The stories, which tackle religion, race, family, and environment, were produced by Jeff Emtman and Emile Klein, who have embraced the musical concept of the ”mashup.” A children’s choir sings odes to a Virginian nun, an off-the-grid survivalist speaks over a Miami DJ’s peppy beats, a Hmong North Carolinian defines the nation within an ambient soundscape. Each story walks the line between the personal and the foreign, exploring America’s cross-cultural harmony.

Musical collaborators for UNHEARD AMERICA include the iSing choir/ Karen Linford/ Jungmee Kim (choral), the Blind Willies (folk), Phantom Fauna (ambient), Gabriel Zucker (orchestral), Zack Varland-Hopkins (down-tempo), Richard Haig (electronic), and JJ Beck (classical).

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Q&A w/ Klein, Emtman, MC Paul Barman, and select musical collaborators

Phantom Fauna is the Brooklyn based electronic ambient/industrial duo of Joe Morgan and Bryn Nieboer. Joe and Bryn met while attending UNC School of the Arts and began recording together when they moved to Brooklyn in 2010. Their music has been featured in the ‘here be monsters’ podcast, ‘youarelistening.to’, and ‘the ripple project’. They are currently working on new releases.

Gabriel Zucker is a composer, classical and jazz pianist, and singer­songwriter from New York. He was a winner of the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Competition, and his newly commissioned Universal at Midnight was premiered at Carnegie Hall in November 2012. Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times wrote that the work “suavely combined a symphony orchestra and a jazz band… a nocturne out of early Bernstein or introspective Sinatra.” Zucker’s music has been played by the JACK Quartet, and was awarded a 2013 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Emile Klein and Jeff Emtman teamed up to produce the series UNHEARD AMERICAN. Emile (right) is the director of You’re U.S., a non profit using visual, literal, and audio arts to tell America’s ever­changing story. Jeff Emtman (left) is the creator of Here Be Monsters, a podcast about fear and the unknown.

Paul Barman stacks culture upon itself like Jenga, be it in sound or image, its unmistakably his hand. Whether laying rhymes alongside  MF DOOM, Prince Paul, ?uestlove, and Del tha Funky Homosapien, exploring new musical territory with filmmaker Michel Gondry in BEER, or creating children’s books and marital A udioketubah’s that are as depthy as they are giddy, Barman’s invites us to think, trusting that we can keep up with his complex lyrical mappings, a cornucopia of phonics tricks, big ideas, and humor. Meticulously layered in meaning, its a home-made Heraclitus river, each piece filled with mnemonics, fresh for the visit. His ebullient potions respect our intellect while saluting our paradoxical love of ribald potty humor. Twitter’s Joyce? D’accord- @mcpb