TapRoot Cultural Troupe

TapRoot Cultural Troupe

Our cultural strategy weaves together the 4 R’s of Social Transformation: Reform, Resist, Re-imagine, Re-create.

Ballots & Balance

A Roadshow Celebrating Collective Voice and Action

“Ballots and Balance” is a dynamic cultural arts tour designed to raise awareness about climate issues and the power of democracy. Finding Our Balance, an interactive multimedia performance created by the NC Climate Justice Collective, is the heart of this experience. This performance combines spoken word, visual art, movement, soundscapes, and puppetry into beautiful storytelling to inspire action. Opening and closing the performance will be songs from guest artist Taína Asili, joined by her band to perform songs from her new climate justice concert, Fever Pitch. Taína and her band will also be creating a dynamic soundscape throughout Finding Our Balance. This exciting experience is family-friendly and vital for all generations. Local guest speakers and nationally renowned performers will provide an uplifting opportunity for fellowship and community connection. Thank you for being a part of a stirring moment where creativity and imagination meet activism and community engagement!

Featured Performers

Dasan Ahanu

Taína Asili

Dasan Ahanu is an award-winning poet and Hip Hop recording artist who has performed across the country and been featured on TV and radio. He is the Cultural Organizing Director for NC Climate Justice Collective, managing director of Black Poetry Theater, founder of the Jambalaya Soul Slam/Bull City Slam Team, the resident artist at Hayti Heritage Center, a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the 2023 Piedmont Laureate. Dasan sees the arts not just as a means of entertainment and inspiration, but also as a vehicle for lifting marginalized voices and fostering radical change.

Taína Asili is a New York-based Puerto Rican singer, composer, and activist carrying on the tradition of her ancestors, fusing past and present struggles into one soulful and defiant voice. Asili’s Afro-Latin fusion songs of love and liberation have inspired audiences at venues across the globe. Her freedom anthems and music videos inspired by social movements for racial, gender, and climate justice have been lauded by the likes of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Huffington Post, Paste, and NPR. Asili uses a multi-genre and multilingual approach to connect with a diverse array of audiences, confidently weaving between rock, reggae, salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and hip hop to give her music a texture that’s unique yet rooted. With powerful vocals and infectious rhythms, Asili’s music urges people to dance to the rhythm of rebellion.

Roadshow Tour Details:

This tour event is part of the 21st Annual Latino Festival “Celebrating Diversity and Sharing Our Cultures.” This festival offers an opportunity to bring the community together to experience the rich and diverse Latino cultures and also learn about local service providers and organizations.

Past Initiatives

Roadshows – The Good Fire (2019)

The Good Fire, an interactive performance which we wrote, produced and performed in spring of 2019 throughout eastern NC—where environmental injustice and climate impacts are so significant—is a good example of how we engage all 4 Rs. The Good Fire is an allegory for renewable energy and community resilience. By combining spoken word, large portable murals, indigenous music and giant puppets, we engaged our communities in envisioning a just energy future, discussed how to reform the broken energy system we have now, learned about new models for distributed solar, and building resistance to the utility monopoly. After performing The Good Fire at the NC Climate Justice Summit, taking it on the road was a wonderful opportunity to involve local musicians, artists, and activists, especially youth who participated as puppeteers (special thanks to Jan Berger and other collaborators with Paperhand Puppet Intervention). Those attending the roadshow saw friends and loved ones performing, encouraging them to engage deeply in the teach-in that followed the performance highlighting the four frontline issues that NCCJC focuses on. 

Protests and Actions

NCCJC brings cultural work to actions throughout North Carolina and the Southeast, uplifting other organizations’ events to achieve shared movement goals. Our creative actions often combine original music, drumming, puppets, hand-painted visuals—much of which is created at or for the NC Climate Justice Summit. On April 29, 2017, NCCJC led a contingent at the People’s Climate March in DC, joining an estimated 200,000 people to call for action on climate change. In collaboration with David Solnit of 350 and Jan Berger of Paperhand Puppet Intervention, NCCJC created a massive street theatre performance to support the aims of the march. During a month-long art build, we produced over 500 pieces of art. During the march, we coordinated with eight busloads of protestors from North Carolina to get over 500 people to dance, sing, and join in a performance at the beginning and end of the march. This is one example of bringing vital, persuasive, and engaging cultural elements to a national action. 

As a part of the September 2019 week of climate action, our drummers led the march during the Triangle Climate Strike and later disrupted Governor Cooper’s meeting with the Interagency Climate Council to call for truly clean energy with our original song.