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Fiidla on the March
By
Bruce Dries
 Not
long after graduating from IUP, Owen Brown M’96 was selected to be
music director for the 1997 Million Woman March in Philadelphia.
With a résumé including studies in vocal and instrumental music,
voice training, dance, massage, holistic medicine, emergency
medicine, martial arts, and sound engineering, Brown had already
been involved in social- and community-related issues.
“They wanted
someone who could handle the music, make the stage work, and had the
right spirit,” he said. He chose the music, coordinated the
musicians for the day’s events, and even performed a violin and drum
duet with West African percussionist Babatunde Olatunji.
Born in London,
Brown moved to America with his mother and settled in New York City.
He began singing jazz and R&B, and decided that he wanted to find
his identity by playing “black” music on the violin. It became his
instrument of choice, and his virtuosity with the violin soon earned
him the nickname “Fiidla.”
His advisor at
IUP was Carl Rahkonen, and Brown remains grateful that he was
allowed to take a leave from classes in 1995 for a fourteen-city
Asian tour as one of the leads in the pop group Surface.
Brown also tap
dances, sings with a four-octave range, and conducts a
Philadelphia-based orchestra called Chocolate Wireworks that
performs his music with strings, flutes, guitars, and rare
instruments from around the world. His music is a mix of world
music, jazz, Indian, hip-hop, and spoken word that he calls “World
Soul.”
“Whether singing,
speaking, or playing, my music interprets love relationships, social
injustice, and spirituality through the soul of the Black
experience,” he said.
Fiidla has
recorded with numerous artists, including Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim,
Santana, and George Clinton. He released a CD in 2004 called The
State of Things (available at
www.cdbaby.com/cd/fiidla), and his music has been getting
play on several independent radio stations and internet stations. In
December, Chocolate Wireworks performed “Violin in Black,” a
retrospective and history of violin music in the hands of black jazz
violinists from the 1920s to the present day.
Brown is also a
voice trainer and fuses vocal care and development with nutritional
advice, physical training, aromatherapy, and massage.
Samples of
Fiidla’s music are available on his website at
www.fiidla.com.
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