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FERN

@fern_presents

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Music in nature. 🌱 Performance, sound & story.

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An offering of music for the natural world.

For new nature-based music platform @fern_presents, each live performance brings artists into unique landscapes, exploring the interplay between music and environment, making space for what emerges when we take the time to listen closely.⁠

Filmed in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, the platform’s debut features R&B artist @serpentwithfeet performing his new single “Sentinel,” with the land's acoustics, elements, light, and movement becoming part of the composition.⁠

Watch the full performance now at the link in our bio. by @fern_presents

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5 days ago

Moments from Creative + Movement Directing for @serpentwithfeet as part of the premiere of @fern_presents 🌿

Serpent and I spoke at length about the Trickster, an archetype I’ve always felt spiritually drawn to. The disruptor, the agitator, the one who shakes up hierarchy and power to reveal what lies underneath.

I think there is something of the Trickster in the role of the artist: to say what is uncomfortable to say, to speak truth to power, to reveal the underbelly, and to find beauty in dark places. When Serpent invited me to play and lean deeper into this world with him, I was thrilled.

FERN is an ongoing project bringing Black music artists into nature to perform, be filmed, and share those encounters with the world. There is something beautifully simple and necessary about that proposition: Black music, nature, and a reconnection to something we may be losing.

Created by Sherlen Archibald @treblesoul and Nadia Nascimento @naleisnaps, FERN was such a generous space to step into. I’m deeply grateful for their trust and for opening their home, their process, and their perspectives to me. The creative conversations around this work were some of my favorite parts of the experience: listening, exchanging ideas, and helping guide the discovery of something new together.

And to Whitney @iamwhitneyross , our brilliant producer, thank you for guiding us so beautifully through the day and holding all of the moving pieces together.

The experience was refreshing, expansive, and genuinely transcendent. 🌿

CREDITS
Director & Editor — Kasey Lum
Creative & Movement Directors — serpentwithfeet + Mike Tyus
Executive Producers — Sherlen Archibald + Nadia Nascimento
Producer — Whitney Ross
Director of Photography — Matthew Koropatwa
1st Assistant Camera — Luke Strahm
Gaffer / Grip — Ryan Nelms
Sound Engineer — Kaj Falch-Nielsen
Sound Technician — Jose Miguel Noreña
Colorist — Clinton Homuth
Photography — Gustavo Chams + Simone Chnarakis
Stylist — serpentwithfeet
Wardrobe — Hana Pesut
Hair — Trinay Brown
Lead Production Assistant — Justine Redila
Production Assistants — Braeden Ross, Linsay Kendall, Sean Lesko, Nathan Livramento + Olivia Livramento by @fern_presents

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18 days ago

True love unearths. Sound takes root. @serpentwithfeet plugs into land and sound in the inaugural episode of FERN. Full performance of “sentinel” out now on YouTube.

Listen differently.

SITE :001
Cedar · fern · moss · stone
Pacific Northwest, Canada

Link in bio by @fern_presents

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20 days ago

@serpentwithfeet in nature >>

Our 2018 cover star serpentwithfeet has delivered a gorgeous, urgent rendition of his latest release “sentinel” for the new nature performance series, FERN (@fern_presents). The new series will bring artists into natural landscapes for intimate performances and conversations, with new episodes set to drop on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Learn more about FERN and watch the full performance at the link in bio.

Photos by: gustavochams by @fern_presents

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23 days ago

serpent smolders & croons about his new love in “sentinel” for the inaugural episode of @fern_presents . Listen for the birds, wind, and devotion.

Listen differently.

SITE :001
Cedar · fern · moss · stone
Pacific Northwest, Canada

Full YT performance out now via link in bio.

Artist | serpentwithfeet / @serpentwithfeet

Director & Editor | Kasey Lum / @kasey_lum
Creative & Movement Director | Serpentwithfeet, Mike Tyus / @miketyus
Executive Producer | Sherlen Archibald @treblesoul
Executive Producer | Nadia Nascimento @naleisnaps
Producer | Whitney Ross @iamwhitneyross
Director of Photography | Matthew Koropatwa / @matthewkoropatwa
1st Assistant Camera Operator | Luke Strahm
Gaffer/Grip | Ryan Nelms / @ryannelms

