​The Dreams Knows More Than You

Spoken Word & Music Project

Cover Photo: Ben Thompson

This genre-bending Spoken Word & Music Project has been in development 
for years, and award-winning performance poet, José Torres-Tama, 
teams up with his long-time music collaborator, BA3,
to create a powerful fusion of words & music that is
provocative, politically poignant, and even comic.

JTT is a veteran wordsmith, and multi-instrumentalist BA3
drops surreal sound-scapes that accompany 
Torres-Tama's "verbalas / verbal bullets" with bilingual hip-hop in 
English, Spanglish, & Spanish. With the unleashed intensity
of a revolutionary spy from her Majesty's
Secret Salsa Service," JTT has a license to transport
subversive performance art across state lines
& international waters.    

With a variety of voices he channels via "duende" possession,
he explores the underbelly of the "American Dream" mythology,
blind nationalism, and the pimping of fear that has driven
a so-called " beacon of democracy" to the "Dark Side"
​with raging anti-immigrant hysteria
--in an election year.

​Addressing GrinGoLandia’s appetite for Mexican food
and Latin culture, his comic battle cry is
“NO GUACAMOLE for Immigrant Haters!” 

"You can’t love the food and dehumanize the cooks because
guacamole junkies are learning how to Tango by the millions,
and salsa sauce outsells Heinz ketchup
as the leading condiment every year."
states Torres-Tama.

This spoken word performance is a clarion call for the
United States of Amnesia
to wake up from its dreadful slumber,
and remember to live up to its press release
as the "beacon of democracy"
in the free world.

His performance dares a divided nation to remember
the words emblazoned on its iconic Statue of Lady Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
the homeless, tempest-tossed to me …

Torres-Tama explores the psychic, physical,
and open wounds of an Ecuadorian immigrant
--balancing two languages and two cultures,
and the heart of this collection is his retelling of the
forgotten Hoboken Fires of the 70s/80s,
where family members perished.

That series of tracks takes the project title of 
The Dream Knows More Than You!

This initial development and early writings of this new project
was supported in part by an award grant from 
Poets & Writers, thanks to a grant from the
Hearst Foundations. ​

Torres-Tama is now looking to develop this spoken word & music
performance into a full evening of a 70-min show.
He is looking to engage National Performance Network
Presenting Partners as commissioners for a new NPN Creation Fund Project.

Also, this new work addresses the growing ICE Detention Centers
and private-for-profit prisons that jail thousands of immigrants
indefinitely in towns like Jenna, La Salle, and Pine Prairie.   

Below are links to two
"Video Cortaditos / Film Shorts"
of two major spoken word & music tracks.
Films composed by Bruce France & JTT.