ABOUT
Movement is a podcast, radio series, live show and community building initiative exploring the intersection of migration and music. Movement uplifts the stories, songs and cultural knowledge of musicians with roots in immigrant communities, creating both intimate space for these powerful artists to connect to each other, as well as expansive public space to express themselves with complexity, nuance, and on their own terms.
Movement debuted in 2020 as a nationally syndicated broadcast on PRX’s The World, and we are now a regular feature on The World, airing to 2.5 million listeners with each episode. It has also been featured on Snap Judgement, Radiotopia Presents, KCRW, WAMU, Immigrantly, Daily Zeitgeist, Podcast Delivery, and been recommended by the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and many more.
Movement is a meditation on the large-scale forces at work in individual lives. We honor themes of joy, curiosity, pleasure, epiphany, and wisdom, even as we make space for the very real presence of trauma, difficulty and pain. Explorations of citizenship, gender identity, race, and border walls are communicated through intimate stories: two brothers sharing one guitar, a daughter trying on her father’s shoes, the lineage of a drum, the sacredness of water, the sounds of a grandmother’s backyard.
Movement is hosted by Ethiopian-American singer-composer Meklit Hadero and was co-created by Meklit, sound designer/producer Ian Coss and editor/producer Julie Caine. Meklit is joined on stage and in our audio stories by a wide range of guest artists whose identities are grounded in an experience of migration: a classical composer who fled religious persecution in Iran, a formerly undocumented Mexican singer returning to perform in her home town for the first time, a Chamorro dancer reclaiming the language and chant of their ancestors, and many more.
Meklit Hadero: HOST/CO-PRODUCER/CO-FOUNDER
Ian Coss: SOUND DESIGNER/ PRODUCER/CO-FOUNDER
SARA LANGLANDS: CREATIVE PROGRAM MANAGER
Sophiyaa Nayar: DIRECTOR: MOVEMENT LIVE
STAFF
Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-American vocalist, songwriter, composer and former refugee, known for her electric stage presence, innovative sound and vibrant cultural activism. Her most recent EP Ethio Blue, was released March 8, 2024. Meklit’s Ethio-Jazz performances have taken her to renowned stages across 4 continents. Her albums have topped world music charts across the US + Europe, and been named best of the year by Bandcamp and The Sunday Times UK. Meklit has collaborated with renowned artists such as Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and the late creator of funk music, Pee Wee Ellis.
Meklit is a National Geographic Explorer, a TED Senior Fellow, and a former Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. A sought after thought leader and speaker, Meklit and has given talks on multiple TED Stages, at the United Nations, and at the National Geographic Storytellers Summit. She is the co-founder of the Nile Project, a featured voice in UN Women’s theme song and the winner of the 2021 globalFEST Artist Award. Meklit has been a guest DJ on KCRW, created new works via commissions from Lincoln Center, MAP Fund, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Stanford Live, NYU Abu Dhabi and many more. Her music has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, NPR, Washington Post, Vibe Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and many more.Meklit is co-founder, co-producer and host of Movement.
Ian Coss is a creator of acclaimed podcasts. His 9-part documentary “The Big Dig” won a 2024 Peabody award, and was named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by the New Yorker and Vulture, while spending over six weeks in the Top 100 shows on Apple Podcasts. Previously, his audio memoir "Forever is a Long Time" was named one of the best podcasts of 2021 by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Apple Podcasts.
As a founding member of PRX Productions, he has produced and scored several limited series with the Radiotopia network — Ways of Hearing, The Great God of Depression, Over the Road, Blind Guy Travels and My Mother Made Me — and launched the long-running Antiques Roadshow podcast, Detours. His work has appeared on Snap Judgement and 99 Percent Invisible; it has been featured at the Tribeca Film Festival, and recognized with multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards as well as a nomination for ‘Podcast of the Year’ from the Podcast Academy.
A longstanding member of the Movement team, Sara Langlands’ official position is Creative Program Manager and Movement Live Co-Producer, but like in many of her previous jobs these amorphous titles only hint at the scope of her responsibilities and contributions. With more than a quarter century of experience in the performing arts Langlands has honed an expansive skill set. Building programming from the ground up, she envisions new work, develops budgets, wrangles talent, and shapes presentations. “Sara is truly a uniquely skilled individual,” says Meklit, the composer, vocalist, founder and guiding spirit of the Movement Immigrant Orchestra and multi-platform Movement podcast, radio series and stage production. “I’ve never met someone as comfortable with budgets as they are with stage managing, rehearsal planning, tour logistics and overall operations. She’s the secret sauce that keeps inspired programming on track.”
She brings a wealth of experience to Movement. In recent years, Langlands has worked with exceptional musicians such as Kronos Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, uncategorizable pianist Stephen Prutsman, and Movement’s Meklit Hadero. Before her focus turned toward music she worked at theater companies from coast to coast, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Ford’s Theatre Society, The Guthrie Theater, Penumbra Theatre and American Conservatory Theatre.