Sound Engineer | Kaj Falch-Nielsen / @bluelightstudio
Sound Technician | Jose Miguel Noreña / @norenajosemiguel
Colorist | Clinton Homuth / @clintonhomuth
Photographer | Gustavo Chams / @gustavochams
BTS Photographer | Simone Chnarakis @wurld2000k
Stylist | @serpentwithfeet
Wardrobe | Hana Pesut
Hair | Trinay Brown / @trinaydidit
Lead Production Assistant | Justine Redila / @justineredila
Production Assistant | Braeden Ross / @braedenmichaelross
Production Assistant | Linsay Kendall / @linsay.kendall
Production Assistant | Sean Lesko / @theginger.van
Production Assistant | Nathan Livramento / @narlynate64
Production Assistant | Olivia Livramento
Catering | Sean Ross / @seanjrboom

Branding | Kim Sutherland / @kimberlysutherland
Social Media | Bosola Ajenifuja / @bosolaa, Araba Ankuma / @arabaankuma by @fern_presents

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25 days ago

serpent ambles through the woods.
EPISODE :001 — SENTINEL
Pacific Northwest, Canada

Full YT performance out now via link in bio by @fern_presents

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a month ago

Between land and sound, @serpentwithfeet enters @fern_presents. 9.23

📸 @gustavochams by @fern_presents

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a month ago

A place for artists to step outside the traditional stage and into the living world.

To listen differently. To notice what changes when sound meets wind, water, distance, light.

The music stays at the center. The landscape is no longer just background. by @fern_presents

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a month ago

Every place has a way of sounding.

Wind moving through trees.
Birds calling across a distance.
Water, insects, footsteps, traffic, voices.

Together, these sounds form a landscape we can experience without ever opening our eyes.

Listening this way changes our relationship to place. We begin to notice not only what is there, but what is moving, responding, near and far.

Sometimes we see a place.
Sometimes we hear our way into it. by @fern_presents

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a month ago

What else can music hold?
In 1979, Stevie Wonder released Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, an ambitious double album created while scoring a documentary whose images he could not see.

Through detailed descriptions of the film, Wonder imagined its visual world through sound—using music, technology and experimentation to explore the living world beyond sight.

That exploration belongs to a much longer lineage of Black artists imagining relationships between land, spirit, memory, technology and possibility. A Black ecological imagination that stretches across generations and continues to take new forms.

Wonder reminds us that listening can be more than receiving what’s already there. It can be a way of imagining what we cannot see.

Sometimes listening isn’t about hearing more.

It’s about imagining further. by @fern_presents

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a month ago

Black music has a long history outdoors.

In New Orleans, Black brass bands moved through streets and neighborhoods as part of parades, funerals, dances and community gatherings. These public traditions became part of the musical environment from which early jazz emerged.

Along the North Carolina coast, the relationship between music and place took a different shape.

Beginning in 1922, the Freeman family developed their land at Seabreeze into a destination for Black recreation at a time when segregation restricted access to many beaches and leisure spaces. Over time, Seabreeze grew to include cottages, restaurants, dance halls, juke joints and an amusement park.

People came to fish, swim, dance, hear music and spend time together by the water. Seabreeze wasn’t simply a beach. It became a place where Black leisure and cultural life could unfold on its own terms.

These histories preserve another side of Black life outdoors: from families dancing at the beach to musicians making music beside the water.

Black relationships with land are often told through labor, dispossession and struggle. Those histories are real. But they were never the whole story.

There was recreation. Community. Music. A day at the beach. A place to gather and stay awhile.

Black music has always had a landscape. by @fern_presents

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a month ago

Before Lemonade, there was the Sea Islands.

The water, trees, open fields and gatherings of Black women that became part of Lemonade’s visual language carry a much longer cultural lineage.
Along the Sea Islands of the American Southeast, Gullah Geechee communities developed a distinct culture shaped in relationship with the coast—through language, food, spirituality, storytelling and music.

One enduring tradition is the ring shout: call and response carried through voice, clapping, circular movement and rhythm. Once practiced through brush arbors, praise houses and churches across the coastal South, the tradition remains alive today through groups including Georgia’s McIntosh County Shouters.

Then, in 1991, Julie Dash brought Gullah Geechee life and landscape to the screen in Daughters of the Dust.
Set in 1902, the film follows the Gullah Peazant family as they face a decision rooted in place: remain on the islands that have held generations of family, culture and memory, or leave for the mainland and the North.
The landscape carries that tension throughout the film.

Water is passage.
The coast is home.
Trees hold intimacy and gathering.
The island carries what the family risks leaving behind.

Shot along the South Carolina coast, Black women move through beaches, trees and open land as part of everyday life. Nature isn’t treated as an escape from their world. It is their world—holding memory, ancestry, movement and possibility.

Twenty-five years later, echoes of that visual language appeared in Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
Black women beneath trees.
Bodies moving through fields.
Women gathered beside water.
Images that reached millions in 2016 carried a much longer Black coastal memory.

The coast was already in the culture. by @fern_presents

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2 months ago