Global Voices is a vocal workshop, performance, and community experience. Explore the vocal styles of two beautiful cultural traditions, Ukrainian village singing, and Sufi devotional music. Mela Closs, Voice Ritualist, facilitates the convergence of these two rich traditions with guest performers/facilitators Umer Priracha and Asia Mieleszko in a participatory evening of listening, learning, meditating, and vocally creating together.
The workshop takes place in two parts. In part one, Umer will lead us in his workshop “The Unheld Note”.
The Unheld Note is a participatory workshop using Sufi vocal practice, breath, silence, and deep listening to restore forms of attention that contemporary life steadily erodes. Moving between sound and stillness, participants explore what happens when we stop trying to interpret, optimize, or resolve experience- and instead become receptive to what can only be felt before it is named.
Following this 700 year-old tradition, we travel to the Ukraine, where Asia will guide us through Ukrainian folk singing traditions.
Ever wondered how Ukrainian village polyphony works? In this workshop, we’ll learn traditional multipart songs and ritual songs while exploring the techniques that make these communal harmonies so distinctive.
Mela will lead vocal warm-ups before each section. Sit on the floor with your shoes off in the beautiful Delight Factory and experience voice in ways both new and old.
Arrive by 4:30 to experience Sufi vocal music.
Arrive by 6 to experience Ukrainian vocal music.
Or stay for the whole journey! Drinks available for purchase.
Artist Bios
Joanna (Asia) Mieleszko is a singer, conductor, protector of the (very) old, and pioneer of the daringly new. She thinks of her life as a series of side-quests.
A classically trained vocalist with one foot in Eastern European folk traditions and the other in experimental music, she spends much of her time collecting songs, chasing strange sounds, and figuring out how old stories fit into modern life. Along the way, she's premiered works by living composers at festivals and institutions including the Arizona Opera, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, SHE Festival of Women in Music, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, the Cortona Sessions, and New Music on the Point, all while continuing to study and perform traditional village songs from across Eastern Europe. With her band, Medukha, she was an artist-in-residence at the 2023/24 New Jersey Folk Festival, where they developed Across Tongues, an audio-visual interrogation of immigration, language, and third-culture identity. That project received its second performance at O+ Festival in Kingston, NY.
A career highlight was directing the NYC-based Ukrainian Village Voices, culminating in performances and workshops at the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She is currently a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant supporting her ongoing research and teaching of Ukrainian village singing traditions.
When she's not making music, you can find her photographing concerts and otherwise writing about cities and infrastructure.
Umer Piracha (@umerpiracha) is a Sufi vocalist and sound artist whose work invites deep spiritual presence and emotional resonance. Raised in the Sufi city of Multan, Pakistan, and mentored within a 700-year Qawwali lineage, Umer blends South Asian devotional traditions with contemporary sonic and contemplative practices. Now based in New York City, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Grace Cathedral, and been featured on NPR. His project Resonance of Grace creates immersive soundbaths rooted in sacred music, and his collaborations with Harvard Divinity School explore the role of sound in spiritual healing. He also leads Falsa (@falsamusic), a transcultural collective bridging World, Jazz, Sufi aesthetics, and global improvisation.
contact@umerpiracha.com
Instagram: instagram.com/umerpiracha
Mela is a Voice Ritualist and Musician creating playful experiences grounded in imagination and healing. She uses voice and ritual as tools for transformation, healing, and empowerment. With a background in music and theatre education (Emerson College, Orff-Shuelwerk, Theatre of the Oppressed Joker Training), as well as Somatic Vocal Healing practitioner certification from SongDance, she uses movement, singing, somatic sounding, and breathing techniques to connect to the body, emotions, desires, energy channels and ancestors. With the co-creation of sacred space and ceremony, voice sessions become a channel of shifting energy, patterns, and opening new pathways to grow. As a musician, she explores themes of spirituality, oceanic worlds, connection, and sovereignty in solo ambient experimental music-performance projects (Be The Ocean, Ocean of Eros, Siren Song). She also sings ambient drone-heavy dramatic soundscapes and playful vocals in Zelenaya, an Eastern-European folk metal project. She loves creating community events that are grassroots, spiritual, intimate, and joy-centered.
Www.melaclossvoice.com