Megan Tan is an award-winning podcast creator. With a foundational background in photojournalism and documentary film, she makes audio stories more accessible by making them visual. In 2020, she was named “Producer of the Year” by Ad Week and in 2016, Refinery29 listed her as one of the “29 Under-30 Powerhouses Poised To Change The World.” She’s known for her critically acclaimed show Millennial on Radiotopia and for her stories that have appeared on This American Life and NPR's All Things Considered.
She recently hosted and created Audible’s Now or Never: How To Find Love When Love Feels Impossible, LAist’ Snooze, shortlisted for the 2023 International Women’s Podcast Award, and LAist’ WILD (Season I and II), named “Best Podcast of 2021” by Spotify and The Atlantic. In 2021, out of over 48 million podcast episodes, an episode Megan wrote, sound designed, and produced WILD: How Do I Love Someone was named “Best Podcast Episode of 2021” by Apple Podcasts, and Best Documentary Finalist by Third Coast in 2023. In addition to writing, editing, and hosting, Megan has a talent for sound design. California Love (Season I), a show Megan Senior Produced and sound designed was awarded the “Best Sound Design” by The Webby Awards in 2020.
Her passion for memoir, rich immersive sounds, and blending fiction with non-fiction, fuels her motivation to push the audio landscape. With over a decade of experience in the podcasting industry, she’s earned accolades from The Atlantic, Apple, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and The Guardian, among others. She’s currently based in Los Angeles with her family and is working independently as a host, editor, and writer on various projects. One of them is a new show she’s creating and hosting. It’ll launch in Spring 2024.
Having lived in New Delhi, India until she was 12 and then traveling through various communities and exploring performance practices from all over the world for the rest of her upbringing, Sophiyaa understands theatre and film as hybrids. She creates interdisciplinary and genre-bending work that challenges existing narratives surrounding (im)migration.
She is a member of the WP Lab 2020-22, 3Arts Make a Wave Grantee, a Definition Theatre ensemble member, member of Director's Lab Chicago 2017 and a resident in Milwaukee Rep’s 2017/18 season. Recent directing credits include Plural (Love) by Jen Goma and Haruna Lee (WP, Pipeline Festival); Shakuntala by Lavina Jadhwani (Future Labs, Goodman Theatre); Love in The Time of Jonestown: A Radio Play by Omer Abbas Salem (New Coordinates); Good Years by Ada Alozie (Film, Definition Theatre) and Pretty Shahid by Omer Abbas Salem (Jackalope Theatre).
AD credits include Search for Signs... with Cecily Strong (Leigh Silverman) and Nollywood Dreams (Saheem Ali). She was part of the SDC Foundation’s Observership Class, through which she worked on Soft Power by Jeanine Tesori and David Henry Hwang at The Public. She has developed work with Steppenwolf, Center Theatre Group, The Shed, American Players Theatre, Writers Theatre, Jackalope, Milwaukee Rep and MCC theatre, among others.
ADVISORS
CECILIA WANG:
Cecelia Wang, National Legal Director of The ACLU + Director for the Center for Democracy: Cecilia’s work at the ACLU encompasses immigrants’ rights, voting rights, national security, human rights, and speech, privacy and technology. She is a past director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and a nationally recognized expert on issues at the intersection of immigration and criminal law, including state anti-immigrant laws, racial profiling and other unlawful police practices relating to immigration enforcement. She has taught immigration law courses as an adjunct lecturer in law at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, and argued cases at the Supreme Court.
MARCO WERMAN:
Marco Werman is co-host of PRX’s The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program. Its mission is to bring international news to American ears in a compelling way that would make the world more relevant to them. Werman is the winner of many awards including the Sony awards for an piece on child labor in West African gold mines; the New York Festivals for a BBC documentary on the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso’s president; the first annual Unity award from the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association for coverage of diversity issues; and an Emmy for a Frontline documentary on Libya. But the most important honor for Werman remains the emails he gets from listeners thanking The World’s team for the coverage of voices from around the globe.
RUFARO GWARADA:
Rufaro Gwarada is committed to a world animated by unhu (ubuntu)—the understanding that collective and individual wellbeing are one and the same. She is a mama, writer, International Coaching Federation certified coach, facilitator, and organizer, with more than 15 years working for gender justice, migrant rights, African-led solutions for Africans, and utilizing art and cultural expression as conduits for healing, liberation, and joy. Rufaro is co-director for Root. Rise. Pollinate!, founder and principal of Pamuuyu, a coaching and consulting practice, and cofounded culture-shift initiatives Wakanda Dream Lab and reSet. Rufaro is home in Zimbabwe, Oakland, and Sacramento, California, with Sangha, on the dance floor, and among creatives and those who strive for liberation of all peoples.
