TEDx: Transforming Work Into Joy

Musicians Bennett Konesni and Edith Gawler want to put the culture back into agriculture and find the joy to make hard work enjoyable.
— TEDxFruitvale: Harvesting Change

In October 2011, Edith Gawler and I shared a stage at TEDxFruitvale: Harvesting Change, a one-day conference at Mills College outside Oakland put on by the Bon Appetit Foundation. The focus was farmworkers and labor movements.

We called the talk "Transforming Work Into Joy." We demonstrated how a song can reset a hard workday. And we made the case that bringing music back into physical labor is not sentimentality: it is a better way to work.

It was a poignant and powerful moment, getting a huge theater of people to sing. They especially requested something from the Mchakamchaka jogging and singing tradition as taught to me by my college roommate and friend Kiddo Kidolezi, from Tanzania. Which felt a little off-topic but it was their request! So we did it. I'd love to have that moment back because I would have shaped this moment on stage differently, knowing what I know now. But that was then! And it was quite a moment.

Watch it

• Transforming Work Into Joy on YouTube
• Conference page at Bon Appetit Management Co.
• Wayback Machine archive

Performed with Edith Gawler at TEDxFruitvale: Harvesting Change, Mills College, October 2011.