By Mark Bialczak
LPL Communications Specialist
Colleen Kattau calls her band Dos XX. Think women’s chromosomes, not the popular Mexican beer, the singer-songwriter-string player said with a chuckle during a recent phone interview.
Her band mates will include Jane Zell on lead guitar and Connie Walter on percussion. (Mike Brandt will man up on bass.)
Dos XX will visit the Liverpool Public Library’s Carman Community Room at 2 p.m. March 15Kattau says they will honor women’s history and Latin culture in this third of four concerts in the Latin Rhythms series.
She sings in Spanish and English.
“Gringo Latino,” Kattau has nicknamed her music. “Spanish resonates with people. The audience inevitably says it’s interesting. The Latin melodies are gorgeous. The chord progression is compelling.”
It’s a good time for Kattau to be visiting.
She’ll bring with her songs from her new album, Besos Kisses.
“It’s a poem from a beloved friend of mine, Pedro Cuperman, we set to music,” Kattau said. “It’s one of two Spanish cuts on the album.”
And one of two poems converted to a song, too.
Kattau recorded the album at the Electric Wilburland Studio outside of Newfield. She said she was fortunate that fall of 2018 because the studio time she booked coincided with a visit to record by Ithaca musician DePaolo. A recorded session with DePaolo had long been on her wish list, Kattau said. He said yes. They recorded four songs the first day and five the next.
“So they have a live studio feel,” Kattau said.
Three of the songs are about the Central New York community.
“Dangerous Women” is based on historian Sally Doesch Wanger and her work in woman’s suffrage.
“To Be an Ally” pays tribute to the social movement work of non-first-people individuals and the Native people who work together in the quest for rights.
“Her Voice Is a River” is dedicated to Onondaga clan mother Audrey Shenandoah, and came after Kattau interviewed her daughter Jeanne and granddaughter Awhenjiosta.
The closing cut, “Winter Guardians,” was a poem she wrote after meeting a refugee from the Congo through her friends Sydney Hutchinson and husband Maurice, a musician and studio engineer. It features that refugee, 18-year-old Olivier Byinshi, on piano.
“I like to think in terms of albums still,” Kattau said. “People still like to buy CDs. They want to support artists.”
Those who show up to witness Kattau’s songs might hear her give a Women’s History Month shout out to her cherished friend, the late Jolie Christine Rickman. Kattau and Rickman performed and wrote music together often when Rickman lived in the Westcott Nation area and earned her graduate degree from Syracuse University in the 1990s. Rickman moved to New York City in 2001 to continue her work in activism. Rickman died of cancer in 2005 at the age of 34.
“Her voice, the beauty of it, is etched in my ear,” Kattau said. “She was a pivotal person in my life. Her optimism and presence kept me going. I’ve been revisiting several of her songs. It’s daunting to cover her music. To make it honest. I say she was prescient.”
Kattau teaches Spanish as her day job, and also used to teach women’s studies. She said she gave examples of Rickman’s music to three of her students, and “three of them came back to me independently and said, ‘I want to get a tattoo with her lyrics on my body.’ Empowering young women was a big reason for her being.”
