Don Paul

Don Paul is the leader or producer of 23 albums. He currently works with Hamid Drake and Alex de Grassi in the GALLOP Trio and with them and Kidd Jordan, William Parker and Paul Plimley in the GALLOP Sextet. He's the youngest winner of Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University and the former world-record holder (1982-1992) for running 50 kilometers. He was a logger or roughneck between 1973 and 1980. He began with music in 1988 and led or produced 14 albums over the next seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area, collaborating with his brother Kenton, Babatunde Lea, Henry Kaiser, Chuck Prophet, John Baker, Dhyani Dharma, George Cremaschi, Richard Howell, James Henry, Glenn Spearman, Lisle Ellis, India Cooke, Larry Ochs, William Winant, Anthony Carrillo, Jeannette Armstrong, q.r. hand, Alfonso Texidor, devorah major, Jack Hirschman, Jerry Anomie, Paul Plimley, Donald Robinson, Myles Boisen, Miya Masaoka, Ben Goldberg, Francis Wong, Genny Lim, Daniel Higgs, Nilak Butler, Lee and Salas of Hedzolleh Soundz, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan, and many more. Since the year 2000 he's co-founded Housing Is a Human Right, From the Ground Up, and Rebuild Green, and served as Operations Director for Common Ground Relief in New Orleans and Executive Director for a Central City project known as the Wesley United Digital Arts & Training Center. He and his wife Maryse Déjean co-direct Sticking Up For Children, thanks to an idea from Cyril and Gaynielle Neville. In 2015-2016 he released four albums and a new book, Animals Are Always Making Music. The album Ever-Changing Light is of songs from Louisiana with Mario Abney, Evan Christopher, Alfred Roberts and many more. The album Women Center Earth, Sea, and Sky is of poems with improvised music by Kidd Jordan and Morikeba Kouyaté. The album Singing In The Airport is of poems with Hamid Drake on drum-set and frame-drum and occasional vocals. The album They Call To You is of poems and songs with Don Paul on bodhran and shakers. He's also working now with Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph, and Carl LeBlanc in a band called Rivers of Dreams. His website is donpaulwearerev.com

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