edits on this one. Christopher Beale engineered this joint.
The Rightnowish team is also supported by Jen Chien, Ugur Dursun, Holly Kernan, Cesar Saldaña, and Katie Sprenger. Rightnowish is a KQED production.
Until next time, peace!
